But when he retired in June, after 55 years with the company, he had worked there longer than anyone else in U.S. Sugar's 70-year history.

And he had done it without missing a single day of work.

"It's nothing I set out to do," said Quintyne, 76. "I just loved my job and continued to work."

When his kidneys began to fail in May, and he had to undergo dialysis twice a week, he said he decided to retire so a younger person could "put in a full day's work."

Quintyne came to the United States from Barbados under a U.S. government contract for foreign agricultural laborers. After a couple of months spent hoeing weeds in sugar-cane fields and working on the sweet-potato crop, he became a ranch hand at U.S. Sugar's Sugarland Ranch. He worked with beef cattle until 1987, when the Clewiston-based company left the cattle business.

Since then, he's been part of the building services department, where his duties included tending the grounds and delivering mail.

Although none of his four brothers and two sisters followed him to the United States, Quintyne sent his mother money from every paycheck for years and put two of his brothers through college. He lives with his wife, Oneda, in the Clewiston house he bought in 1968.

Quintyne received several retirement gifts, including a hand-painted cane-cutting machete illustrated with a Glades scene and mounted on a stand. He also was given a certificate good for $500 of gasoline.

"They don't make people like Rouse anymore," said Judy Sanchez, U.S. Sugar's director of corporate communications.