DATE: Friday, June 27, 1997                 TAG: 9706270651

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JENNIFER LANGSTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: KITTY HAWK                        LENGTH:   94 lines

86-YEAR-OLD MCDONALD'S HOSTESS ``MISS RUTH'' WON'T STOP WORKING

Ruth Spivey keeps the coffee flowing, the restaurant sparkling and the customers laughing as a hostess for McDonald's. She works nearly 40 hours a week during the summer.

A farm girl, Spivey grew up working. She left the nest when she was 18 and has held a job most of her grown life.

Spivey never asked for any of them. Employers wooed her. Her current boss snapped her up after the closure of the restaurant where she had worked for eight years.

At the age of 86, ``Miss Ruth'' is still an attractive hire.

She makes customers decades younger feel guilty about retiring to the air-conditioned beach houses for the day. But her reasons for working long past the day she could have retired are simple.

``For company and entertainment,'' she said. ``I don't want to sit home by myself and have my joints rust out and say, `I can't go. I can't walk.' ''

With people living longer and healthier, it might seem natural to assume that they might extend their working lives. But statistics show that the number of working women over age 65 has changed little since the 1950s.

The percentage of older women who still work has hovered between 7 and 10 percent in the last 35 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers drop dramatically as they approach Spivey's age, with 1 percent still on the job after they turn 80.

But the landscape is changing for older workers, experts say. New technologies that reduce physical demands are opening opportunities for older people who want to work. And some employers have been pleased with experiments to hire workers with age and experience.

``I would hire all the older people I could hire,'' said Beverly Surman, 41, the McDonald's manager who asked Spivey to work for her. ``Their work habits are different. They're dependable. They love to work. They were brought up that way.''

Spivey was raised on hard work - tending to her three brothers and sisters while her mother worked in the garden or dairy barn of their farm in Hertford County.

She got her first job 68 years ago with the Planters Chocolate and Nut Co. in Suffolk. She worked as a nanny for one of the managers until she married her husband.

She had two daughters and thought she would settle into a housewife's routine. Her husband owned a country store with a lunch counter and gas pumps outside. But he had a heart attack at a young age, which left him disabled for the rest of his life.

``We had to do something,'' Spivey remembered. ``It bothered me in a way to leave my home and children. But other than that, I like to work.''

She toiled as a clerk in a general store during World War II, selling everything from hammers to dresses. She worked in a state liquor store 23 years, the first woman in Hertford County to sell whiskey.

Although it was a rather scandalous place for a woman at the time, she liked it.

``It was wonderful. It was quiet. It wasn't trashy,'' she said. ``I only had one problem the whole time I was working there. A boy from New York was showing off in front of the country boys.''

``I said, `Listen, we don't act like that or talk like that.' He shut his mouth and never said another word.''

Spivey has always lived by certain rules. She never smoked or drank. She never had thoughts for any other man besides her husband, who died in 1960.

``I tried to stay straight and forward my whole life,'' she said. ``I just enjoy life.''

She works to fight off loneliness. She thinks that, along with her belief that ``can't'' is a dirty word, is why she has lived to the age of 86.

In what little spare time she has, Spivey quilts, sews, paints and takes care of her cat. She watches her cholesterol since a heart attack five years ago, although she occasionally sneaks a McDonald's egg biscuit into her diet.

She eats breakfast there often. She keeps her purple McDonald's shirt, black pants and sneakers in her car just in case they may need her unexpectedly.

Talking with people is Spivey's favorite part of the job. After years of practice, she has learned the secret of conversation - chatting about whatever interests the customers seem to have.

``She keeps them happy and laughing. I never worry about my lobby when she's out there,'' said McDonald's assistant manager Diane Ivey. She says employees who are natural hostesses are rare.

``They're very few and far between. It's really hard to find people like her that are good at what they do. If there was ever someone designed for this, it's her.''

Spivey said her doctor has given her the green light to work as long as she wants. Occasionally, other companies try to lure her away, but she is happy right where she is.

``I don't growl and complain,'' she said. ``It's wonderful. This is my life.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Ruth Spivey, center, chats with patrons at McDonald's in Kitty Hawk,

where she was offered a job soon after the place she had worked for

eight years closed. Talking with customers is Spivey's favorite part

of her work. ``She keeps them happy and laughing,'' said McDonald's

assistant manager Diane Ivey.

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