So at the end of her eight-hour shift at Palo Alto Middle School in Killeen, she drives over to Jason’s Deli on restaurant row and puts in four to five hours as the cashier on the night shift.
She said she’s averaging about 75 hours a week working seven days a week. Yet she still has time to teach Sunday school. So what’s so unusual about that? Susan Counts is 88 years old.
“I’m a Kentuckian by birth,” she said, “born in Germantown in Mason County on Dec. 29, 1919. I grew up on a farm.”
She said her father died when she was 5 years old. She helped her mother, sister and two brothers bring in the crops all through her childhood.
“I learned what it was to work,” she said.
In 1938 she landed her first job when she earned a certificate in cosmetology and went to work as a beautician, she said.
“I married a Texan from Hamlin near Abilene - J.T. Counts,” Mrs. Counts said. “We met and married in October 1949 at Fort Bragg, N.C. He was later assigned to Fort Hood. J.T. is gone now. But I’ve been here ever since.”
In 1958 she joined the federal civil service as Fort Hood’s chief telephone operator.
“I was there 29 years,” she said. “I retired from that in 1987, and the next year went to work at Palo Alto Middle School,” she said. “This is my 20th year with the school district. I’ve been with Jason’s seven years this October.”
She said she is the oldest employee at both the school district and Jason’s.
“They are just kids at Jason’s,” she said. “They call me Miss Susan. I show them respect even though they are still just kids. They are in their prime. I give them an “E” for effort.”
At Palo Alto Middle School she works in the media room making copies of documents for staff members. She also delivers mail for the school.
Anna Maysonet, an art teacher, said everybody there loves Mrs. Counts.
“She has a smile for everybody and takes care of you as soon as you walk in the media room,” Ms. Maysonet said. “When I met her 10 years ago she had a smile for me. She’s had one ever since.”
Mrs. Counts said she feels a special harmony with Jason’s Deli. The customers and her co-workers are like family to her.
“The folks at Jason’s say I’m like the Energizer Bunny,” she said. “I just keep going and going and going.”
Brian Hardin, store manager at Jason’s, said he has seen Mrs. Counts carry trays loaded with heavy plates of food to the table for customers who are half and even one-quarter her age.
“Sometimes we’ll ask her to do things that we’re not sure she can do,” Hardin said. “But she fools us all every time. She can do it.”
“She keeps up with my younger folks - high school kids and people of that younger range,” Hardin said. “It’s very impressive.”
Mrs. Counts said she works because she enjoys it. She said her health is good, she’s on no medications and she’s never smoked or been a drinker.
“The Lord has been good to me and kept me well all my life,” she said.
Mrs. Counts said she was born and reared a Methodist but converted to the Pentecostal Church in 1950. She attended the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Temple for 20 years. After the pastor there left she said she took over his duties.
“I’m an ordained minister, so I served as pastor two years until it was taken over by Cornerstone,” she said. “I’ve attended Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church on 38th Street in Killeen since then, though.”
She said she tries to live by the Golden Rule - ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ - even though to some it has become a cliche.
“I practice that in my working here with younger people,” she said.
“Prayer is a constant thing in my life,” she said. “I get my strength from the Lord. When you get to be 88, the strength starts to leave your muscles and bones. I’m not as strong as I was. Something I used to do in five minutes now takes me 10.”
She said when she closes out her cash register at Jason’s in the evening it’s supposed to balance to the penny.
“When my manager tells me my register has balanced I say, ‘Praise the Lord! Tell Him that’” she said. “If I call on Him, He answers.”
“They are used to me being like that,” she said, laughing. “It doesn’t surprise them at all.”
She was asked if she ever will retire.
“Retire? What would I do? Sit down and die?” she responded.
Mrs. Counts’ daughter-in-law, Janet, said she can’t keep up with her mother-in-law.
“In addition to working two jobs, she also owns her own business, too,” Janet Counts revealed. “What? She didn’t tell you that? It’s in Harker Heights - the Double J Mobile Home Park.”
“My husband does all the maintenance,” Janet said. “But I’ve seen her get a push mower and mow the whole park. She puts on her sun hat and away she goes!”
Susan’s son, J.T. Counts Jr., said that if his mother ever retired she would lose her energy and strength.
“The last 10 years she’s kept saying, ‘Well, this is my last year,’” J.T. said. “But to tell you the truth I don’t see that happening. So I’m going to leave it alone.”
He said he had to take away all the ladders and tools from the mobile home park so she wouldn’t go up on the roof to clean the gutters.
“I won’t go to Jason’s Deli because I would feel guilty sitting there eating while my 88-year-old mother was up on her feet working,” Counts said dolefully.
Susan’s pastor at the Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church, the Rev. Marshall Bishop, said he has known her 35 years.
“She’s been good to the Lord,” said Bishop. “He’s been good to her in return. It’s a two-way street.”
He said she is the kind of person you can depend on.
“Maybe that’s where her name - Counts - comes from,” he said with a soft laugh. “You can ‘count’ on her.”
Justice of the Peace G.W. Ivey of Temple had similar sentiments.
“She’s a good, Christian woman who is conscientious about everything she does,” Ivey said. “She was my Sunday school teacher five years ago at the Temple Full Gospel Tabernacle. She’s very caring.”
Susan is proud of a note a soldier wrote on the back of a deli napkin and handed to her when he left one night. She has it sealed in plastic.
“I am a soldier,” it reads. “I have put my life on the line for our country and will do it again. Sometimes I wonder why I do it.”
“I saw you today and I remembered why. An old, sweet lady works hard to make life (good) and is free to do so. While all the young guns are walking around talking to each other, you are hard at work. You are an American citizen. I fight for you. Thank you. :)”
“It would be a sad day around here if she ever leaves us,” Hardin said. “We have customers from Temple to Copperas Cove who come in here simply because they know her and really care for her.”
hclark@temple-telegram.com
