DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997                TAG: 9704080054

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   97 lines

A CHEERFUL WELCOME FOR EVERYONE GREETER AT NAVAL EXCHANGE MAKES EVERY CUSTOMER FEEL LIKE A FRIEND.

THEY GAVE her a chair.

Can't work sitting down, she told them.

If Esther M. Payton ever sat . . . well, that'd be the day.

She's the greeter. Make that THE greeter at the Norfolk Naval Base Exchange.

``Good morning, girlfriend. Here you go,'' Payton chirps, peeling off a sales ad from a bundle on her arm.

Tuesday through Saturday, sneakers churning, she yanks out shopping carts and flashes miles of smiles.

``Let's enjoy the morning, retiree!''

``See you later, friend.''

``Hey babe, get on in there with my girl. And enjoy.''

She does not sit, does not stand still, does not run out of greetings.

Esther Payton, 67, has been there six years, checking IDs and saying hello. She knows people's names and ranks, kids' names, favorite NFL teams. She hustles in active duty, dependents, retired customers like they're all old friends. She points out the bargains.

Once, in the beginning, she mistook a two-star admiral for a commander. For a year. He wanted to keep it quiet, but Payton's boss finally told her.

``So that's when I went to the uniform shop and learned the rates from the chart in two weeks,'' she says. Somebody else might have become gun-shy.

Not Esther.

``Come on in, chief,'' she says, working a slow smile from a guy in khakis. ``Let's party.''

Dave Walls, master chief, spent 16 years stationed in Pearl Harbor. He'd never seen anything like this. ``She's fabulous,'' he says, standing near the perfumes. ``Sometimes she calls me her boyfriend. She always gives me a warm welcome. She's good for the Exchange, just a pure delight.''

She's known by all, by style if not by name. That's why she got the job, says Annie Wilson, deputy Exchange manager.

Payton starts each day the same way - cup of coffee, a few minutes alone to gather her thoughts, then the wait for the doors to open. ``She's just, like, psyching up,'' Wilson says.

Her welcomes, many to newcomers, come from a Norfolk native, a grandmother to four and great-grandmother to one. ``I'm one of the few who didn't leave Norfolk,'' she jokes. ``I was afraid to venture out.''

After Booker T. Washington High School, she took a job as a domestic that lasted a week - ``the woman ran out on me without paying'' - and in the '50s and '60s, she washed dishes at a long-closed White Tower restaurant on Norfolk's City Hall Avenue. When things got busy, she was the only black employee allowed to ring the register.

``That was before integration, you know,'' she says, sipping a Coke in the Exchange food court. She stayed 20 years, eventually becoming a waitress, before taking on custodial work at a heavy-equipment company.

It was good money, and after a time, she wound up a custodian at the Exchange. Ten years later, she landed the job that has made her part of the business's very fabric.

She still works an off-base custodial job at night, but her day job has made her a common thread among military men and women around the globe.

``I'm known all over the world,'' she says, without a speck of false modesty.

She takes another sip and adds: ``I don't mean no harm, but they do miss me when I take vacation or a day off. Not everybody likes everybody.''

Payton's customers stream through the door in khakis, flight jackets, dress blues, dungarees. She helps out moms with whiny kids, helps retirees find their lost mates in the china department and the shoes.

Everybody gets a special greeting, she says firmly.

``Come over here with my girl out of uniform, buddy,'' she says to a young couple.

The pair is followed by two baby-faced lovers. ``Is this your fiancee?'' He blushes, nods. ``Over to the jewelry store. Get a diamond ring and come back.''

``Good morning, Second-Time-In.''

``Get the party goin', Boo-Boo. Let's wake 'em up.''

``Let's party together with Grandma.''

Two big guys in dungarees give her a thumbs-up.

``A lot of them I know by sight,'' she says. ``Sometimes they might be in a bad mood. They might feel down in the dumps.'' She laughs. ``I'm the lift-up girl.''

And the no-nonsense girl. She scrutinizes the paperwork of military personnel from other nations to be sure nobody slips past her. And everybody, everybody, gets a sales flier.

``Good morning,'' she says to two young airmen. ``Wait, you need one of these.'' She shoves a flier at Scott Morris, a 19-year-old E-1 from Pittsburgh.

``I don't need one,'' he says.

``Yes,'' says Payton, fixing him with a look over the top of her glasses, ``You do.''

He takes it. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

LAWRENCE JACKSON

The Virginian-Pilot

Esther Payton greets patrons at the entrance of the Norfolk Naval

Base Exchange, where she gets to know the customers.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu