FIXING TO RETIRE
Walmart maintenance supervisor hangs up his tool belt at age 91
It isn’t often you get to throw a retirement party for a 91-year-old.
But that’s what the employees of the Walmart Supercenter store on Frank Sottile Boulevard did Friday for Harry Scarth, a man known to everyone who works there as “The Fix-It Man.”
Nineteen years ago, at the age of 73, Scarth became one of the first employees hired at the Walmart store. On Friday, the store maintenance supervisor hung up his tool belt, retiring from a position he’d held since the store opened.
Leaving a job he’s held for nearly two decades is bittersweet, he said.
“I helped put the store together,” Scarth, a Port Ewen resident, said Friday. “I put the store together, and then they
opened it, and I’ve been here ever since.”
He said the hardest part of retiring “is leaving all the people I’ve met and worked with over the years.”
Scarth, a widower, said he planned to retire on his 92nd birthday in June, but after a recent health scare, his doctor said he should stop working sooner.
Learning that Scarth would be leaving, Melissa Gromacki, the store’s Vision Center manager — who, like Scarth, has been with the store since it opened — immediately began planning Friday’s celebration.
Former co-workers and managers joined current employees and members of Scarth’s family to bid The Fix It Man farewell.
“He has, since Day, 1 put in 110 percent,” Gromacki said. “Until recently, he’s never missed a day of work.
“This is kind of killing us as a Walmart family,” she said of the retirement.
“Harry was one of the original 11 that are left that opened the store,” said Walmart Co-Manager Tom Sullivan. “He was always the ‘go to’ guy.
“He’s quite a man. He was loved by everyone,” Sullivan said.
“I think this is phenomenal,” said Dwayne Hazel, the store’s manager. “We have 390 associates, and I think this shows that we’re all here for each other. It’s a family thing, and I think that really shows.”
Scarth embarked on his career with the retail giant at a time when most people are well into their retirement years.
With a number of careers already behind him — he worked for Schatz Federal Bearing and Red Hook Telephone Co., was mayor of the village of Red Hook for a decade and was an owner and president of a mobile home community in Florida — who could have blamed Scarth if he did kick back and retire rather than embark on a new career when he was in his 70s?
But that wasn’t the way Scarth wanted to spend his golden years.
“I wanted to do something, he said. “I don’t like sitting around.”
Even now, with retirement finally upon him, Scarth isn’t thinking about slowing down anytime soon.
“I’ve got some work to do, maybe I’ll take a trip,” he said.
Now, he said, it’s “wherever the world takes me.”