Jenna Rhodaberger of Butler says her first job running an arcade didn't necessarily lead her down the path to become a bereavement coordinator and medical social worker, but her second job teaching gymnastics helped her get her foot in the door at a nursing home chain.

For most Americans, Labor Day means a three-day weekend and the unofficial end of summer.

But the holiday, first observed in 1882, was originally intended to be a tribute to the working man and woman.

In honor of this celebration of labor, a number of Butler County residents were asked about their first jobs and whether their first experience drawing a paycheck influenced their careers.

One of those asked, Jenna Rhodaberger of Butler, bereavement coordinator and medical social worker for the Lutheran Senior Life VNA, part of the VNA Hospice, started out running a video game arcade.

That was one of two jobs she had in high school, said the Butler High and Slippery Rock University graduate.

Rhodaberger said, “I worked at Aladdin’s Castle in Clearview Mall, that arcade that used to be there.”

“I was 16 years old and saw there was a Cougar for sale at the mall,” she said.

Her parents told her she would have to get a job to have the money to buy a car like that.

“So I walked up and down the mall, and Aladdin’s Castle hired me,” Rhodaberger said.

“I had to fix the machines if something broke. I ran the ticket counter,” she said, adding that once she incorrectly loaded the money counter so that it spewed bills “like something out of ‘The Lucy Show.’”

“I never bought the car,” she said. “I ended up with the money, and I thought it was silly to spend that much money on one car.”

She said she also worked as a dance and gymnastics teacher.

“Both of my parents (David and Sherri Wood of Butler) were self employed, so from a very young age, I hit the ground running,” she said.

But she doesn’t think the year she spent at Aladdin’s Castle influenced her future career.

“I can’t say that I think it did. I was fortunate that I never worked in fast food or retail,” she said.

But it was her gymnastics teaching job that helped set her on her career path.

“The mother of a girl I was giving private gymnastics lessons to, her family owned a nursing home chain,” said Rhodaberger. “She knew I was getting a degree in social work and she said, ‘We need a social worker.’”

“So, as a 19-year-old social worker I started at the Chicora Medical Center. That groomed me to do what I do today.”

Rhodaberger said of her present job, “I provide all the grief support to anyone who’s had a loved one die within our hospice services. Our bereavement center is a community center. We also provide free grief support to anyone who has suffered a loss outside the hospice.

“That could be someone who had a loved one commit suicide or die in a car accident,” she said.