On Nov. 5, 1964, 20-year-old Eva Fullwood began her job as a meter-reading clerk at Consumers Energy, working with paper files and entering all the meter reads by hand.
A lot has changed in the past 57 years for Fullwood, the utility’s longest-tenured female employee—most notably, the advent of computers that made her original job obsolete—but her love for the people she works with and the pride she takes in her work endure.
“I’ve kept up with the modernization of the company, and that keeps my mind sharp,” Fullwood told American Gas. “I’ve been able to support myself and send both my sons to college and help my four grandchildren further their education and their dreams.”
Fullwood, who became a natural gas dispatcher in 1980 and often volunteers to work double shifts at the utility’s Royal Oak Service Center, says she learned her work ethic early from toiling on her family’s tobacco and cotton farm in North Carolina, starting at age 6.
The secret to loving her job, she said, is “I don’t bring it home with me, and I hold no grudges.”
For more than 30 years, she’s worked the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift by choice, and she always goes to work in heels despite the company’s relaxed dress code—one change she laments.
A lifelong NAACP member, Fullwood says she was one of just five Black women in the office when she started, and she’s proud to have been a trailblazer for diversity as well. “To me, I am history,” she said.
—Carolyn Kimmel