Walk into Euro Dry Cleaners, located just behind Aspen Dental on the east side of Putney Road in North Brattleboro, and chances are you will be greeted by the manager, Linda Vartuli. Chances are also good customers will also walk in with an armful of crumpled shirts, a stained dress or coat, or a laundry bag full of clothes that just overwhelm you. Vartuli has been working at Euro Dry Cleaners for 22 years and counting. But more than longevity on the job, it's her larger-than-life personality, her ready laugh and, of course, her utter competence that draws customers in.
She was born in Albany, N.Y., in 1963 and, by age 18, was living out in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, working at a dry-cleaners there. In 1990, she moved back east to be near her mother, Joyce Dushane, who lived in Newfane. To get herself situated in the Brattleboro area, she took a variety of jobs: at Cersosimo's Mill, The Retreat, Mt. Snow, and Stratton, and then in April 2001, at age 38, she started at Euro-Cleaners, a business still owned by the St. John family, a family Linda regards with great affection.She lives in an apartment above the business she manages. She's up at 5:30 a.m. every morning to get the business up and running for the day: getting the dry-cleaning machine – a 7'x7'x7' Union HXL 8018K digital dry-cleaning machine - ready. Checking on the pressing machine, the washers and driers, organizing the sequence of washing, stain removing, pressing for customers who dropped their clothes and blankets and sheets off the day before, and getting the washables going.
By 8:30 a.m. or so, her two assistants, Shirley Morrill and Jenni LaPointe, arrive."It's never dull here," Shirley said, largely because of the pace of work and Vartuli's sense of humor. "Steven Steidle, a customer, used to enter the door, stand there, and then throw his clothes at me, and we'd laugh 'till our sides split. Then he'd pick up his shirts," said Vartuli. Another customer, Elaine Ducharme, came in one day, breathless, to tell Linda some guy almost ran her off the road on her way to the store."People know I'm a people person. I'm sassy. I get on with everyone," said Vartuli.
(This writer remembers a visit to Euro Cleaners I had last summer. It was one of those brutally hot and humid days in August. I went in with an armful of shirts. Every fan, along with all the cleaning machines in the 24' wide, 60' long establishment, were on, and the three women were at work. Linda told me, "We can open three doors but there are no windows to open. But then, if I can lose even an ounce of weight, it's worth the aggravation!" She did admit that "it can get pretty hot in [the building]," but she said that "we have only closed the shop six times because of excessive heat in the 22 years."
Jenni, overhearing the conversation from her place at the nearby coat presser, said, "And I can't stand the cold. This job is like a tropical vacation for me!'
What does Vartuli do with her off-time? She goes to her "Gramma Cave" upstairs, where she and her three grandchildren in the area join her in her apartment. Her daughter Laurie Hoover lives in Brattleboro with her family, as does her son Adam Morrisette. They and their children visit Linda regularly on weekends. "We go for walks, go bowling, go out for Chinese, and we make fudge," said Vartuli. "Lots of fudge."
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.