Two weeks ago, Doris Lewis came out of retirement briefly to keep a promise she had made to talk with the Stabroek Business about 25 years of the family’s proprietorship of the Gift Centre, a store that has been the backbone of a broader reputation which the family has for entrepreneurship.
The occasion was an unfussy partial gathering of the Lewis clan and there was no hint that the occasion of the Gift Centre’s Silver Anniversary would extend into anything even remotely resembling an elaborate celebration. For Lewis it was simply a matter of quietly marking a milestone.
Not for the first time we have pondered the official position that the matriarch of the family business is in retirement. She may no longer show up at the office every day, but when she put in an appearance to talk with the Stabroek Business, other members of family, all of whom, these days, play some integral part in the running of the Gift Centre gathered in the small back office on the premises, sitting at her feet, to hear, probably for the umpteenth time her account of the story of the Gift Centre.
