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Francis Smith |
What started out as a part-time job to help pay for his wife’s medication turned into a second career of sorts for Francis Smith.
Before you start thinking, “So what?” you should know that Smith is 91 years old and still works seven days (around 30 hours) a week for Wash ’N Go Car Wash, a self-serve chain in southern Illinois.
“I’ve had several people say [they’re surprised I’m still working],” Smith says. “I say I just gotta have something to do. [If I wasn’t working] I’d be going to the senior center playing cards and putting puzzles together.”
Smith was 78 when he joined Wash ’N Go in 1995 and owner Jim Corbin says Smith was just the kind of employee he was looking for.
“The idea of hiring a retired person really appealed to me,” Corbin recalls. “They’re usually dependable, and the job is not really strenuous.”
Corbin says Smith — whose responsibilities include light maintenance, troubleshooting, general cleanup and a lot of customer service — is a model employee.
“A lot of what makes Francis stand out is his attitude and work ethic,” notes Corbin. “He has a very good attitude and a very good attitude toward work.
“At his age it is very surprising his willingness and ability to do some of the things that he does. He’s a pretty small guy, yet he’s one of those guys who can get things done that you wouldn’t expect. He knows how to use leverage and just do things that you wouldn’t expect him to be able to do.”
Smith also is a master of multitasking. On a rainy summer afternoon, he answered his cell phone when I called and said he had just arrived at one of the two locations he serves to find water running out the door. While we talked, he found the problem and fixed it, then dashed into the automatic bay to avoid the downpour.
Interspersed throughout our interview were tiny narratives of what he was doing, often accompanied by loud chuckles.
While working at the carwash is not the career Smith started out with, it’s not far from where he spent many of his working days as a younger man. After five years in the Army as a combat engineer during World War II (where he went to places like Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippines), Smith returned home and started working with a construction contractor, building, remodeling and moving houses. Smith also worked with his uncle, a carpenter, for a number of years and had stints at a grocery store, a railroad and for a building department. He spent 12 years in the maintenance department at a Sparta, Ill., hospital.
A native of Plymouth, Kan., Francis is the oldest of nine children, four of whom have passed away. He and his second wife, Hazel, settled in Tilden, Ill. (about seven miles north of Sparta, where he now lives) after he was injured while working for the maintenance department for the city of Perry Village, Kan. Hazel passed away in 1981.
Ten years later, Smith married Fern, who later became ill. Her medications cost the couple around $1,000 a month, which prompted Smith to look for a part-time job. Even after Fern passed away two years ago, Smith continued to work so he could have something to do, Corbin says.
Throughout Smith’s 13-year tenure at Wash ’N Go, Corbin says he can only remember one time Smith took off work. In fact, he took off six months.
“He had been working for me for about four or five years and he had a heart attack and had to have bypass surgery,” Corbin explains. “I left the position open if he ever wanted it, but I just assumed that he would not come