Dorothy Bale, who in her retirement years worked at a Utah Arby’s for nearly 26 years and earned national attention for it, has died.
Bale died Oct. 16, according to an obituary posted by a Millcreek mortuary. She turned 100 years old in May.
Bale was 69 in 1994, when she walked into the Arby’s at the corner of 2300 East and 3900 South in Holladay, across the street from Olympus High School, on the border where Holladay meets Millcreek.
“I just came in and asked if they were hiring,” Bale told The Salt Lake Tribune in January 2019, when she marked her 25th anniversary with Arby’s.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sharon Grover orders a drink from her long time friend 94-year-old Dorothy Bale, who in January 2019 was marking 25 years working at an Arby's in Holladay, Utah. Bale left Arby's in December 2019, after nearly 26 years there. She died Oct. 16, 2024, at age 100.
She and her husband, Dennis, had retired in 1988 from his Sugar House dental practice, where she worked in the office. Sixteen months after they retired, Dennis died of a heart attack at age 66.
Bale traveled for a few years, then applied for the Arby’s job. “I would not like staying home at all,” she said in 2019.
“She’s going, going, going. She never stops,” said Cici Salvador, then Bale’s manager at Arby’s. “You never see her just standing there. She’s like a little bunny.”
Bale usually worked three days a week, cleaning tables and running the register. People in the neighborhood knew she was on duty because they saw her white Ford Taurus parked in the far corner of the parking lot.
In 2014, Bale was invited to Arby’s worldwide franchise convention in Las Vegas, celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary. There, she met Arby’s then-CEO, Paul Brown, who in 2018 co-founded Inspire Brands, the parent company of Arby’s and other restaurant chains.
In her nearly 26 years there, Bale worked under 21 managers and went through two restaurant remodels.
The job, Bale said in early 2019, “has kept me busy, and I’ve met a lot of wonderful people. … I’m going to work as long as they let me.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dorothy Bale, then 94, marked 25 years working at an Arby's in Holladay, Utah, in January 2019.
Bale’s story, first published in The Tribune in January 2019, was picked up by news outlets nationwide. “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon even mentioned Bale in a monologue: “I read about a 94-year-old woman in Utah who is Arby’s oldest employee. When asked what it was like to work with her, the manager said, ‘Oh, thank God, you can see her, too.’”
Bale left the fast-food restaurant in December 2019, she said, when pain in her legs made it difficult to work her four-hour lunchtime shift. She was 95 at the time.
Dorothy May Green was born May 3, 1924, in New Castle, Colorado, and grew up mostly in Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction, Colorado. She was a senior in high school in December 1941, when Japanese air forces attacked Pearl Harbor, starting the American involvement in World War II.
She moved to Ogden in early 1943 and worked at the Ogden Arsenal. She returned to Glenwood Springs to work at the U.S. Naval Convalescent Hospital during and after the final months of the war.
At the hospital, she met her future husband, Dennis Bale, who was a corpsman. When that hospital closed after the war, they moved to Salt Lake City, where Dorothy got a job at the local VA hospital.
The couple married on Sept. 10, 1947, in the living room of Dennis Bale’s parents. They had two children: Susan, born in 1949, and Denise, born in 1952. Except for a stretch in Kansas City, Missouri, where Dennis attended dental school, the family lived in the Salt Lake City area. Dennis ran a dental practice in Sugar House for 35 years, and Dorothy worked in the office for 23 of those years.
Bale is survived by her younger daughter, Denise, as well as a grandson and two great-grandchildren. Her older daughter, Susan, died previously.
At Bale’s request, there was no funeral or memorial service, and she was buried next to her husband, the mortuary said. Instead of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the University of Utah School of Dentistry in the Bales’ name.
