MORGANTOWN – Alberta Wilfong recently marked her 50th year working for WVU Medicine.
Now 78 – she’ll turn 79 in February – she works as a unit clerk in the Ruby Memorial Hospital Surgical Intensive Care Unit, having transferred there from another unit in October 2020.
“I love it,” she said. She commutes from Fairmont and works 12-hour days, and she loves it so much that she’ll often put in for more days when she’s fulfilled her three 12s.
She has seven 12s in a row coming up after a day off. She recalls a stretch some time ago: “I’ve worked 60 days without a day off. They told me it was hazardous to my health and I had to take a day off.” But when she took it, she got called to come fill in for someone.
Her reason for getting involved in health care back in 1971 was relatively simple. “I had to have a job, so here’s where I came,” she said with a chuckle.
She began as an aide in the old hospital. But that wasn’t what her then-supervisor had in mind.
“Every time she would do my evaluation, she would say, ‘You’re going to be a clerk.’ I would say, ‘No I’m not. I like my job. I don’t want to be a clerk.’ She said, ‘You heard me, you’re going to be a clerk.’”
The same issue came up at every evaluation. “As soon as she got an opening she put me as a clerk.”
And what’s kept her there all these years? Another simple answer. “I enjoyed working here.”
Her current supervisor, SICU Nurse Manager Miranda Nuzum, said Wilfong performs a variety of duties: She takes calls from visitors and other hospital departments; she talks with people on the phone who want to visit; makes lab calls; puts charts together for patients coming in, transferring to another section or being discharged; she helps arrange patient transport.
She commented on Wilfong’s preference to work long weeks. “I just think she enjoys being around people.”
SICU staff had a little party for Wilfong, Nuzum said, and put up Elvis décor to honor Wilfong’s fondness for The King.
“She’s like our unit grandmother,” Nuzum said. “She loves to bake for us. She’s very sweet, pretty quiet at work, just does her job.”
Wilfong said, “They all seem to love me, and I love all of them.” She worked the day of her 50th anniversary. She was told she could have taken it off. “I said that’s OK, I’ve got my 50 years in now.”
Wilfong is a widow with 18 grandchildren and nearly as many great-grandchildren. “I’m more or less on my own. I can do as I want to do.”
What about retirement? “I keep telling them I’m going to work till I drop. I really don’t know when I’m going to retire. … It’ll keep me going if I keep working.”
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