Still working hard at 95

Hardware Hank owner Bruce Lukens knows what to do when his longtime employee comes in to his Cedar Grove store every Tuesday and Saturday.

“She’s in charge. I leave,” he said.

On Sept. 10, he didn’t. Lukens partook in the 95th birthday celebration for Charlene Dana, who has worked at the store for 60 years.

Customers and friends young and old stopped by to say hello, reminisce and enjoy a piece of birthday cake one day before Dana’s birthday on Sept. 11.

Dana doesn’t hear as well as she used to, but she still can find anything people ask for in the packed store, and she remembers exactly who she worked for and for how long.

She spent 10 years working for owner Virgil Nonhof, nine years for Tom Zachman, 24.5 years for Glendon Ten Dolle and Paul Huenink and 17 years for Lukens.

“She pretty much runs the place when the owners aren’t here,” her son Gene Dana said.

She started working in the store in 1964, the same year Kamala Harris and Jeff Bezos were born, and the year the Beatles came to America.

Her favorite part of the job is the customers, her son said.

“Getting out, seeing the people. She’s a people person,” he said.

Before computers came along years ago, Dana specialized in paint samples.

She has seen major changes in the store, from having a large fishing area and local contests for who caught the biggest ones to the store adding carpeting to its offerings.

Dana, whose maiden name is Hyink, has lived around the corner for decades and can walk to work. Her husband Gordon died in 2011. Gene visits his mother four times per week, and sometimes he said the hardware store and grocery store are the only times she gets out of the house.

With many of Dana’s friends passed, “this is what she looks forward to,” her son said of her shifts at the store.

Gene, who has worked for Kohler Co. for 38 years in information technology and as a tour guide, and his brother Bruce, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and works for Sirius XM Radio in IT, attended Tuesday’s celebration. Dana’s daughter Carol Spear is a teacher near the Catskill Mountains in New York State. She was prepping for the school year and couldn’t make the party, but she recently spent three weeks in town. Dana has five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

These kinds of longtime employees and relationships with customers help define the Cedar Grove community, Gene Dana said.

“It’s what being in a small town is all about,” he said.

While his mother manages the store when Lukens is gone, he has the call on when she can call it a career.

“She can’t retire until she’s 100,” he said.