Ozarks Coca-Cola bids farewell to 45-year veteran employee

At a July 25 company party, Joe Graves announced his retirement from the Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Bottling Company, where he started working in 1957.

According to a company announcement, Graves worked in several different positions during his 45 years of employment, including production employee, plant foreman, warehouse manager and production manager.

Graves has seen many changes in warehouse procedure at the bottling company. He remembers mixing the "old way," when workers climbed ladders and dumped 100-pound bags of sugar into large metal drums, then added water with a hand-held water meter and hose.

Graves also remembers mixing "Classic" syrup from dry ingredients and corn sweeteners, and the transition from returnable glass bottles to plastic two-liters.

"It's a good place to work the people you work with, the working conditions, good boss, good owner. One big family," Graves said of the company.

Edwin C. "Cookie" Rice, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper, and long-time friend of Graves, said, "(He) is a remarkable man. He has demonstrated the best qualities you would like in a fellow worker: dependability, honesty, fairness and a good work ethic. He never asked anyone to do anything he was not willing to do himself. We will all miss him and his influence very much."

Springfield Coca-Cola was founded in 1905. The Rice family purchased the company in 1920, adding the Dr Pepper franchise in December 1986.