Cheryl Moore expects to walk out the doors of Greer Memorial Hospital into the sunset Friday and begin a new, unpredictable, adventurous chapter in her life.

Gone will be the keys, name badge and work space that has occupied her life for the past 40 years as a guardian of healthcare for legions of upstate patients she has cared for at Greenville Memorial, Allen Bennett Memorial and Greer Memorial hospitals.

Mementoes that have accumulated on her desk and offices are long gone – family photographs, a collage of photos by long-time friend and photographer Gerald Davis, plaques including one acknowledging Moore as Chairperson for Greer Relay for Life, the Healthcare Association and Greer Chamber of Commerce.

Moore is retiring to live a life without wakeup calls, appointments, meetings and the constant that hospitals deal with daily in illness. “I want to retire while I am healthy and enjoy some things I haven’t had the opportunity to in the past.

“Everybody has been asking me what I am going to do. They are telling me I will be bored after all these years working,” Moore said. “I don’t think so. I want to spend time with my husband. I have a lot of friends that I want to enjoy and I want to take a day trip when I want to. There are three ladies, retired, who go to church with me and we like to do things.

“It will be nice, when it snows, to get up and look at it . . . and then turn and go back to sleep,” Moore said as she smiled.

The Christmas and New Year’s holidays, said Moore, will provide a cushion of easing into the reality of retirement.

“My heart and soul have been given to my job,” Moore said softly. “I did the very best I could and my goal every day was to make people happy.”

John Mansure, President of Greer Memorial Hospital, has touted Moore’s promoting the core values of the healthcare facility. “Cheryl has the passion for making people feel good,” he said.

Moore has been the mainstay at hospital’s main entrance since it opened. “The front desk is very important to us,” Mansure said. “It’s the first contact a visitor makes with our hospital.”

“When we (husband Linny) married I lacked a semester of school and we moved to Columbia so he could finish school,” Moore said. “I worked at Providence (Hospital) for one of the nuns. Just being in the hospital made me feel like I was making a difference.”

Moore said she encouraged her husband to return to Greer.

The first place Moore applied for a healthcare job was at Greenville General Hospital. “By the time I got back to Greer they called and offered me a job,” she said.

Moore had her son at Greenville General and later joined the Allen Bennett Hospital staff. “People couldn’t believe I left for Allen Bennett but I wanted to come back here because I loved it.”

Allen Bennett provided one of the more interesting occasions. “There were times at Allen Bennett when we would be so full we would have to open up recovery and the emergency room and I would spend the night,” Moore said. “There were several times our manager would be the nurse and I would be her nurse’s assistant. That was a lot of fun.”

The traumatic memories Moore recalls are vivid. She talks of the time a mother and young child, who later died, in a car accident. Moore was there to comfort the family while the mother was being treated.

And then there is the day, Moore said, “I felt really called. I was leaving work, about 5:30, and heard sirens. Something told me I didn’t need to leave. A friend of my husband died of a heart attack, really too young. I met his wife and stayed with her.”

It was later the woman related to Moore how much it meant to be with her and the compassion shared. “Sometimes you don’t have to say a word. Just be there,” Moore said.

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