Waterworth checks out after four decades in grocery business

Doyal Waterworth started working for Ron’s Food Farm for $3.25 an hour in 1982. Now, after over 40 years in the grocery business, the Lynn’s Superfoods manager will step into retirement. 

“I really have been very fortunate to have what I’ve had,” Waterworth said. 

Waterworth graduated high school and college from Kearney, Neb., and made his way to Greybull in 1981 to visit his sister, who had purchased River Road Honey with her husband. He got a job at the old Safeway store, located where present-day NAPA sits on Greybull Avenue, to earn a little money. 

After six months at Safeway – stamping cans with an ink pogo stick and changing prices by wiping them off with a can of hairspray, he remembered – Waterworth made the switch to Ron’s in the spring, carrying groceries, running the checkout and mopping floors.

It was there he met Cari Storien. The young Greybull woman was home for the summer from the University of Wyoming. 

“She had to come over to the store and buy lots of groceries, one at a time it seems, for her parents,” Waterworth said. 

“She was stalking me. We went out on a date and got married three months later.”

The newlyweds moved to Billings, Mont., for a year and a half in 1983 so Storien – now a Waterworth – could finish up her schooling. Doyal Waterworth managed a convenience store there, and when they returned to Wyoming, he was able to take over Ron Fiene’s new Food Farm in Worland. 

Waterworth managed that store for 15 years until it closed in 2000, then he was back to Greybull. He has seen the store through Fiene’s retirement in 2015, its transfer to Blair’s Market and then Lynn’s Superfoods. 

The COVID pandemic stood out as a defining moment to Waterworth. Before that, the store’s normal out-of-stock percentage was never higher than 1%. During the pandemic, that number jumped as high as 60% and still has not recovered, now at 10%.

“I don’t think it ever will (recover),” Waterworth said. “Now the way the markets are, the way the supply chain is and how COVID changed hiring and the people that want to do this job… I think everyone had a reawakening as to what they want to do with their life, it seems like.”

His career came as a surprise, Waterworth said. He originally planned to be a photojournalist, using his photography to expose society’s underbelly. 

“I didn’t really consider myself successful until I started thinking about how it was a career… I’ve been pretty successful to do this business and make some money at it. I never intended it, never imagined it,” Waterworth said. 

The people are what has made Waterworth’s job worthwhile, he said. 

“It’s the customers and the employees. It’s funny, because the hardest part of this job is probably those as well.”

He has seen countless kindergarteners coming in with their mothers to buy a candy bar grow up, graduate high school, and come back with their families to visit the store. 

On the other hand, Waterworth said his elderly customers – the ones who need a little extra help getting their groceries to the car and finding the right aisle – have taught him how to treat people right.

“Don’t judge that, we’re all going to be there someday and hopefully the young people when I’m that old will give me a break,” Waterworth said.

“I’ve learned a lot about people in general: how good they can be… and how some people can have misfortune. So consider yourself lucky for what you have.”

One of the first customers who became Waterworth’s friend was Christine McMillan. He remembered once, back when he was a bag boy, when he loaded McMillan’s groceries in the car for her … apparently, not her car. 

The pair still laughs over the incident, now decades ago.

“I’m going to miss that when I’m gone,” Waterworth said of the many relationships he has formed over the years. 

Waterworth will officially take off his name tag May 30 with assistant manager Brandon Williams set to take over.  He shares his retirement with bookkeeper Laurie Wendling, who has been with the store for nearly a decade. Their party will be Friday at noon; feel free to swing by the store and say ‘congrats.’

Waterworth’s retirement plans include spending time with family – his sons have given him four grandkids: two in Powell and two in Colorado Springs – golfing and fishing, in that order. 

“This has been a wonderful place to work; it’s been a good career,” Waterworth said.