“They’re not my rats.”

Those four words, delivered with a practiced indifference to a father of two concerned for the safety of his children, propelled a man already dedicated to common causes to a life in local politics.

Gerald Yob went for help with an infestation in his neighborhood – rats visible in the streets his kids were playing in – and was not impressed with the response by a member of Freemansburg Borough Council. He decided to run for office to provide the community with a better example in leadership. And he said pointedly, “I’m going to get rid of all the rats.”

That was around 1963, and he’s been an integral part of the borough’s government ever since, spending a dozen years on council and three dozen as mayor. Now 88 years old, he’s returning to his council roots for another term before considering retirement.

“I might beat my mom, but I don’t want to stick around on council that long,” he said with a laugh. Anna Yob died in 2012 at 102.

Anna, a North Braddock native who worked in the silk mills and Granville, a locomotive engineer, settled on Bethlehem’s Southside in the College Hill neighborhood. Gerald, born in 1929, would live there for many years as well.

His commitment to service began in his youth. While attending Liberty HS, his scoutmaster father helped him achieve Eagle Scout status, and within a few years he was serving in the Army during the Korean War. He would go on to serve as a scoutmaster himself, as well as number of other volunteer positions, including trustee, usher and others at College Hill Moravian Church, as a member of the borough fire department, Lions Club president and an American Legion district commander.

Yob and his wife Doris have lived in the borough on Garfield Street for 64 years.

Over the decades, Yob has watched divisive councils sink Freemansburg in debt and opportunities pass by unrealized, but he worked closely with residents and local legislators to keep his community a family.

He woke daily at 4:30 a.m. and arrived at the office two hours before anyone else, checking in with police, taking calls about road problems or fallen trees, and immediately contacting the proper department or committee members to get on the issue. “I was always around,” he said. “People would stop by and say, ‘What about that one street?’ I’d say, ‘I’ll take care of it.’

“I always said I liked what I was doing. I got to know a lot of people. A lot of them still call me mayor. They know I get the job done.”

For a personal high note, Yob said he is proud he joined the Pa. Association of Boroughs, from which he earned Mayor of the Year in 2004, and of which he was president from 2011-13. At that time there were 620 mayors in the association.

But he sees that time in office as a time Freemansburg was in the commonwealth’s consciousness. “I’m proud of this, being from a small borough,” he said. “I want to show that people from this little borough can go ahead. I put Freemansburg out front.”

Yob said his greatest accomplishment as mayor is fairly recent; the expansion and modernization of the police department.

The former began when Las Vegas Sands began the groundwork for its Southside casino. “[Former Sands President Robert] DeSalvio came in here one day and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to close down the Minsi Trail Bridge and we’re going to use your road as a detour,’” and Yob explained everything the borough would need to make that work, from traffic studies to new lights to new signage. The casono made it all happen, but that was just the beginning. “Once I was on the gaming committee, the first thing I said was ‘we need money for the police department.’ And we got it; $800-some thousand at the time.”

Since then, Yob estimates the borough has received about $2.5 million for new computers, cars and facilities to compensate for increased traffic and population. He said police and emergency incidents in the borough of 2,900 people increased since the casino’s construction from an average of around 60 to as high as 300 per month, averaging around 200 today. “For a little borough, we’re moving.”

Yob said he’s concerned for Freemansburg’s future, as lack of participation makes it more difficult to get things done. He said there’s an open council seat, the Legion is failing, and the Lions Club and Halloween parade are no more. “People today don’t want to get involved. We’re going through a process, I’d say, over the next couple years, if we don’t get some newer people involved, I think we’re going to have some problems.” He said, “I think everything is going to go downhill eventually.”

But for now he’ll continue to serve however he can, a constant presence for generations of borough residents.

“I served my church, my government, my community, and I think I know what I’m doing. The good Lord’s been good to me, good to my family. That’s what I look at.

“I made sure we were ahead of the game.”