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There’s only one way to describe Harry Wilson, who has worked in Children’s Hospital Boston’s Linen Department for nearly 50 years: He’s a ladies’ man. Although Wilson has been happily married for decades, his grandfatherly charm and jokey one-liners act as magnets for the female employees he sees every day while making his daily linen delivery rounds. “How long have you been in love with me?” he innocently asks one of them, without cracking a smile. To another he shyly asks, “Did you get me roses?” The women match his deadpan delivery and respond with quips of their own: “I’ve been in love with you all my life, Harry,” and “No, Harry, you said you were getting me roses this time.”
Wilson’s linen route takes him all the way from the hospital’s sub-basement to the top floor of the Berthiaume Building. His day starts early, helping unload giant carts of fresh linens from the delivery truck onto the loading dock. After that, he wheels carts, piled high with fresh scrubs, caps, johnnies, blankets, towels, washcloths, sheets and pillowcases, into elevators and up onto the floors. When the carts are empty, he retrieves them, humming as he strolls down the hallways. “I don’t know what songs I hum, I just like to hum when I’m happy,” he says.
During the second part of his day, Wilson makes special deliveries to individual units when they page him for more supplies. He pretends to dread those calls, but the truth is, he doesn’t mind being in such high demand. “This beeper really gives me a lot of trouble,” he says, shaking his head and frowning at the beeper’s long log of pages. “It seems like mine goes off more than everyone else’s, with ‘I want this, I want that.’ We have 15 beepers around here but everyone likes to call me.” Wilson’s grumblings are all in good fun, and he’s always wearing a hint of a grin. “It’s OK though,” he says. “I like to see their smiling faces and hear them say, ‘Hi Harry, how you doing?’”
Despite their frequent occurrences, Wilson’s delivery rounds almost resemble a homecoming celebration. As he pushes a linen cart to its station on a floor, administrators, nurses and security guards alike greet him with shouts of “Har-ee!” as though they’re welcoming a rarely seen relative. Others slap him on the back with an affectionate “Hello, old man,” or a “Hey, chief!” Wilson usually responds with a soft “Hello, my love,” to his “girlfriends,” a “Yessir!” to the men or sometimes just a nod. At some point, most of them have asked Wilson how old he is, but none have successfully gotten it out of him. He answers with a shrug and “I’m about 29” or “I just turned 36.”
However, he will say—with a sigh—that he came to snowy Boston from his sunny North Carolina home for a vacation almost 50 years ago and never left. “I took a job at Children’s for the summer,” he says. “I guess I enjoyed myself because time went by so fast. I’m still here.” That was back in 1961, when the hospital was a fraction of its size, and his job was giving out uniforms to doctors and nurses by hand. “I’d get uniform number 93 and hand it to doctor 93,” he remembers. “I’d know everyone by their number, so I’d say, ‘Oh, here comes doctor number 32.’” Wilson’s job has expanded along with the hospital. When asked how many pieces of linen now flow through his department, he grabs his head and says, “Oh God, millions of pieces!”
Wilson is a creature of habit, having had the same job and hobby for most of his life. When he’s not at Children’s, he can be found working in his garden, where he grows vegetables and flowers, especially his favorite, tulips. His wife helps with the gardening, but “she gets in there and messes up everything,” he teases. After all these years, it looks like Wilson has gotten used to New England. He wears a Red Sox baseball hat to work nearly every day. When asked if he’s a big fan, he deadpans, “Only if they’re winning.”
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