Bill Roberson figured he had landed a pretty good job at Dixie Portland Flour Mill in 1951 when he started on the day after Christmas and his employer agreed to pay him for the Christmas holiday even before he began his job.
More than 65 years later – and two decades after he first tried to retire – Roberson is still on the job at the same location. But today will end the career at the downtown flour mill for Roberson. He turns 85 on Jan. 20 and finally decided to give up his job for good.
“I will miss the work and all the people,” he said Thursday in the ADM Milling lab where he regularly inspects the flour produced at the King Street facility. “I first retired back in 1996, but I started coming back as a part-time worker and just kept working. This is just a great place to work, but I just figured it’s finally time to move on.”
Technically, Roberson has been a part-time worker for the past 20 years, but he usually has worked five days a week – sometimes more – through the year.
“He has taught me a tremendous amount through the years and he’s been a joy to work with,” said Patsy Sellars, the head of the ADM plant lab for the past 16 years. “The flour business was fairly new to me when I came here but it was old and very familiar for Bill.”
In the same plant on the first floor, Evelyn McBride is preparing to retire from the mill after 51 years with the company. Her last day is scheduled for March 1.
McBride was hired as the secretary to the former president and moved into customer service later when the plant was sold in 1992 to ADM.
“I would keep working if I could, but my husband’s health really requires that I retire,” she said. “I like people and it’s really a peach of a job.”
When she joined Dixie Portland Flours at the age of 23, McBride had already worked at Combustion Engineering, at City Hall and at Chattanooga Warehousing. But she found her dream job in the flour mill – or at least in the office that handles the customers that buy the product.
The longevity of Roberson and McBride is extraordinary in an era when the average worker stays with the same employer only an average of 4.6 years. Only one in 10 U.S. wage and salary workers has logged 20 or more years at a single employer, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS does not keep data for those with more than a 50-year tenure with a business, but such work experience is very unusual.
Roberson said he thought about moving to another job at various times, but he says he kept getting raises or promotions and he loved the people where he works. The job has changed through the years, keeping his occupation interesting, he said.
When Roberson began working at the flour mill, it still shared part of its building with the Chattanooga Bakery Co., which started making MoonPie snacks 100 years ago this year. Chattanooga Bakery later relocated to Moccasin Bend, but it still buys much of its flour from the mill near where the company began.
McKee Foods Corp., the nation’s biggest independent bakery and another one of ADM’s customers, also moved out of downtown Chattanooga when it moved to Collegedale more than a half century ago and began making Little Debbie snacks.
Roberson said at one time, Dixie Portland Flours also baked its own bread and snacks and he helped staff the bake shop briefly in the 1980s. For most of his career, however, the veteran employee has worked running or managing the lab where the flour is tested or remixed for different customers.
ADM Milling now employs about 70 people in the mill, lab and support facilities on King Street just two blocks away from Chattanooga City Hall.
“There have been a lot of changes through the years, but it’s always been interesting and a great place to work,” McBride said.
She recalls when she was hired in 1965, she told her boss at the time she was through having children in order to help her land the job. But two years later, she had her second child – and Dixie Portland paid her during the three months she was on maternity leave.
“The company has always been very fair to all of us and I will miss being here,” she said.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.