Shelving teapots — Barbara Fender’s job is to unpack, store and care for the Kamm teapots that have arrived in Sparta.

Fender has been working in the same building for most of her life

Barbara Fender has been going to work in the same building for most of her life. She has seen it change from Troutman Shirt Co. to Lee Jeans to Modern Globe to Bassett-Walker and now the Blue Ridge Business Development Center.

“I came to work in this building in 1964 and I’m still here,” the Alleghany native said with her gentle and cheerful laugh on a recent workday.

After Bassett-Walker closed, the plant building on Atwood Street was renovated extensively and became the Blue Ridge Business Development Center (BDC), housing Wilkes Community College’s Alleghany Campus and several other agencies.

Meanwhile, Fender took a job at Bristol Compressors.

“When Bristol Compressors shut down I found myself having to come back here to school,” she said. “I was exposed to computers. It was quite different way back when I started working.”

She studied office systems technologies at WCC. “When I got into it I actually enjoyed it. You take school a little more seriously when you’re a little older and you try harder,” she said.

She’s now the evening receptionist for WCC and recently added another part-time job, working for the Kamm Teapot Foundation.

Fender is helping Mary Douglas, curator of the Sparta Teapot Museum, by unpacking hundreds of boxes that contain the Kamm teapot collection. Those teapots will be housed in a museum expected to open in Sparta in 2008.

She unpacks the boxes, saves any paperwork with the teapots for Douglas and documents the location of the teapot where it will be stored.

“If any need to be stored in a specific way, and some of them do, Mary is very good in guiding me to do that,” she added. “I’m learning a tremendous amount. Mary is so educated in this and she has so much information to offer. I’m loving every minute of it.” She enjoys seeing what comes out of the hundreds of boxes that are being unpacked.

“I guess it’s the anticipation—not knowing what you’re going to find next. It’s amazing what a variety there is and how beautiful they are.” Her favorites are the Christmas teapots, because Christmas is her favorite time of year.

Douglas and Fender are both employees of the Kamm Teapot Foundation.

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