L.A. bus worker calls it quits at 100
A bus maintenance worker in Los Angeles will mark his 100th birthday Wednesday by retiring after more than 70 years on the job.
"I'm kind of nervous about leaving the job, I've been doing it for so long," Arthur Winston told the Associated Press at a ceremony held in his honour on Tuesday.
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| Arthur Winston in 2003. (Courtesy: Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Photo: Rick Jager) |
"I'm going to miss my crew, but I'll find plenty of things to do with my free time."
According to transit officials, Winston had a near-perfect attendance record. The only work day he ever missed was when his wife of 65 years died in 1988, AP reported.
Winston arrived in California after drought and storms drove his family out of Oklahoma in the 1920s.
"In 1924, at age 17, Mr. Winston started cleaning trolley cars for the Los Angeles Railway Co., which morphed and merged nearly half a dozen times and is now the Metropolitan Transportation Authority," the Los Angeles Times said in a 1997 profile.
"He quit that job for a spell, then went back Jan. 24, 1934. He has never left."
"The barber refuses to take his money."
He was something of a celebrity in South Los Angeles, the Times continued, "the result of being around so long that he seems to know just about everybody (or everybody's great-grandparents). People fuss over him. The barber refuses to take his money.
"Men in their 60s and 70s stop to tell Mr. Winston they have been emulating him since they were boys."
In recent years, Winston led an 11-member crew that cleaned and refueled buses at the Arthur Winston Division, a South L.A. bus yard named in his honour in 1997, China's official Xinhua news agency noted.
"Employee of the Century"
In 1996, he received a congressional citation as "Employee of the Century" from U.S. President Bill Clinton.
The secret of his long working life?
"I don't smoke, and I don't drink and I don't fool with these credit cards," he told CBS News in 2004.
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