A pair of Petes part with Bethesda hardware store

Longtime workers retire from Strosniders

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Pete Prather likes jobs that keep him moving. Since his days as a rifleman in the Army, Prather has been a man of perpetual motion.

‘‘Every job I’ve had I’ve been on my feet,” Prather said. ‘‘Sitting-down jobs wear you out.”

Prather, 81, will have to find another way to stay active now, after he retired earlier this month from a 42-year career at Strosniders Hardware store in Bethesda.

He’ll miss it, he said, but for the time being he’s excited about retiring to his house on Florida’s Palm Coast.

Prather’s lengthy tenure at the store is unprecedented, but not by much. Another octogenarian, this one also called Pete, retired earlier this month.

Pete Scott, 87, worked at the store for 29 years before he left.

Scott, an Arlington, Va. resident, ran a photography store in downtown Washington, D.C., before he joined Strosniders. He turned to Strosniders, where he said his father was one of the original owners, for a job and he never looked back.

‘‘It’s a very good place to work,” he said in a telephone interview. ‘‘The thing that makes that store so good are the people who work there. They’re all friendly.”

Though he was hired to work in the store’s electrical department, Scott often strayed to other departments, according to his boss, Bill Hart III.

‘‘Pete could cover almost any department the customer needed help in and if he didn’t know the answer he would find it out,” he said.

Hart described Scott as a gentleman.

‘‘He was very courteous and genuine with each customer,” Hart said. ‘‘He came to work every day with a tie around his neck and was eager to dig in and help each customer who came through the door.”

Prather, who lived in Cabin John before selling his home and moving to Florida, worked in each of the store’s departments, including housewares and hardware before landing in the garden department, where he hauled boxes of weed killer and bags of birdseed with ease.

One customer wandered over to Prather on his last day of work to ask about an extension to her downspout that would keep water from puddling on her lawn. He reeled off a list of contraptions the store stocks that could solve her problem, then promptly denied being an expert on lawn and garden care.

‘‘I don’t feel like I’m an expert,” he said. ‘‘I just tell them what I know. I don’t try to make up stories just to sell something.”

Hart agreed that Prather is an honest worker, but said Prather was being characteristically modest about his knowledge.

‘‘He’s basically a garden encyclopedia,” he said. ‘‘He knows what all the poisons are, what they take care of. He might not know the chemicals, but he knows what they do.”

Hart described Prather as a hard-working man who never gets sick and who had to be dragged from the store by his wife after he cut himself at work and needed stitches.

Hart said that Prather set good examples for the other employees.

‘‘He’s the most reliable guy you ever want to have work for you.”