Career Women’s Week honors Melissa Dunkel
PUNXSUTAWNEY — The Thursday Punxsutawney Career Woman of the Week has lived in Punxsutawney her entire life and led a very busy one over the years.
Melissa (Shedlock) Dunkel said she was born and raised in Punxsutawney, the daughter of the late George and Mary Shedlock. Dunkel said that her parents lived here in Punxsutawney until they died.
“I really enjoyed growing up in Punxsy and was happy to move back here,” Dunkel said, adding that she lived in Erie for awhile and moved back to Punxsy to marry her husband, Doug Dunkel.
Dunkel said that the family business, Dunkel Roofing, has been operating in Punxsy for more than 100 years.
She said that she graduated from Punxsutawney Area High School and went to business school in Erie. She didn’t like living in the snow belt and having to deal with the winter weather that came with it.
“I began working in Erie at a law office, where I learned new things, and attended classes at Gannon University,” she said. “I took some paralegal classes at Gannon and continued to do that after I moved from Erie.”
Dunkel pointed out that in 1979, she moved back to Punxsutawney, which is when she married Doug. She said she started working in Indiana for attorney Beverly Gazza, where she was for a number of years, and she continued to take more paralegal classes. “I worked for her for awhile, and I had my family, three daughters,” Dunkel said, adding that her daughters are Chelsey, Amanda and Katelyn.
She said that she continued to work while she raised her children, who attended SS.C.D. and then Punxsutawney Area High School.
Dunkel said that the reason that she quit working in Indiana was that her girls were in dance, karate, track and golf, and she couldn’t get home in time to help them participate in their events.
She then began working for Lukehart and Lundy in Punxsutawney, and she went back and forth. Dunkel went back to Indiana after she was done raising her children, and then came back to Lukehart and Lundy again.
“It was a back and forth kind of thing, because I got tired
(Continued from Page One) of the drive,” she said. “Then, I would run into Kip and Jeff, and they would ask if I could come do their real estate cases for awhile. I enjoyed working for all of those people.”
Dunkel then had her own title searching business until 9/11. After that, she said, her insurance went up by a very large margin, and she received a call from one of the women at S&T Bank saying that Bill Cooper was looking for an assistant and asking if she was interested. She was the assistant who did Groundhog Club things for Cooper, who was the president of the club at that time.
“Everything I’ve done throughout my life has been interconnected, being a paralegal, title searching and the bank is kind of hard to figure out, but they are all interconnected,” Dunkel explained, adding that they do a lot with loans and home purchases and had some interconnection.
“I enjoy dealing with the public, and then Bill retired about three years after I started working for him,” Dunkel stated. “At that time, I moved and became a commercial lender, and then, I was the commercial lender in DuBois.”
She pointed out that she’s driven to work out of town her entire life. “I never minded my drive, that was always my downtime,” Dunkel pointed out. “On my drive home, it gave me time to think about what I had to do with my kids, and in the morning, I could prep myself to start my day.”
She added that after working with commercial lending, that was when they offered her a job in retail as the manager of the Route 36 office in Brookville, and she’s been there now for six years.
Dunkel said the banking business has changed an awful lot. “The bottom line is that it’s still a customer service job, no matter what all the rules and regulations are. The bank rules and the Fed still come down to serving the customer,” Dunkel explained.
In all her spare time, she’s also the secretary of the Punxsutawney Area Hospital Board, treasurer of the Punxsy Regional Development Council (PRDC) and president of the Jefferson County Area Agency on Aging board.
She noted that she has two grandchildren that she enjoys very much, a grandson from Amanda and a granddaughter from Chelsey.
Dunkel said she wants to thank the Career Women’s Club for choosing her and that it was a great honor and she was humbled.