One of the things that I love about keeping this blog going is that I get to meet new people through this channel. The most recent new friend is Peggy Day, CEO of Marshall Community Credit Union. She sent me one of her favorite newspaper articles from The Virginian Pilot dated April 30, 2005 and written by Jacey Eckhart. The article is entitled, "Give Mom Credit: she loves her work" and it speaks for itself so here it is.
Give Mom credit: she loves her work By JACEY ECKHART, The Virginian-Pilot © April 30, 2005 Last updated: 9:56 PM MY MOTHER has chosen the date of her retirement with all the care of Nostradamus. Come Thursday – 5/5/05 – at 5:05 p.m., she will walk away from the little credit union where she has worked since 1979. I don't know what has taken her so long. I have been hoping she would quit for the last 10 years. I've been dying for my parents to be free to visit more often – every day, even. I'd love to have them sitting around my kitchen table in their robes, drinking coffee and witnessing the nine minutes a year my kids are actually cute. The combined allure of coffee, grandchildren and golf in winter hasn't been enough to pry Mom away from the credit union, though. We kids can't figure it out. It isn't like our parents are desperate for the money. It isn't like Mom is a workaholic. When we complain to Dad, he says she must be getting something out of it. Yeah? What? I've watched my mother with the same puzzlement George Bailey watched his dad run Bedford Falls' penny-ante building and loan in "It's a Wonderful Life." Mom's credit union isn't building skyscrapers. It isn't financing ocean liners. It cashes Burger King paychecks for teenagers and processes car loans. This is enough to win my mother's loyalty. I've known the woman to bustle in early to get her paperwork done so that she would be more prepared for the members on Friday, a busy credit union day. I've known her to meet members on weekends to close a loan because they couldn't get off work during regular hours. I've known her to take phone calls at home.
Only one conclusion makes sense: Mom loves her work. In a country where 41 percent of adults in a Gallup poll reported that they were only "somewhat happy" at work, my mother is one of those individuals who truly loves what she does and does it with excellence. Which is weird to me. I thought you had to be an actress or an artist or an executive to love your work. I thought you had to be rolling in moolah. I thought you had to be Katie Couric . Evidently not. In her book "Be Happy at Work: 100 Women Who Love Their Jobs and Why," Joanne Gordon says that women who love their work have the same things in common. No matter what the job is, they take great pleasure from the work itself. They feel good about the reason they do their work. They like and respect their co-workers . "Process. Purpose. People," Gordon writes. "These three surprisingly simple concepts can mean all the difference between loving and liking your job." Mom had all these things. She could lose herself in the joy of making the accounts balance. She thought the little credit union could swing things for people that big credit unions could not. She always listened to people's vacation plans, and how their teenager managed to put $867 worth of damage on the truck in the driveway, and how grandma wouldn't be living in her own house anymore. It all mattered to her. The credit union board is hosting a dinner in Mom's honor, but otherwise her retirement will be pretty quiet. Her picture won't be in the paper, and Sunday news pundits won't wonder whether her excuse that she needs to spend more time with her elderly mother and grandchildren is real. No one will cry. But greatness is passing from that little credit union: a woman who loved her work.
