By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Dwight Eisenhower was president, campaigning mightily for Richard Nixon to succeed him as the Free World’s leader.

Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” was No. 1 on the record charts, and the epic film “Spartacus” along with a gunslinging Yul Brynner in the “The Magnificent Seven” were the talk of movie fans everywhere.

Time Magazine’s Aug. 29, 1960, edition was hyping the Olympics, and showed decathlete Rafer Johnson hurling a javelin on its cover.

And at what was then Geiger Bros., Jackie King walked through the door to begin her first day on the job.

Next week, when she walks out on March 18, it’ll be her last, nearly 45 years later.

For most of that time, she’s done pretty much the same thing, fulfilling orders for Geiger customers. When she started, the job was part of the order department. Now the customer-service function is called total care, said King, but it still boils down to making sure a customer’s order is complete and that it gets shipped on time.

Pat Penley, Geiger’s human resources chief, said King is the company’s most senior employee. She’s also the person most other employees turn to, he added, to learn how to handle customers.

“I like dealing with people,” King said, crediting that trait for her longevity with Geiger.

Dealing with co-workers has been another part of the job that she says she’s loved.

“It’s like family here,” said King.

And she gets a kick out of some the younger “family members” because “they don’t have a clue” as to how things used to be, she noted.

When King started on the job, she entered order information by typing it onto forms using a manual Remington typewriter. She’d also take dictation from her boss, Win Hildreth, in shorthand and then transcribe the letters using the typewriter so they could be sent out.

Many of her younger co-workers “haven’t even heard of a typewriter,” King said Monday. “Everything’s done on the computer now,” she added.

Change, she notes, has been a constant on the job. She’s blessed, though, because she’s a person who embraces it as it comes, she said.

She also remembers some of the world events that happened while she was on the job: She learned of the assassination of President John Kennedy while at Geiger, and she learned of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as well.

Still, most of her memories are happy ones, King said. They consist largely of camaraderie and kidding among co-workers, be they members of the Geiger family or not.

On Monday morning, she said, Peter Geiger “was teasing me in the corridor” about her length of service with the company. “He was 9 years old when I started,” she said.

The fun isn’t going to keep King from retiring, however. She said she’s looking forward to joining her husband of 45 years, Michael, in their harness racing hobby. The couple, who live in Greene, have two horses. “I’m the groom,” she said. Caring for the animals can be time-consuming, she noted. And Scarborough Downs, she added, opens in early April, not long after she retires.

She also expects to have a bit more time to spend with her daughter Patty and granddaughters Jennifer and Melissa, as well as her new great-grandson Cain.