All the interesting people have not been customers, Cummings says. For Cummings, the Coop has been "more of a family affair. We sort of adopted each other. Alice Knox's granddaughter is my godchild."

"The Coop is my home away from home," Cummings says, adding she has no plans to retire because "there are too many grand people down there."

At her 50th anniversary party, the Mayor of Cambridge presented Cummings with the key to the city. Always ready to seize an opportunity, she asked him if the key gave her the right to "park anywhere in Cambridge." Apparently, however, it takes more than 50 years at the Coop before such a privilege is granted.

The Bess of Times

Just weeks after Cummings' anniversary gala, Bess Makris celebrated her 50th year with the Coop. Although Makris began at the Harvard Coop, she later transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Coop, then known as the Technology Store. She remains there today.

Makris says she remembers working at the Coop's laundry service--which has since been abolished--filling out the cards for incoming students. "We picked up and delivered their laundry every week," she says.

Like Cummings, Makris notes changes in the student body. In the past undergraduates were "very immature." In those days, she explains, "they had never left home, and they needed guidance. Now they are more mature, and having left home several times during high school, they aren't completely lost in college."

Makris says she is proud to be a member of the MIT community. "I have had so much experience there," she says. "I am part of the MIT family."

Irreplaceable Employees

Argeros says he feels like a newcomer, having been with the Coop for only 10 years. He says the four longtime employees are, "irreplaceable...They represent a generation of service-oriented people who work and dedicate themselves to serving the institution."

And when oldtimers leave, "it is a double loss," Argeros says. "We lose both the people and the experience they have relating with hundreds and thousands of Harvard faculty and administrators who have come to depend on them."

In the meantime, Argeros notes, "Through thick and thin we can always count on them, and we have only the highest respect and regard for them."

In this day and age, career loyalty, such as that shown by Knox, Sutherland, Cummings and Makris, is rarely found among young people. With the present high-turnover rate of most retail store employees, it is unlikely that fifty years from now, women such as these four will have worked at a department store for such a breadth of time. In the meantime, Sutherland, Cummings and Makris have no plans for retirement.