Auntie, Take A Bow

By TAD BARTIMUS

The small woman with the fogged-up glasses was struggling to regain her composure. Come on, Auntie, you can do it. This is your big day.

Finally, her voice ragged with tears, she spoke:

"I have always been a behind-the-scenes person. I tried not to stand out. But I worked hard. I did some things."

In this narcissistic age, Auntie is a throwback worthy of Jurassic Park. Self-effacing, modest and motivated by personal pride, she worked 50 years in the same place, going in and out of the same door twice a day for most of her life.

She also raised five children by herself, put cousins through college and mentored three generations of employees. By her example she earned the respect of nearly every person in town. She says her satisfaction "had to be in the doing, because the job was never done."

Auntie had wanted to go to college, but there was a war on. Then the hotel opened right in her small town and somebody had to dish up ice cream and dance for the guests. And by the way, could she type? One thing led to another, as lives do; children came, her titles changed, years passed.

"It doesn't feel like half a century," Auntie said wistfully, as she accepted the hugs and kisses of dozens of old friends and colleagues. "Inside, it feels like yesterday."

At her retirement party pictures were pinned chronologically on a bulletin board: the laughing school girl with the heavy auburn hair, the serious young secretary, the middle-aged matron introducing a new (younger, male) general manager to the staff. 

The last snapshots showed a grandmother holding it all together during downsizing, foreign ownership, an inexperienced front office team. By then, Auntie was the "acting" boss who'd worked for seven general managers, each of whom had been hired by various absentee owners who peremptorily ordered them to re-invent the wheel.

Auntie gave all her bosses absolute loyalty, treated them with kindness and taught them all she knew, which was everything, since she'd been there from the beginning.

"Auntie," they'd say, "you're one in a million."

When they went away (as they always did), seeking more money and bigger careers, Auntie would do it all over again for the next Seven-Day Wonder.

"We all know," said an outspoken daughter-in-law, giving public voice to whispered truth, "that she should have been general manager a long time ago."

Five hundred heads nodded. Auntie stared at her shoes.

"She never complained," the daughter-in-law continued. "Not once, in all those years, did she ever say a single negative word about her job or the people she worked with."

It was everybody else's turn to stare at their shoes. Badmouthing the hotel was a community sport.

Then, to great applause, Auntie rose to accept a box tied up with white ribbon. No seven-figure golden parachute for her. Just a parting gift, a small pension, a scrapbook of memories. Taking the microphone, Auntie ended her career the way she'd lived it, with dignity and class:

"It has been a great privilege. Thank you."

One in a million.

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