By: K. Michelle Moran | Grosse Pointe Times | Published December 29, 2015

GROSSE POINTE PARK/CITY/FARMS — 2015 will likely be remembered as the end of an era in Grosse Pointe Park, with several well-known, longtime city leaders stepping down.

In March, after nearly 32 years at the city’s helm, Mayor Palmer Heenan, then 93, retired. A month later, the Park City Council voted unanimously in favor of renaming City Hall in his honor; a sign outside the building now calls it the Palmer T. Heenan Municipal Center.

Heenan’s successor, longtime Mayor Pro Tem Gregory Theokas, opted not to run for re-election in November, essentially ending his own council career after 20 years of service. Voters elected former City Councilman Robert Denner — the sole candidate for mayor — to become the new head of the city, and the Park City Council named City Councilman Daniel Clark as the new mayor pro tem at a meeting last month.

Someone with an even longer career in the Park, Public Safety Chief David Hiller, announced in 2015 that he would be retiring Jan. 3, 2016, after a 44-year career with the department. Grosse Pointe City Public Safety Director Stephen Poloni was tapped by Park leaders to fill Hiller’s shoes, but in an unprecedented arrangement, Poloni will divide his time between the Park and City, as he’ll continue to helm the City’s Public Safety Department as well. The Park and City already share a single emergency dispatch center and prisoner lockup, located in the Park.

Hiller’s second in command, Park Public Safety Captain David Loch, quietly retired Sept. 11 after more than 29 years with the department, opting to take on a new challenge as the director of security and public service for the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores and its sister site, the Henry Ford Estate-Fairlane in Dearborn.

A less seismic, but no less noticeable, shift will forever mark Grosse Pointe City’s Public Safety Department. In the summer of 2015, Sgt. Anthony Railling retired after 22 years with the department. At press time, Sgt. Ronald Wieczorek was slated to retire Dec. 29, after almost 29 years, and Lt. Edward Tujaka was slated to retire Dec. 31, after almost 30 years. Lt. Michael Seidel is scheduled to retire after his shift Jan. 17, 2016, and like Tujaka, he’s been with the department for nearly 30 years. That means that more than half of the City’s command officers will have retired within months of each other. And these retirements come at a time when the director is about to become the head of the public safety staffs in the City and Park, a change that takes effect after Hiller’s retirement.

Anyone who’s ever called Grosse Pointe Farms’ Public Safety Department or stopped by the dispatch center might have noticed a change there as well, with the retirements of three veteran dispatchers in 2015. In June, dispatcher Don Dewey — who started working for the department in 1967 as a police officer, at a time when the police and fire departments were still separate — answered his last emergency calls. Farms Public Safety Director Daniel Jensen said Dewey’s 47 1/2 years on the job — the last 14 of them spent as a public safety dispatcher — were a record in the Farms, and might even be a record statewide.

Farms dispatcher Andrea Seidel — whose husband is City Lt. Michael Seidel — also retired in June, after 13 years. Before that, she handled dispatching in the City for about 2 1/2 years, and she spent another five or six years prior to that working as a crossing guard in Grosse Pointe Woods, so Seidel worked to keep Grosse Pointers safe for roughly 20 years. Since retiring, Seidel has continued to come in periodically to help train the new dispatchers.

Another longtime dispatcher, Dottie Deneau, retired April 29 after 23 years with the Farms. Deneau served as a dispatcher in Grosse Pointe Woods for roughly five years before coming to the Farms.