Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 8, 1993 TAG: 9307080406
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I don't know what retirement is," he says now, at 87.
Owen would much rather spend his leisure days at work.
So he does, and has since his official retirement 22 years ago. Owen be lieves he's found the perfect job delivering drugs for Williamson Road Pharmacy - definitely his favorite of all the places he's worked.
Every weekday, Owen rises at 6:30 or 7 a.m. and cooks sausage and eggs for himself and Gladys, his wife of 66 years. Then they share a kiss and he moseys out the door, usually arriving at work by 9 a.m., even though he doesn't have to be there until around 10.
Call it dedication if you will, but Owen sees his work as a reason to live.
Don't be left with the impression, however, that Owen's life halts outside this small pharmacy along busy Williamson Road. Though he works five mornings a week, he spends more time committed to keeping his relationship with Gladys blooming, and carrying on a tradition they began years ago. Every afternoon when he returns to his Northwest Roanoke home, Owen and his bride go cruising in their '92 Olds.
"We just go anywhere. After 66 years here, we know Roanoke pretty good."
Still, there's something about working at the pharmacy that rounds out his life quite nicely. "It seems just like a family," he says of his co-workers. "I don't have to work. I just enjoy being around them."
Upon his retirement in 1971, Owen began looking for a part-time job to keep himself busy. The only reason he wound up at the pharmacy was because it was the first to hire him. "I asked for the job and I got it."
In his 22 years there, Owen estimates he's met at least 20,000 folks - that's "about 30 to 40 people a day, five days a week." That's also his favorite part of the job as he delivers medicines to folks' homes and businesses around the Williamson Road area.
Born in Walnut Cove, N.C., Owen came to Virginia with his family when he was 3. He lived most of his young life with four brothers, his father and an aunt after his mother died during childbirth at 38.
He grew up on a tobacco farm in Pittsylvania County, where he met Gladys. "We was country boys and girls at that time."
The two courted for three or four years, even after Gladys' family moved to Franklin County. "They was the good old days - horse-and-buggy days," he remembers. That was the only way Owen had to see his girlfriend until he bought his first car, a single-seat Brisco, for $25. "That was a whole lot of money for somebody in the country to pay."
After deciding to marry, the couple boarded a train to Bristol, Tenn., where they married in secret. Owen laughs that he returned to Roanoke, where they set up housekeeping, broke at 19 years young. But, "Oh yes, she was worth it. She's still worth it.
"Somebody's been looking after Gladys and I," he says softly. Owen attributes their happy marriage and family of two children, five grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren to "doing what's right, I guess." Both attend Belmont Christian Church, and for them, that's important.
Owen's career began at Roanoke's American Viscose Co., but at about 25 he knew he needed a change.
"Well, I tell you what I did. I bought a grocery store." Owen's Grocery, at Ninth and Moorehead streets Southeast, did very well until the Depression hit. "A lot of people lost everything they had, and I was one of them."
With no money or time to dwell on his loss, Owen started over, working for a grocery chain making $12.50 a week. "I finally got up to $25. It was the good old days, wasn't it?!"
Before becoming an insurance agent, Owen also drove a laundry truck, picking up dirty clothes for Atkins Laundry on Williamson Road.
In all those working years, Owen has only one regret. "I should have been there all my life," he says of the pharmacy. "I wish I had been. They're not only good to me . . . they're good to the people that come in there."
How has his wife felt about his lifelong career? "She don't mind me working. She thinks it's good for me. And I do too."
by CNB