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After spending 45 years at Remington–28 years in the factory, two or three in the employee store, and 13 or 14 in the retail department–80-year-old Rose Borodko finally called it quits the end of January.

Rosie’s tenure at Remington goes back to before the factory even had conveyor belts. She had worked with big machinery during World War II as one of the original “Rosie the Riveters,” then at companies like General Electric. In 1957, she was fed up with work at the scissor-making plant down the road and stopped by Remington on her way home to interview for a job. She wasn’t sure how George Reed was going to notify her she got the job, since she didn’t have a telephone at home, so she came back for an answer in person,” and was put to work on the spot.

“It was a beautiful place,” she says of the company back then. “We had Christmas parties in the shop: parties and dancing. It was like family.” She’d work with the same girls year after year, operating the coilwinding machine and putting together motors for the shavers. They’d play word games like hangman and Wheel of Fortune while they worked together on the conveyor belt.

And they worked hard. “We were very careful with our work,” she recalls, speaking for herself and for the other girls like Shirley Knapp and Helen Miglin. “We didn’t want somebody on the outside to say, ‘Gee I bought a lousy shaver.’ It would reflect badly on us.”

She still remembers the lessons she learned on the factory floor. “The jobs could be done if you made up your mind to do it. You had to have Time, Motion, and,” something else that begins with T. In other words, don’t waste time.”

Over the years, she says, the feeling changed, different people came in, but still it was family. She remembers Victor Kiam coming in to speak to the folks in the factory and dancing with them at retirement parties.

You Call This Retirement?

Rosie retired from the factory in 1985, only to return to work in the employee store. During that time she earned her GED and became a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). Three years later she found herself in the Retail department, where she’s been ever since.

“We really are the best department,” she says. “Everybody is so congenial–like family.” She considers Patty Soltis and Karen DellaRocco her adopted daughters. And, as excited as she is for retirement, she says, “I don’t want to leave my friends. That’s the only bad part.”

Real Retirement

This time, Rosie thinks retirement will stick. She’s considering a job as a teacher’s aide this spring, reading to kids and helping out the teachers. If this retirement is anything like her last one, though, she may just be entering her next career.