STILL WORKING
At 77, woman still on the job with Consumers Energy after 56 years
Eva Fullwood, a radio dispatcher for Consumers Energy in Royal Oak, has the longest work record in the company’s 135-year history.
But working at age 77 has not dimmed Fullwood’s cheerful voice or the brightly colored clothes she designs and makes herself.
Her African-themed clothing has been featured in NAACP shows, but her most arresting performance is perhaps the proper style she brings to everyday life.
“I walk straight and I still wear three- or four-inch heels,” she said. “I like to dress colorfully. I’m not dull and my favorite color is orange. It goes well with the vibrant blues and fuchsia colors.”
Fullwood works the midnight shift at the Consumers Energy Service Center on Coolidge near 14 Mile Road.
While many nationwide retreated to work from home and dress casually after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Fullwood still showed up for work as an essential employee.
She is known to routinely volunteer to work double shifts if one of her coworkers is ill or on vacation.
Fullwood is still a reliable trouper after 56 years with the company. She started working in the Royal Oak office in 1986.
“A couple years ago I worked 100 hours in one week,” she said. “I enjoy people.”
Early this week she had finished working nine days in a row.
Working as a natural gas dispatcher can be stressful work. Fullwood has to multi-task and stay calm in the face of emergencies, such as a gas pipeline break, while communicating with employees.
She has to dispatch workers to locations wherever there are fires to turn off the gas, or even when someone dies at home to make sure the death isn’t related to an unreported gas leak.
There are false alarms, too.
“We get many skunk calls,” Fullwood said. “People smell a skunk and think it is a gas leak somewhere.”
She got her job with Consumers shortly after she moved to Mount Clemens from New York when she was young and expecting her first child.
“I had lots of relatives working here at GM and that’s what brought us to Michigan,” she said. “After the baby was four months old I got a job with Consumers.”
It was 1964, a year when the Beatles first toured the U.S., the war in Vietnam was heating up and the average cost of a new house was $13,000.
Fullwood first trained as a payments clerk at a company office in what is now Eastpointe. From there she moved to the meter reading department, back when workers had to routinely go into homes to read gas meters. Anyone around during that era can usually remember a man coming up to the door and calling out, “Gas man!”
Fullwood’s mother, who didn’t drive, worked in food service until she was 75.
Her mother only stopped working when Fullwood’s schedule prevented her from giving her mother a ride to her job.
Fullwood and her sister later decided they had to work beyond the 75-year benchmark set by their mother.
“We had to outdo her,” she said with a laugh. “We couldn’t let her beat us.”
Her mother lived to be 93. Fullwood attributes her sustained energy to the longevity in her family, with a grandfather who lived to be 100.
With two sons who live out of state, she has four adult grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
When she isn’t working, Fullwood spends much of her time at church. She makes hats now and donates many of her clothes. She would never go to church without a hat on.
“People wait to see what I’m going to wear on Sunday — I try not to let them down,” Fullwood said, a smile in her voice.
Though she is a woman of orderly habits, Fullwood is firmly undecided about how long she will continue to work.
“I’m saying another two years,” she said. “But I’ve been saying another two years for the past four years now.”