A Labor Day tribute: When night falls, these workers rise

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They labor while the rest of us sleep. They labor so that the rest of us can sleep peacefully or so that we have a place to go when rest eludes us.

Graveyard-shift workers drive police cars to protect us, wait in firehouses to rescue us, work in hospitals to heal us. They pave roads, make pancakes, brew coffee and stock grocery shelves at night so we can make it through our days.

About 3 percent of Americans work the night shift, gigs that fall between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., according to a 2007 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Medical research shows defying the body’s natural circadian rhythm can take its toll on late-night workers, possibly increasing their chances of heart disease.

But life doesn’t pause at 9 p.m. Some people are born with a different internal rhythm and prefer the nights; others like knowing that their jobs take care of us in ways we often don’t realize.

RICHARD "FAMOUS" AMOS

Lynnhaven Fishing Pier cashier

Famous Amos – legally Richard Amos – already was fishing night and day at the Lynnhaven Fishing Pier in Virginia Beach when he got the chance to make some money there.

This summer he was offered a job working the cash register at the pier store from midnight to 8 a.m. It gave Amos, 70, another reason to be there.

“I just love fishing,” he said. “I love it, love it, love it.”

He’s in his element either way. He started fishing in his 30s, and now he often gives his catch away.

In his teens, he worked early morning hours on a milk truck making house deliveries.

He later worked overnight shifts for years at the International Paper Mill near Franklin, where he lives before he retired after 23 years.

A widow with no children, the night life simply suits him, he supposes.

“I’ve just always liked it.”

STEVE AUSTIN

Pier master for Norfolk Southern

Sandwiched between Norfolk’s West Ghent and Lamberts Point neighborhoods and the river, another community chugs along 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It’s the Lamberts Point Coal Terminal of Norfolk Southern, about 325 acres of train carts and loading berths that emit a constant spray of coal dust along the Elizabeth River.

The terminal runs nonstop because countries around the world need their Appalachian coal to power plants and to make steel.

Steve Austin, often called “Stone Coal” Steve Austin, has been a pier master for six of his 36 years with Norfolk Southern. At night, he manages the unloading and loading of ships. When foreign vessels pull in, he ensures the pier follows the safety guidelines designed by the Department of Homeland security.

He’s chosen the shift for the past nine years because of the flexibility it offers during daylight hours.

“I was assistant coach for my daughter’s softball team when she was at Churchland High School,” said Austin, who lives in Portsmouth. “That was great.”

But working the night shift isn’t easy, he said. He must stay busy to keep his body alert.

“Your body knows when it’s night and knows when it’s day,” Austin said. “You can’t fool it.”

MELODY BATTEN

IHOP server

Melody Batten doesn’t like working any other shift at the IHOP on Battlefield Boulevard in Chesapeake.

She has been waiting tables for three years and loves seeing the new faces who stop in after they’ve spotted the familiar glow of the IHOP logo and realize they need a 3 a.m. T-bone steak or Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity.

After 1 or 2 most mornings, the crew of the nearby TGIF restaurant will drop in, order and sit for hours, playing cards. The Blakely’s nightclub gang will head over and fill a section of booths once its doors shut.

“Customers know all the managers’ names, the cooks’ names,” said Batten, 20.

Batten looks out for the loner, the guy or gal who can’t sleep and sits nursing a cup of coffee for hours.

“Sometimes they need someone to talk to them,” Batten said.

“You never know whose day you’re going to make.”

And unlike the daytime hours, when people come in, eat and run, “No one is in a rush. Where are you in a rush to get to at 4 a.m.?”

DAVID BENNETT

Ferry supervisor

David Bennett likes his peace. He grew up in a speck of a Georgia town where there was nothing but quiet.

He never felt quite at home as the Navy took him to the larger and louder cities of Long Beach, Calif., Virginia Beach and Norfolk.

Now Bennett, 43, and his wife have settled in tiny Ivor in Southampton County, where the loudest noise is the occasional rumble of a train.

The serenity is one of the reasons he prefers working midnight to 8 a.m. as the shift coordinator for the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry, which runs between Surry and Jamestown.

“I’m there to make sure everything is OK,” he said.

He works under a canopy of stars, where the surroundings are still except for the grumbling of engines and the clapping of catfish near the river’s surface.

His days are free to spend time at his church and with his wife.

At night, it’s his job to inspect the docked ferries and to be on alert if something goes wrong on the one ferry carrying early-morning riders to work.

TYRONE CRAWFORD

Virginia Zoo night security officer

Tyrone Crawford has worked security for years in some of the region’s most threatening streets and clubs. The idea of protecting the animals at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk at night posed a different kind of danger.

“Pitch black, and I knew there were wild animals in surrounding areas,” Crawford said. “I honestly wasn’t going to accept the job.”

More than two years later, he’s glad he did.

On a recent muggy Tuesday morning, Crawford, 51, of Norfolk, began his rounds. Some animals stir only at night; armed with a flashlight, he makes sure they are where they should be. If he notices a problem, he phones the on-call supervisor.

In the Night House, the crowned cranes squawked as he strolled near their exhibit. The female was on guard, protecting her eggs. She did not know that keepers had replaced them with fake ones and that the last surviving egg was in an incubator in a nearby room. Staffers, including Crawford, turn the egg every few hours to keep it thriving.

Crawford headed next to the barn area, where the goats were up and the Sardinian dwarf donkey and black pigs in the stable were quiet.

It’s what he now loves about his hours – it’s just him and the honking of a bullfrog and the busyness of the squirrel monkeys. Even the ostrich seems to prance out of its resting spot when Crawford walks by. He never thought he’d become attached to the animals.

Around 1:30 a.m., Crawford drove down a dusty path to say hi to April. Before he parked, the zebra had trotted to the fence, waiting for him to stick his fingers through chain link and rub her skin.

“Hey, beautiful,” he whispered.

He lingered for a minute. Crawford swears she looks sad whenever he has to leave. Maybe it’s the other way around.

BARBARA FELTON

Bridge-tunnel patrol

One thing Barbara Felton likes about the overnight shift is that she never gets stuck in traffic on her way to work. Which she finds funny because Felton works at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and stops traffic as a job requirement.

Felton, 53, of Newport News, is a bridge-tunnel patrol. She listens for alarms that are stationed along the interstate and alert her to trucks and tankers that are too tall to squeeze through the tunnel. She also looks for signs on trucks signifying flammable cargo that could ignite. She flags down offenders and reroutes them to a bridge crossing.

Most travelers, Felton said, don’t realize that the huts that sit near the entrance of each bridge-tunnel are manned 24 hours by people like her who look out for drivers’ safety.

Drivers certainly don’t appreciate when she has to close all lanes because a car has broken down in the tunnel.

“People have said that they thought we just stop cars every few cars just to do it,” she said. “Or people have asked, 'Where’s the VDOT roads?’ Like we take a different road.

“I tell them, I get stuck in traffic just like you.”

Just not on the night shift.

MICHAEL HALL

Cab driver

Nighttime is when a cab driver is needed more than ever, Michael Hall says.

Busses aren’t running then, and friends and family are asleep. But people still get drunk and need a ride. Or their car breaks down and they need to get to work. Business travelers get in late, don’t know where to go and want a bite to eat. Later, they need an early morning ride to the airport.

“There’s a desperation; there’s already a sense of urgency there,” Hall said.

So he keeps his cab spotless and offers a smile and an ear because many customers need both.

“Cab drivers give a big service to the community,” he said on a recent morning, idling in a Chesapeake shopping center parking lot.

“And I really enjoy working with people and giving good customer service.”

He drives his Crown Victoria from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. six to seven nights a week. Night driving, with less traffic, allows him to provide faster service and less hectic travel for his clients.

Hall, 46, has been driving cabs off and on for years. He’s tried different jobs but keeps coming back to the cab.

“I’m content,” Hall said. “I’m happy with it.”

CAROLYN JOHNSON

Air traffic controller

Carolyn Johnson works what is called the midnight crew, or “mid crew,” at the Oceana Naval Air Station tower in Virginia Beach.

As an air traffic controller, she and others monitor radar and the nighttime sky to make sure incoming and outgoing F/A-18 Hornets and F/A-18 Super Hornets land and refuel safely.

Johnson also keeps an eye on any craft – including police helicopters and planes heading into Norfolk International Airport – that pass through their airspace.

Johnson, 32, likes the night work because fewer planes and jets are in the air, which allows her to concentrate on her job of making sure pilots can do their jobs with ease.

Because Johnson and the others in the tower are on alert, thousands of residents below can sleep without worry. Johnson knows that a misstep on her team’s part could mean a catastrophe.

“The tower’s job,” she said, “is to see and be seen.”

WALTER JONES

Squires Club manager

After 2 a.m., the door of the Squires Club in Norfolk starts to swing open every few minutes.

“Hey, Walter.”

“Hiya, Walter.”

“How’s it going, Walt?”

Walter Jones, 59, is manager of the private, after-hours club. He mans the door and knows most who visit.

He’s worked at Squires for more than 30 years, handling everything from distribution purchases to picking up bottled water from Costco during the day. But, thankfully, he says, that’s only once a week.

He prefers the early-morning hours of the club, which is open from 1:30 to 6 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday. People come in after their midnight shifts have ended or their other bar haunts have closed.

“It’s kind of addictive work, the night shift,” Jones said. “Most people, when they go out to a nightclub, they go two or three times a month, with two or three friends.

“I’m there each night with 150 people I know. It’s kind of an ego boost. It’s very hard to get away from.”

EMILY MCGINN

Veterinary technician

Emily McGinn spends her night shift keeping an eye on sick patients, monitoring their blood pressure and checking their temperature.

Her patients go by names like Mocha, Shadow and Amos, and they lick their appreciation as she checks their stitches.

Like people, cats and dogs and the occasional ferret have their 24-hour issues and accidents.

McGinn, 30, is a licensed veterinary technician and one of three who nightly staff the Greenbrier Veterinary Emergency Center in Chesapeake.

The late hours cut into McGinn’s personal time, and she says it’s kind of weird to be leaving her job as others are heading to theirs. But she likes being there.

“Seeing them get better and go home is the reward.”

KENNY MOTEN

Hilton third-shift supervisor

Since Kenny Moten left the Navy in 1999, he’s preferred working when it’s dark.

Moten, 32, is a third-shift supervisor at the Hilton Virginia Beach Oceanfront, and the bustle of those supposed quiet hours requires energy.

“The night shift is when I’m on,” he said.

Moten’s cleaning and housekeeping crews must transform the nightlife setting of the restaurant Catch 31 and the swank Sky Bar into breakfast venues in four hours. He often rolls up his dress-shirt sleeves and helps out.

His crews are responsible for vacuuming floors, polishing tiled walkways and restocking rolled towels into perfect pyramids in the fitness center.

Moten said he and his crews become more essential at night because guests often are unfamiliar with the area and don’t know where to get something to eat or buy a bottle of aspirin.

Moten sometimes is asked to perform the unusual. He has made runs to find a tea­kettle for a celebrity who didn’t drink coffee.

He once got a request from another guest who wanted four packs of Ramen noodles, two cans of tuna and a can opener.

It is the Hilton’s, and Moten’s, policy to make the guests as comfortable as possible.

“I’m from Mississippi, the hospitality state,” Moten said. “I love making people happy. Some people just say that, but I truly love making people happy.”

DANA PERKINS

Tunnel-cleaning crew supervisor

Dana Perkins and members of his tunnel-cleaning crew have been called every name that he can imagine – and some that he can’t.

Drivers yell when he and his workers close a lane of traffic to clean the sewers that dot each of the tunnels.

“When we close the lanes at night, drivers ask why we can’t do the work during the day,” said Perkins, a supervisor. “When we close them during the day, people ask why we can’t do it at night.”

He prefers the night.

Perkins, 43, of Virginia Beach, says that he can get more done during those hours and that the work is necessary. His crews with TME Enterprises are contracted by the Virginia Department of Transportation to clear the drains in the area’s five tunnels, including a runway tube near Norfolk Naval Station.

The drains – and there are many – fill quickly with cigarette butts, flattened soda cans, leaves and grass. One tube of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, for example, has 98 drains. The other has 91.

They must be cleaned routinely or the tunnels could become impassable during storms.

“The work might seem insignificant,” Perkins said. “But it isn’t.”

JIMMY SMITH

Area manager for The Pilot

Jimmy Smith has worked the night shift for the past 38 years. He’s done it mostly because his inner clock always has seemed to be wired differently.

In addition, he’s always liked the job.

He started working as a newspaper carrier for The Ledger-Star in the 1960s and later moved to The Virginian-Pilot, where he now is an area manager overseeing carriers.

Smith, 66, of Chesapeake, is an important cog in the 24-hour cycle of collecting, printing and delivering news.

Around 12:30 a.m., the first papers roll into a building next to the printing plant in Virginia Beach.

They will go to Chesapeake and North Carolina routes, the lengthiest drives. During the next two hours, people, some with small children in tow, come to gather, fold and stuff papers in plastic bags so they’ll be on porches and in mailboxes by 5:30 a.m. during the week, 6:30 on Saturdays and 6 on Sundays.

Around 5:30 a.m., Smith waits for the text messages that relay missing papers or complaints about deliveries. He, like other area managers, then will pile papers in his car and deliver them. Which he doesn’t mind at all.

“I’m an overzealous person in doing and seeing that a job is done and done right.”

TYLER WILKERSON

Krispy Kreme assistant manager

Tyler Wilkerson has no idea how many people he makes happy each morning after he’s done his job at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop.

Wilkerson is the assistant manager at night, when workers hand-dip, hand-fill and hand-sprinkle the “hero,” the standard glazed Krispy Kreme star.

Summer is the Virginia Beach store’s busiest time, when it pumps out 6,000 to 8,000 dozen doughnuts of various kinds a day.

During the night shift, workers watch the pastries stream down a conveyor, and they squish and toss the ones with lopsided centers or bulbous rings.

Those that pass inspection are packed, slid onto trays and pushed into a holding area where carriers pick them up and drive them to Delaware, Maryland, the Eastern Shore and the Outer Banks.

Closer to home, drivers deliver the doughnuts to hotels and grocery and convenience stores, where people can find their heroes within hours of them coming off the line.

Around 2 a.m. on a recent Wednesday morning, long after the front doors were locked, a family with four kids came to a halt in the parking lot. They piled out, and the kids pressed their faces into the store’s glass window. A pleading dad held up dollar bills.

Wilkerson, 25, of Norfolk, relented and motioned for them to go to the back of the building, where he filled their emergency request.

“It’s fun to work at a place where 90 percent of customers come to the door smiling,” he said.

ANNETTE WILLIAMS

Sleep technician

Annette Williams knows the importance of sleep. It’s her job.

Three nights a week, Williams works as a sleep technician at The Sleep Disorders Center for Adults and Children of Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Patients come in for overnight evaluations, and Williams, 41, settles them into beds and connects them to wires and belts that monitor their heart rate, limb movement and breathing.

She sits in a nearby room, where intercoms pipe in a chorus of snoring and where on little screens she watches her patients sleep. On a computer, multi­colored zigzags translate the monitored body signals.

When one line goes straight for 10, 15, even 20 seconds, it means a sleeper has temporarily stopped breathing. These fits and starts – known as sleep apnea – have been linked to congestive heart failure, high blood pressure and vascular disease. In the worst cases, people stop breathing hundreds of times a night.

Williams gives up her own nighttime slumber for the 7:30 p.m.-to-8 a.m. shift, but she knows her work is helping to improve lives.

It’s also why she’s guarded about her own sleep. She makes sure she gets her eight hours each day, using blackout curtains in her bedroom and cutting off her cell phone.

“I don’t call you at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning,” she said with a laugh. “Don’t call me when I’m sleeping.”

To see full-sized portraits and watch a video from each of the 15 workers featured, click into the interactive presentation at the top of the story.

Photography by Stephen M. Katz stephen.katz@pilotonline.com

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com