Current position: President, owner and founder of both the Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat in Leavenworth Valley, and of the Icicle Broadcasting Co. with radio stations in Leavenworth and Chelan, broadcasting throughout north-central Washington. (She is the daughter of the late Dorothy Stimson Bullitt, who founded King Broadcasting in Seattle.).

First job: I was a server and glass washer in the Brown Jug (in the 1930s), a fountain and lunch-counter coffeeshop owned by two women in my mother's office building at 1411 Fourth Ave. in downtown Seattle. I made ice-cream sodas, shakes and sundaes, served coffee and pie and washed all the glassware. (There was no dishwasher.) I was trained to remember how the regular customers liked their coffee, and to serve it without slopping in the saucer, the handle toward them, and always with a cheery smile.

How I got the job: Through a newspaper ad. The farmers would recruit pickers and provided bus transportation for many of the youth in the area wanting summer employment. It was fun since many of my friends were doing the same thing. As a teenager I spent my summers working at local farms and then going to Eastern Washington to work in the field crops to hoe weeds and later work during harvest time.

What I learned: Appreciation of prompt, gracious service and the joy of doing it well. I learned how to make a great ice-cream soda and never forgot it. Most of all, I learned the necessity of doing a job that I could be proud of, and the importance of being considered a valuable worker; I was not there just because my mother got me the job. My ambition was to do it so well that I'd be promoted to the sandwich board.