04/17/2024
Philadelphia may be a huge city, but for Mark Olinger and his family, it’s a company town. That company is Jefferson Health, where he and/or a member of his family have been employed for 60 consecutive years.
In the aggregate, Olinger’s immediate and extended family have devoted 220 years to Jefferson, which must be some kind of record. At one point, four members of the family worked here at the same time.
“My father, mother, brother and I all worked here together for I’d say about five years,” says Olinger, lead receiver in Shipping and Receiving.
Olinger’s father, Ronald, had been encouraging his wife and sons to come to Jefferson ever since he started as the assistant laundry manager in 1964.
“My father said, ‘We’re a hospital. Hospitals don’t go out of business.’ “
Olinger previously had worked five years as a sheet metal mechanic. “You’d get work and get laid off,” he says. “I was getting married the same year I started here. I needed a stable job.”
Jefferson spared Olinger and his family from the vagaries of commerce, the insecurity of jobs that vanished when businesses closed or contracts ended. It provided the reassurance of a steady income and a stable future.
“It helped us tremendously,” Olinger says. “I put my kids through college. My brother put his kids through college. It’s been a great place to work.”
Olinger’s brother, Mel, was already working for his father in the laundry when he arrived in 1986. His mother, Jackie, came to Jefferson after the tool company where she was employed shut down.
“I deliver packages so I’d see my father in the laundry, my mother in the mailroom,” Olinger says. “And I’d see my brother every day.”
Meanwhile, Jefferson evolved from a local to a global institution. Olinger watched buildings go up and Jefferson’s reputation go wide. Some things changed – he laments that there no longer are catered dinners to celebrate employees’ special anniversaries, for instance. But he can’t complain.
“I owe this place a debt of gratitude,” Olinger says. “They took a chance on me. It kept me employed for 38 years. What more could you ask?”
At the end of May, Mark Olinger is going to retire. But not to worry.
His daughter, Amy, is a nurse in the short procedure unit. She’s been at Jefferson for nine years.
The era of the Olingers goes on.
