LENOIR CITY, Tenn. (WVLT) - For decades, Sue Bunch punched a time card at what is now Family Brands in Lenoir City.

Bunch introduced herself to WVLT News as Rosetta Sue Bunch, but if asked what people know her by on the Family Brands campus, she will tell you ‘Sue B’.

At the age of 15, Ms. Sue was one of five children, she would be quick to tell you when asking about her life, her father died one month before she was born, leaving her mother to care for her and the rest of her siblings.

When it came time, Bunch joined a friend on a ferry, to travel the several minutes downriver to the factory in Loudon Co., she would then call her work home, for 70 years.“It just don’t seem like it’s been that long,” said Bunch.

Bunch started on the assembly line making 60 cents an hour peeling hotdogs. “The way people are now if they had to work back then, they wouldn’t work, you can’t get people to work now for what 14 dollars an hour,” said Bunch. “If they had to make 60 cents an hour for a penny a pound if you didn’t make 60 pounds or you got 40 pounds you got 40 cents an hour, you just got paid for however much you could do, and I liked that because I got to where I could make $1.20 an hour.”

Work came naturally to Sue B. “We had to cut our wood, we had to milk cows, we had to feed chickens we had to feed hogs we had to work in the garden, we had to work in Tobacco Patch,” said Bunch.

She felt when she went to work, she could find a permanent home at (now) Family Brands, and she did.

For having worked 70 years, she worked longer than any other employee at the plant. “First of all its amazing to even have an individual who does at her age what she does but to have started with this company 70 years ago and still be working for this company today it’s almost hard to put into words because you don’t have anyone to compare that to,” said assistant general manager Cindy Cornelius.

Cornelius worked with Sue B for 18 years, inspired by the woman she has worked closely with for nearly two decades. “Sue in a nutshell is just a mom for all of us. She is a sweet lady, dedicated in this day and age. You don’t find quite the workforce you have in the past where people are dedicated, get up, come into work every day no matter what’s going on. She’s had double hip replacements in the past and she keeps on ticking, she’s incredible,” said Cornelius.

Family Brands gathered Monday to celebrate the woman many watch in awe of every day. “Not too long ago we had her come in and sit down we had a girl’s night. We had dinner brought in and we just wanted her to tell the history of her life here because so many of us didn’t really know it all, it’s amazing of course too, to think she was peeling hotdogs by the pound and how much she peeled is her wage but to think 60 cents an hour, and for someone who is so much younger, not so much younger, but younger, to know someone who was working under those conditions,” said Cornelius.

Cornelius wasn’t the only one mentored by Sue B. “Back during covid, everyone was struggling with staff and because of her prior history and helping with inventory and the management team was going out and doing inventory because we were short staffed. I reached out to her and I said, ‘Sue, we need your help, we’re going to need you to help us do inventory,’” said Cornelius. “She was a workhorse, we were there until midnight that night, I think she really loved it, it was really a good time, that time was a good time to take yourself out of the management chair. She was out there climbing over pallets, working right along she’d dig right in there and get it done.”

Scott Lynam is the operations manager and has worked with Sue B for 12 years, starting out working underneath her and finding out quickly about her work ethic. “Well it’s like me, I’m almost 60 and I’m doing the same thing so, and I got that from Sue, and watching her, there’s nothing she can’t do and that she hasn’t,” said Lynam.

On Monday, workers gathered to honor their Sue B, gifting her a pink jacket, a clock for her years of service, and even naming the dock she called her workplace for so many years, after her. “Well if you work for somebody you should do a day’s work and be proud that you’ve accomplished what you set out to do,” said Bunch. “I love my job”

Bunch works in housekeeping now, vacuuming, cleaning, and other odd jobs that she tackles with no complaints, and no problems.

“We’ve made comments that Sue B has a job here as long as Sue B wants a job here because Sue has done just an incredible job for this company as long as she’s been here,” said Cornelius. “You know I would love to be able to have her in a position that isn’t quite as physical as the one she has right now, but I think she’ll be able to work right up until the good Lord calls her home.”

A timeline the mother of two, grandmother of six, great-grandmother of 14, and great-great-grandmother of two, agrees with.

“I tell everybody until Jesus comes and gets me and calls me home, until the rapture and I go whoo up in the air,” said Bunch. “But, I don’t know, I got people that depend on me, kids, grandkids, great grandkids, I have people who depend on me.”