"My first paycheck came when I spent the summer of my junior year in high school covering school books. That was in the 1950s, when I lived in a little town called Pulaski in Virginia.

"Back when I went to school you used the same books over and over, and they got a new cover each year. That summer I covered all the elementary books in the district for 50 cents an hour.

"There were two students and three teachers working on covering the books with plain, yellow book covers. I got the job because my aunt's husband's mother was a teacher. I had never met her before, and we got to be really good friends. Later, when I graduated high school, I came to Fort Myers and she was here. When I learned how to drive she went with me to get my driver's license.

"While we were covering books, the teachers talked to us and tried to make things interesting. We tried to see how many books we could get done in a day. It wasn't a huge school district, but we did cover thousands of books. We packed our lunches and would walk to the schools each day. We went to each school [in the district] to cover books and when we went to a school farther away, they would pick me up at one of the schools close to where I lived.

"Back then, we had our names in our books on labels, and you were responsible for paying rent on books if you didn't turn them in at the end of the school year. That's the way we used to do it, making an old book brand new with a cover. [The 1950s] was a very interesting time because we were just on the beginning of new discoveries; technology was coming on board, at lot of things were happening. Today change happens so fast that text books cannot keep up with us.

"From that job, I learned patience. Absolute patience. It was very boring and very tedious to get though the day, especially when you were in high school. I knew I could not cover books every day of my life. It was very difficult to do just one thing. I like change every day. I've been in one job now for almost 30 years, and every day is different."

-Interview by Katie S. Betz