GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A sign is posted outside of Grand Rapids' Northfield Lanes honoring their longtime employee, Eileen Visser. It reads ‘FOREVER EMPLOYEE REST WELL EILEEN.’
Her family explains that the longtime employee recently passed away at 99.
After spending more than half a century there, the bowling alley was a second home to Eileen.
“I was here a lot. I was a teenager and I used to hang out here,” Eileen’s daughter Patti Duflo said.
Duflo had a good reason for being here, her dear mom.
“When she started working here, I was 13,” Duflo added.
The year was 1968, and Katherine Eileen Visser started working at the alley.
“They used to call her ‘I-LEAN,’ and they would do that to a lot of the kids that worked here from the neighborhood over the years. That's what they used to do to her,” Eileen’s granddaughter Jenn Badgero said.
Eileen spent the next 53 years working at the Grand Rapids staple.
“This was her dream job. When she got this job, it was like what she'd always wanted,” Duflo said.
She not only worked here but also bowled and coached here. Eventually, she hung up her bowling shoes and retired from working at Northfield Lanes at the young age of 95.
“She treated everybody when they walked in this door like their family,” Northfield Lanes Owner Harold Klukowski said.
Her family spent an evening looking through a photo album at the bowling alley. All of them remembering all the great memories made here.
“I’m really proud of the impact that she made on so many people like you knew it, but you didn't know it until you saw how many people were actually there,” Badgero said.
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