VOORHEESVILLE — Mae Duncan will be leaving Smitty’s in Voorheesville — where her boss estimates she has probably either baked or prepped a total of one million pizzas — on Friday after 48 years of work in the kitchen.

Talking about it recently, she choked back tears. “I just thought it was time,” she said. She will turn 83 on Saturday.

“I plan to enjoy life with my hubby,” she said.

Daughter Deidra Trombley, 48, recently started working at Smitty’s full-time — until the end of this week she works alongside her mother — after many years working as a seasonal cook at Indian Ladder Farms.

She decided that she wanted to start working year-round and to “take over what my mother had been doing.” This is actually a return to Smitty’s for Trombley, who also worked there from age 15 to 25.

Mae Duncan raised seven children — four girls and three boys — while working at Smitty’s. Until they reached school age, she would take them with her to work when she needed to.

Trombley, the sixth of those children, was seven months old when her mother first started working at the popular eatery and bar in 1957. She recalls her mother taking her along to work when she was about 3, together with her younger brother, Darrin, who is now 45 and would at the time have been a newborn. 

The original owners, Frank and Gert Smith, would sometimes call her little brother the “Freihofer bread baby,” Trombley said, because Mae Duncan would place him in a Freihofer’s bread box to sleep.

Did Trombley like going there as a young child? “Yeah,” she said, “because you were with your mom.”

When they reached school age, she said, she and her siblings would stay home with their father, Donald Duncan, who worked days. In the evening, he would often take them along with him to baseball games. “He was in a league,” she said.

Six of the seven would later go to work at Smitty’s for at least a time. The Duncans’ oldest son did dishes at first, and later cooked pizzas. Their oldest daughter became one of the cooks. “And on down the line,” Duncan said.

The only one who never worked there was the youngest, Darrin, who was always busy with sports.

Duncan’s main responsibility right now, said restaurant co-owner Jon McClelland, is prepping the pizza dough in the morning — weighing it, putting it through a machine, cutting it, and putting it in a pan. “That’s what she’s known for,” he said.

McClelland and co-owner John Mellen bought the tavern from Frank and Gert Smith 25 years ago, in 1991.

“Pizza was introduced in 1958 — a few years before Mae’s time — and in that time we have probably made close to two million pizzas. Over the years, I would guess that Mae has probably had her hand in literally half of them, prepping or baking them. That’s just an estimate,” McClelland says.

In addition to prepping dough, Duncan also currently makes homemade soups and salads and, perhaps most importantly, continues to mentor the new high school and young college kids, McClelland said. “She’s had them under her wing for as long as I can remember.” 

She has done everything in the kitchen over the years, and has waited tables and done some bartending, he added. “She’s been a great employee,” he said.

McClelland spoke of her consistency (“If she’s on the schedule, she gets there”) and her good humor (“She’s a sweet person and a lot of fun to be around”). Everyone here likes her a lot and will miss her, he said.

Duncan has 20 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. None of the grands or great-grands have worked at Smitty’s.

Not yet.