Last Thursday, Sawbones held a retirement party for islander Emma Kukors. But a retirement party for a 92-year-old is no ordinary celebration, just like Sawbones employees say that Kukors is no ordinary woman.
“You will never see anyone else like her in your life,” Foss Miller, co-owner of Sawbones, said of the 30-year employee. “She’s old school. Her work ethic is incredible.”
Kukors began her career at Sawbones in 1985, when the company — which makes model bones — was barely 7 years old and she was 62. At an age when most people are looking to retire, Kukors was intent on working.
“I love to work,” she said in a recent interview. “And (Sawbones) hired me even though I was close to the time when you’re not supposed to be hired.”
After working in the Beall Greenhouses bundling roses for nearly three decades, Kukors went looking for a job at the young “Bone Factory” when the Beall family moved its business to Colombia.
“When she first came in, we thought she’d work for a couple of years and then retire,” Miller recalled. “But then we saw what she was capable of. She could outwork anyone in the plant, even when she was 75.”
Indeed, on her first day, Kukors was reported to have assembled twice as many parts as anyone else doing the same job.
“My fingers work very fast,” she explained with a little shrug and a smile.
Her seemingly superhuman drive aside, it was that same bright smile, along with an uncanny knack for remembering her coworkers’ birthdays, anniversaries and family facts — as well as a poppy seed cake and bacon rolls that coworkers call delicious — that endeared Kukors to her Sawbones family.
But retirement was never on Kukors’ radar.
On her 65th birthday, Sawbones threw her a surprise party that initially shocked Kukors. Concerned that she was being shown the door, she explained that she didn’t want to retire. Colleagues said her relief was evident when she was told it was simply a birthday celebration.
To hear Miller tell it, she needn’t have worried.
“She worked as hard as she could and was a joy to be around,” he said. “I always used to think, ‘If I had 10 Emmas, I could rule the world.’”
But time does eventually leave its mark, and once she’d reached her 80s, Miller began to wonder how long she could continue.
“I called her into my office probably once a year for the last 10 years, just to see if she was ready to retire,” he explained. “And every year she’d tell me ‘No way.’ One time when I pressed her a bit, she told me that she loved the place, that it was her home and that if she left, she’d just go home and die. So I said ‘Ok, well, I’ll see you tomorrow at 6.’”
While Miller was reluctant to tell Kukors that she shouldn’t work anymore, he was also concerned about her health as aging began to take its toll. So slowly, her hours were scaled back.
Still coming in to work one day a week at the tender age of 92, Kukors finally decided it was time.
“I made the knees. It’s very intricate work, and my hands … there came a time when I couldn’t do it anymore without someone having to go back and do it again,” she said. “That’s not right. That just costs the company money, so it was time for me to leave.”
But as remarkable as Kukors’ career at Sawbones has been, it almost pales in comparison to her life leading up to it.
Kukors still lives in an immaculate house of her own with a garden just south of town. Her son Pete and daughter-in-law Cathy Hammel are her caregivers now.
Bright and cheerful in a lavender sweater, Kukors was quick with a smile and a firm handshake during an interview last week when she recounted her story.
Born in Latvia in 1922, Kukors reclled a happy childhood and still tells stories of checking the dirt driveway on Sunday mornings for signs of visitors coming by the night before and of her friend pouring a bucket of water over the unsuspecting heads of young men who had come to serenade them.
In June of 1940, the happy memories came to an abrupt end when Kukors, then a young bride of 18, and her husband Matves (Mat), were told by her parents and the police to run away — the Russians were invading Latvia.
The two slept hidden during the days and moved at night. With World War II in full swing, Kukors never saw or had contact with her parents again.
She and her husband ended up in a German work camp, where she delivered their first child, Elsa. At the camp she cooked for the guards, she said, and lived in a barracks, 16 to a room.
One day, when Elsa was still an infant, the guards told Kukors that she had to leave her baby and return to work. Kukors said no, and that if they didn’t like it, they could shoot her. Thankfully, they declined the suggestion. When she did go back to work, it was with baby Elsa in a basket by her side.
After the war was over, the young family was still intact and eventually left Germany to come to the U.S. in 1950.
After being quarantined on Ellis Island and a short time working on a farm in Massachusetts, the couple made their way to Vashon, where both Kukors and her husband worked at the Beall greenhouses until they closed.
The rest is Sawbones history.
During her time with the company, Kukors saw her husband pass away in the late 1990s and watched her granddaughter, Ariana Kukors, set a swimming world record and compete in the Olympics. And, by Miller’s estimate, she built over 1 million model knees for Sawbones.
At her party, Miller and co-owner Denzil Miller presented Kukors with an acrylic knee mounted on a plaque that reads: “A million thank-yous for a million knees,” as well as a scrapbook filled with pictures, memories and personal messages from her coworkers.
Miller said many at Sawbones will miss Kukors, but they are also relieved she will be cared for at home.
“She’s amazing. If the Bone Factory had a hall of fame, she’d be the first one in it,” he said. “You couldn’t find a sweeter, nicer person.”
Kukors beamed with happiness as she turned the pages of the scrapbook.
“I really enjoyed working. I would keep going to work if I could still do the job the way it should be done,” she said. “Pacific Research is the best place. I wish them hundreds of years to grow more and more.”
