Longest-serving team member, John, celebrates 50 years of service

Fifty years. Half a century. Five decades. Whichever way you want to put it, it’s a very long time to pledge your allegiance to a single organisation.

Tenures of this length don’t happen very often, but then employees like John Wheatley don’t come along very often, either!

When John joined us in 1972, Roberta Flack was topping the music charts, NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme was a recently launched phenomenon, and the Dow Jones had closed above 1,000 for the first time in history.

Fast forward to 2022 and the Dow Jones is almost at 32,000, Roberta Flack has been replaced by Harry Styles, and John Wheatley has been replaced by… nobody!

It’s fair to say that there’s very little John hasn’t seen over the past 50 years, although the recent heatwave has presented logistical challenges on a scale that even he had never previously experienced!

He said: “I’m not sure where the time has gone, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way! I’ve worked across various parts of the company during my 50 years, and have loved every second of it.

“I’m proud of my career at Andrews and equally pleased that I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many fantastic people – and I’d like to thank every one of them. I’ll definitely miss it when the day comes to retire, but I’m not thinking about that just yet!”

Congratulations John, and thank you for all the hard work you’ve put in since the moment you walked through the door.