81-year-old named Outstanding Older Worker
BILL BATEMAN PHOTO
Roberta Thompson, age 81, Region 9 winner of Missouri’s 26th annual Outstanding Older Worker of the Year contest, poses at a sewing machine surrounded by some of the products she helps create for the Wool Shop, a lambs wool manufacturing operation located just north of Grant City in Worth County.
So you think you have a good work ethic? Well, maybe so. But odds are you’ve got nothing on 81-year-old Roberta Thompson, who after 30 years is still putting in a 40-hour week at the Wool Shop, a family-owned Worth County manufacturer of lambs wool cleaning products and other goods serving hardware, housewares, janitorial, and specialty retailers nationwide.
As the firm’s cutter and chief sewer, Thompson spends her days cutting, trimming, and stitching her way through stacks of moccasins, ear muffs, mittens, floor mops, seat belt strap pads, and other products crafted from down-soft sheep pelts.
For decades, the petite, soft-spoken Thompson has done her work quietly, gaining little recognition except from her bosses and co-workers, who describe her as a friend, mentor, and shining example of skill and dedication.
But that has now changed.
On Thursday, dozens of Thompson’s friends and admirers gathered at the Wool Shop factory north of Grant City for a reception during which she was honored as the Region 9 winner of the 26th annual Outstanding Older Worker contest.
Next month, Thompson will travel to Jefferson City, where, along with other regional winners, she will be in the running for statewide Outstanding Older Worker honors.
The contest is sponsored by the Missouri Senior Employment Coordinating Committee, which comprises Experience Works, Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph, MERS/Missouri Goodwill Industries, the Missouri Department of Economic Development/Division of Workforce Development, and the Department of Health and Senior Services/Division of Senior and Disability Services.
Wool Shop co-owner Jeff Andrews called Thompson “A great Christian woman” who is “full of life and the epitome of an excellent, outstanding employee.”
“She’s a mom to everybody,” Andrews said. “She’s a friend, and she’s a wealth of knowledge.”
She’s also someone who has seen her share of struggle and hardship.
As a young woman, Thompson worked for the Missouri Department of Transportation in St. Joseph. After marrying Robert Thompson the couple returned to their roots and began farming in Worth County.
Then came the family farm crisis of the 1980s, and the Thompson farmstead, like so many others, didn’t make it.
“We lost everything,” said Thompson, the mother of four grown children.
So, well into middle age, the couple was back at square one. Robert went to work for the Missouri Department of Conservation, and Roberta, on her 50th birthday, started cutting and sewing lambs wool pelts for the Andrews family.
She’s been there ever since. Robert, sadly, has been an invalid since a brain tumor operation in 2001. He was forced to have a second surgery eight years ago.
And so Thompson soldiers on.
“When you start over in your 50s you’ve got a long way to go,” she said. “It’s nice to have a job, and it’s good to have nice people to work with. They’ve been very good to me.”
Working 15-plus years past the normal retirement age doesn’t appear to have hurt Thompson’s health. Slender and erect and looking at least a decade younger than she is, she cut an elegant figure at Thursday’s reception in a sleek red top decorated with a pink rose and set off with trim white slacks and matching sandals, her gray hair cut short and stylish.
“I’m very blessed to have my health,” she said. “Physically I’m in pretty good shape.”
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Roberta Thompson, Missouri’s Region 9 Outstanding Older Worker of the Year, stands beside Wool Shop co-owners Allen, left, and Jeff Andrews. The brothers’ mother, Jo, founded the company in 1983 after Allen, now a state representative, started raising sheep as a high school 4-H project. Thompson started working for the family-owned company in 1985 and still puts in 40-hour weeks.
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Deb Trautloff, an employment training coordinator with Experience Works, stands beside Roberta Thompson after presenting her with a certificate recognizing the 81-year-old as the Region 9 Outstanding Older Worker of the Year.
