Although there’s reportedly no traditional gift one gives for a 28-year anniversary, the kind that comes to our mind is bouquets of flowers as tokens of gratitude to Gerry Patnesky for her shop, Alphabet Soup.

For that length of time, the downtown merchant has helped countless scores of people find just the right gift or clothing items for other people or even themselves.

Patnesky has seen her store through the good times and the bad — flooding and an economic downturn — but still she carried on. We think her persistence has been a model to other current businessmen and women, and Patnesky also will be the standard by which new merchants can look up to when they experience their own troubles.

The downtown merchant retires this week, and we join with other people to wish her well, hopeful she will continue to find more meaningful ways to enjoy her life and enrich others.