Ruined 'surprise' retirement party set for Linda Alt
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| Linda and John Alt were the guests of honor at a courthouse breakfast outside the door she opened for 19 years, but John and their sons are putting together a real celebration. |
Her official last day of "work" with the county was August 31, last Wednesday, but everyone who knows her knows that with all the free time she now has on her hands, her real work, just like John's, is only beginning.
After John's retirement, he continued to work hard on the family farm in Paradise Valley and in the butchering and packaging business he founded. John's slowed down some in the years since, getting out of the butcher business, for instance, but he's still a dynamo, going pretty much from sun up to sun down and even later or earlier as the need arises.
And even while working full time, Linda has never been a shirker when it came to doing what had to be done either on the farm or in the community she grew up in. She's a Badger Booster, a Rotarian, a member of several local ladies' societies and one of the driving forces behind the Boundary County All-Class Reunion that takes place only once every five years because the other four a so much needed for planning, organizing, tracking and getting all the letters out.
She's also the matriarch of the family dynasty, always present and part of just about every special occasion in their lives, be it grandaughter Savannah's first recital or grandson Derrick Alonzo-Alt's graduation from Air Force basic training.
By all accounts, Linda isn't likely to slow down in retirement, but to speed up.
She knows her husband and her family so well that what had been planned as a surprise party by John and sons Don and Pat, is no longer a surprise to the guest of honor, but a get-together to which everyone who knows and loves her is invited, and you don't have to bring anything but yourself ... John and the boys are doing all the work.
What led her to burst the bubble of secrecy, she said, was John telling her he needed to go shopping at Costco.
"John hates shopping, and it has always taken something drastic to get him to go to the store," Linda said. "It wasn't too hard to figure out after he told me that."
John, Don and Pat and everyone else in Linda's tight-knit clan invite you to her "official" retirement party, taking place between 3 and 6 p.m. Saturday, September 10, at Paradise Valley Fire Station 1 on Paradise Valley Road, just a couple of miles from where John and Linda let the district use their land long ago for an old, now idled fire station.
They'll be serving up barbecue pork and beef with all the trimmings.
And almost as soon as it's done, Linda will most likely go right back to work, getting ready for the upcoming CommUnity Breakfast, taking place in the Middle School lunchroom from 7 to 10 a.m. Saturday, September 17.