×

Kenmore Stamp employee is 90

MILFORD – Leona St. Cyr celebrated her 90th birthday this month with a party on Labor Day.

It was a day off for St. Cyr, because on Monday mornings for the past 50 years she always gets up early and goes to work.

St. Cyr has been working at Kenmore Stamp Company in Milford since 1958, and now works three days a week doing whatever needs doing – data entry, sorting, mailings, affixing stamps to orders, all part of fulfilling philatelic orders, for stamp collectors.

Does she consider retirement?

“Not yet,” she said last week. “I like keeping busy, and everyone’s so friendly.”

Her daughter, Louise St. Cyr, said her mother started working when she was about 40 and took the Kenmore job because it was convenient, a short walk from her home.

“Once my brother, sister, and I were old enough to be in school, she decided to get a job to help supplement the family income,” Louise said in an email. “Back in those days, we only had one car, and my dad took it to his job in Pepperell, Mass.

“She started working at Kenmore when it was located in the Town Hall simply because she could walk to work every morning, as we lived across the river in the Souhegan Street neighborhood and she used Milford’s Swing Bridge every day.

In 1967, St, Cyr was part of Kenmore’s move from Town Hall to their current address on West Street.

Until a few years ago she worked 40 hours a week.

“It really is amazing to me at 90, she still wants to work,” said her daughter. “She’s always been that kind of person who spent her life wanting to be helpful. This gives her a reason to get up in the morning. She is still sharp as a tack and has a better memory than me.”

Leona’s coworker Ed Hall, who has worked at Kenmore for 48 years, said “she keeps us laughing a lot with funny comments … She always commenting about dimes in the floorboards” in Milford Town Hall.

In those days customers would pay for stamps they brought with dimes, and sometimes the coins with fall on the floor and disappear between the old wooden floorboards.

“She’d get tons of dimes.” said Hall.

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100 or

kcleveland@cabinet.com.