Staton retires from hospital Thrift Shop

"I like the thought of giving to the community," said Pauline Staton. "I like the idea of helping people who need something and can't afford it."

It's in that spirit that Staton has helped lead the Alleghany Memorial Hospital Thrift Shop in Roaring Gap since its inception. She was a co-founder of the shop in 1991.

"This is like a little boutique," she said of the store. "We get designer clothes; we get some absolutely gorgeous things, and you have to have the right person come along and want it."

During her tenure, the shop has raised more than a quarter-million dollars for the hospital.

After 13 summers, Staton stepped down as coordinator late last month at the end of the season.

Staton and her husband Bill have been half-year residents of Alleghany since 1980, spending the winters in Florida. They have sold their home here recently and will be spending most of their time in Florida.

"We're just getting too old to own two homes and keep them up," Pauline Staton explained.

Of overseeing the store, she said, "I could go on forever doing this because it's wonderful, it really is, but we just can't be here all the time anymore."

Betty Walker of Sparta will become the new coordinator. Staton said she expects the all-volunteer staff of 17 to remain much the same. She expects to help some at the shop herself. She and her husband will be renting housing here for about three months each year. "We'll just be coming up and enjoying your weather."

The shop is open from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday from June through September — four hours a day, four days a week, four months per year. Staton said it is not anything particular about the number four; with her spending six months a year here, it made sense to have a month to set up the shop and a month to close it down.

From Florida

A native of Miami, she worked for the school system there for 19 years. Positions she held included registrar for a high school and liaison for the schools superintendent.

A North Carolina native, Bill Staton is from the Albemarle area and attended Wake Forest University. He sold concrete truck mixers, and that business helped bring him to Florida.

The couple met, introduced by a friend, at a country club in Miami Lakes, Fla. They married three weeks later. "I'd been single five years, and it was one of those things," Pauline Staton said.

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