The Chronicle

Issue date: 7/25/07 Section: News
Last update: 7/25/07 at 7:10 PM EST

Media Credit: SARA GUERRERO Becky Tesh began working at Duke in 1959 and got her first job because of her knack for speedy typing.

Forty-eight years ago and two weeks out of high school, Becky Tesh rode passenger side heading south from Oxford, N.C., to Durham. Tesh's aunt had found her a position in the accounts payable department at Duke and was driving the teenager to her first day on the job.

Now, six decades later, Tesh, a sweet-hearted 66-year-old woman with a soft Southern voice, makes that same drive five days a week-a 30-mile trip to the place where she has worked for close to 50 years. Her tenure at Duke is the longest among active employees, not including faculty.

"Things have changed quite a bit since starting at Duke," Tesh said.

The University first hired her with only a high school diploma in 1959 because she was a speedy typist, Tesh said. She added that the Burroughs adding machine she originally used was very different from the computers of today because you could not see what you were typing.

"You had to pull the carriage out and up to see what you had typed," she said.

Working on the third floor of the Allen Building, Tesh said the thing she remembers the most about it is the way people helped her.

"Years ago, someone always answered the phone," she said. "You always got someone during that eight-hour day. They usually helped with the problem that day, and you had an answer.... Now, there is a long chain of commands you have to go through to try and get your job done."

Nowadays, Tesh works as faithfully as she did when she was a teenager. In fact, she said she even works more sometimes, noting the added pressure that has come from Duke's expansion in the past 10 years.

The only thing that slows her down is that she is deaf in her right ear, an unfortunate byproduct of a surgery to remove a tumor in her ear 10 years ago.

Now that Tesh has qualified for maximum Social Security, she said she has begun to consider retiring. She said, however, that when she was growing up, the word "retirement" was not part of her vocabulary.

"It's the way you were raised," Tesh said. "The attitude was, 'Get up every morning and go to work.' There was no such word or talk about retirement. Basically, work until you drop dead."

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