If you stepped onto an elevator in the Eola Hotel during the 1980s, chances are you met Willie Wimbley.

And at that time, you needed Wimbley’s help to get to the next floor.

“It was a hand-operated elevator, and it had hand-operated doors,” the now 82-year-old Wimbley said. “Everything you did on those elevators was by hand.”

Wimbley started working at the Eola in 1980, soon after it was remodeled. He had spent most of his working life at the Holsum bakery, but when he saw an employment ad in the newspaper, he thought he would see what kind of work he could find at the hotel.

“I went there one day just looking for a job, just looking around,” he said. “They needed someone to operate the elevator, so they gave me the job.”

At 53, Wimbley had never been an elevator operator before. As a teenager, he had taken a job keeping cars clean in a parking garage that allowed him to operate an elevator on occasion, but he was only interested inasmuch as it made his job easier at the time — he didn’t think he would end up spending months of his life on an elevator.

Even though it was years later when Wimbley took the hotel job, it wasn’t difficult to learn how to operate the Eola’s hand-operated elevators — there were two. Wimbley began working an eight-hour workday at 8 a.m. as a bellhop and elevator man.

Even if operating the machinery of the lift was easy, it took a sort of mathematical art to make sure things ran smoothly.

“You had to eliminate the weight of the passengers,” Wimbley said. “If you were going up you couldn’t take more than four or maybe five passengers.”

Going down was a little easier.

“You could take seven or eight passengers if you were going down, but you’d still have to know how to eliminate the balance,” he said. “You’d have to throw the brake at least two feet before the floor, and then the cable would tighten up and it would level off where you could step off.”

Still, parking the elevator was an art and not a science.

“You always had to tell your passengers to watch their step to make sure they didn’t trip or fall,” he said.

The hotel was popular during Wimbley’s time working there, and he met a number of people from foreign countries like Germany or Japan.

One tour sticks out in his mind, though.

“It was a group from Africa,” Wimbley said. “They didn’t say much, but they were looking for land to set up some sort of factory.”

He also met a few famous people, though 20 years later the only one he remembers for sure is Camille Cosby, the wife of comedian Bill Cosby.

But it was the everyday work that he remembers the easiest.

Some days the work was slow, and only two or three people would ring the elevator with the buzzer system.

It would ring like a doorbell, and a bulb would light up on the panel to indicate on which floor the elevator patron was waiting.

Other days, though, were hectic.

“When those tour buses would come in there, I felt like shutting the doors and walking out,” Wimbley said. “I just did the best I could by it.”

A lot of the younger bellhops would prefer the work of carrying luggage because they could earn better tips that way, and sometimes Wimbley would feel like he couldn’t get any help on the elevators.

But he enjoyed his work traveling up and down the insides of the hotel.

“There ain’t telling how many times I went up that elevator, because we were going up and down all the time,” Wimbley said. “It was uncountable.”

When Wimbley turned 62 and started drawing Social Security, he was approached with a request about the elevator work.

“They came to me and said, since you’re already getting some income, why don’t you let some of these younger guys get this income,” Wimbley said.

So he left the job, and now he does yard work on the side. A few years ago, the hotel was forced by safety codes to replace the hand-operated portions of the elevator with electronic controls.

He doesn’t go back to the hotel much, but not because he wants to avoid his old workplace.

“I don’t really have a reason to go there now days,” Wimbley said.

But in December he visited the hotel again.

“It’s a fine place, but when I walked in there and goddog it wasn’t the same place,” he said.

As he stood in the lobby, he took a look around, and though he decided against a ride in the elevator, he decided a peek couldn’t hurt.

“I just looked at the elevator,” he said. “It’s fancy — it’s beautiful.”