San Bruno B.A.R.T.

  Marilyn McAllister can't believe how quickly the years flew by.

  She holds the record for the longest career at BART -- 40 years.

  On Tuesday, the Vallejo native will retire from the job she loves.

  "I remember my first day like it was yesterday," McAllister said. "I was straight out of college and my dad warned me to be prepared to be unemployed for six months ... and 19 days later I was hired."

  That fatherly advice came from Jesse Bethel, McAllister's dad, Vallejo's first African-American school board member. Most Vallejoans are familiar with the name because of Bethel High School, which was named after Jesse Bethel.

  "He was always preaching job security," McAllister said. "That's why I stuck with BART when I had opportunities to leave. I thought it was better to have the pension."

  McAllister, a Concord resident, has spent the bulk of her career in accounting. She also worked as a cost engineer before moving to grant development, where she has been for 12 years as a principal financial analyst.

  When McAllister started in 1968, BART was still only a hole in the ground. Trains were years away from running. When her roommate's boyfriend bragged that he could get her a job, McAllister said she hadn't even heard of BART.

  "Nobody knew what BART was back then," she said, adding that construction was under way, but only 10 or 20 percent complete.

  At the grand opening, employees and their families got to ride the trains before the public did, says Veronica Bethel Stone, McAllister's younger sister.

  "I thought it would be like the submarine ride at Disneyland," said Bethel Stone, who was in elementary school at the time.

  Bethel Stone said she's not surprised her sister stuck with BART.

  "It's totally her," Bethel Stone said. "She's so committed, no matter what she gets involved in, to the very end. That was a value I learned from her."

  With a degree from San Francisco State in business and accounting, McAllister went to work in the accounting department, helping to keep the numbers straight as bills were paid for the construction effort.

  Earning $631 a month -- an impressive salary for a then-recent college graduate -- McAllister became the first African-American woman in BART's fledgling accounting office, which was dominated by white men.

  "It was intimidating at first," McAllister said. "Normally, when you go someplace, you want to see at least one person like yourself."

  Fortunately, she said, she always great people around her, even though few women were given opportunities then to rise to the top of their field. Today, she said, she sees more women than men in accounting.

  "We've taken over," she said.

  Competing with successful males wasn't new for McAllister. At Vallejo High School, she competed with classmate and friend Osby Davis, now Vallejo's mayor, to see who could get the best grades.

  "It made school more interesting to have someone to compete with," McAllister said. "It was a good rivalry. I think I surprised him with where I went, and he totally surprised me with where he went."

  The two graduated as part of the class of 1963, she said.

  In 1979, McAllister was part of a crew that implemented the accounting office's first computers.

  "When I was first hired, we had 13-column paper and a calculator," McAllister said. "I had to share a phone with my boss."

  After she retires, McAllister plans to relax and take fitness and piano lessons. She's also looking forward to spending time with her husband, two grown children and five grandchildren.

  "I want to travel because I've never been anywhere except on BART," she said.

E-mail Tony Burchyns at tburchyns@thnewsnet.com.