‘Gopher’ retires after 50 years at the pharmacy
ALICE STARTED WORK IN MIDDLETON SHOP IN 1968
A PHARMACY assistant who has helped generations of Middleton families has retired after 50 years in the job.
Back in 1968 when Alice Lewis first set foot in Carlow Pharmacy, the Beatles were about to release the White Album, Harold Wilson was in Downing Street and the England football squad, of course, were reigning World Cup champions.
Over the years Alice, now 86, became a familiar face for Middleton families and would travel by bus to hand deliver their prescriptions to their front doors, long before the launch of the delivery service.
Despite being two decades past retirement age, until last week Alice was still working for at least an hour every day in the pharmacy.
Her willingness to deliver prescriptions far and wide and take on any task earned her the nickname ‘the gopher’ from her colleagues.
Now many of her customers, who she first met when they were youngsters, come into the pharmacy with their grandchildren.
Colleague Pam Williams said: “We’re like family. Alice came to Middleton in her twenties and she started working here in her thirties, 50 years ago almost to the day.
“We call her the gopher. She’s always going to get prescriptions and she used to get the bus and deliver to patients.
“A lot of customers who now come in with their grandchildren remember her.
“I’d say Alice is like a grandmother to everyone, but she still feels so young to us even though she’s in her eighties now.
“She always looks out for all of us and she’s really just family, we all are. We all think the world of her.”
Alice, who lives in Middleton, became mayoress when her late husband Ron was mayor of the borough in the early 1980s.
She has two sons, Martin and Christopher and is grandmother to Matthew and Elizabeth.
She is part of a tight-knit team at the pharmacy, Pam, Joanne Jenkinson, Amanda Tamsey, Kelly Williams, Elizabeth Cooper, Conor Royle, Naz Iqbal and Graham Mansey who threw a celebration to mark her retirement.
Pam added: “Alice is going to be greatly missed, but we will still see her all the time. She is part of the family.
“We all love her so, so much.”