COLUMN: Shout-out on a quiet retirement day

Wednesday was the final day of Shirley Greenway’s long career.

One might have expected a retirement cake and farewell speech. There should have been applause and praise for her 57 years of dedicated service with the Social Security Administration.

But the door was locked at the agency’s offices on Riverside Drive. Shirley and her staff were scattered like nine-digit numbers, working from home on laptops and cell phones.

Just call it “Social Security Social Distancing.”

A retirement party had been planned for Friday, March 27 at the Fish N’ Pig but was postponed because of the COVID-19 shutdown. On March 18, the popular Lake Tobesofkee restaurant closed until further notice.

Other options were limited. A retirement bash with curbside service in an empty parking lot would have been far from fitting for a legend like Shirley.

Of course, Wednesday was April 1, so her co-workers had their fingers crossed that her departure was all a big April Fool’s Day joke anyway.

“Everyone has been asking if I really was going to retire,’’ Shirley said. “People will laugh. This is the third time I have retired, and each time something has happened that kept me from retiring.’’

She had the paperwork filled out in March 2015. But her husband, Al Greenway, who served four generations of customers as a pharmacist at the ChiChester’s on Vineville Avenue, was hospitalized and died two weeks later. She returned to take care of unfinished business and kept working another five years.

Shirley was born two years before the Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935. Those six decades working for the agency not only filled her life but saved it.

“I have sat on both sides of that desk,’’ she said. “I had to apply for Social Security myself as a scared young widow, at age 26. I got benefits because I had a child in my care. And I had to follow the rules as a recipient when I finished school and started working. My widow’s benefits stopped, but my child’s benefits continued. Social Security helped me to raise and educate my boys and maintain a home. I owed Social Security a good job because they were good to me.’’

She grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, and was president of her 1952 senior class at New Hanover, the largest high school in the state. While basketball star Michael Jordan is considered Wilmington’s most famous hometown athlete, Shirley remembers when the distinction belonged to her classmate, Sonny Jurgensen, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who played quarterback for 18 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins.

But it was another football player who her stole her heart when she enrolled at East Carolina University. His name was Dennis “Doc” Smith. He was from the tiny town of Chocowinity, North Carolina, and was captain of the Pirates football team. They married in 1956. He died three years later of melanoma. Their son, Dennis, was 6 months old. Following her husband’s death, Shirley returned to East Carolina to finish her degree.

She was hired by the Social Security office in 1963. A tireless worker, she was willing to transfer for job advancements. She worked in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Richmond and Raleigh, before being transferred to Macon in January 1970.

“I had to move around because I had a child to support,’’ she said. “I had very little choice but to go with it when they offered me a promotion. I moved so many times I could go through and kick my couch, and it would pack itself.’’

The workplace was dominated by men. Shirley once went to a Social Security Administration conference where she and another woman were the only females out of some 400 in attendance.

In Macon, her first office was in the old Sear’s building at the corner of Riverside and Third. From there, the agency moved to Second Street and later left downtown for its offices at 3530 Riverside Drive.

She met Walter Scott, an attorney from Gordon, on a blind date. They married in April 1971 and had two sons, Shawn and Bryan. They lived in Gordon, and Shirley commuted to Macon every day.

Walter had just been sworn in as president of the state bar of Georgia when he died of a massive heart attack in June 1981. He was 50 years old. It was Father’s Day. He never got to open the cards Shawn and Bryan had made for him.

She is proud of her three sons. Dennis is a dentist in Gordon. Shawn is a dentist in Macon. And Bryan is an attorney in Macon. She married her third husband, Al Greenway, in 2000.

Shirley has been district manager for 27 years, with 31 employees in the Macon office and 80 in her district. She has spent more than two-thirds of her life working for the agency and has seen plenty of changes. In the early years, everything was done manually and on paper.

“We didn’t have fax machines or computers, so people had to come in and file claims for retirement disability or survivor benefits,’’ she said.

She recalled when Medicare went into effect in 1966. Her office was flooded with applicants who were eligible but had no birth certificates because they had been born prior to 1900.

“We had to find a means of proving they were 65,’’ she said. “They had no legal birth certificate. A lot of them had recordings in the family Bible. Today, everybody gets a Social Security number in the hospital when they are born.’’

Wednesday may have been quiet retirement day for Shirley, but her dedication and contributions deserve a shout-out.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.