Indian Head, MD – When Gina Rhoades-Carpenter first came to Indian Head from Verona, Italy in 1967, her first reaction was not what you would call an overwhelming endorsement.

“There was nothing here then,” she recalled. “I asked my husband, ‘Where have you brought me, the desert?’

“I was from the city,” Rhoades-Carpenter explained. “It was bad. I cried and cried. I cried my head off. I was lonesome, I had no family here.”

The seamstress eventually adapted to her new home, however, and Tuesday, July 5 was presented the town seal by Indian Head Mayor Brandon Paulin as Gina’s Alterations has been in business within the town limits for more than three decades.

“I started in 1983,” she explained, saying she has served the town for 33 years.

She married her first husband, Darwin Rhoades in Italy. Rhoades, in the Army, was actually born at the Indian Head naval base. The couple came to Charles County in 1967. He died in 1984 and she remarried in 1986. Her second husband died two years ago.

“Now, it is just me,” she said.

Rhoades-Carpenter got her start in sewing when the owner of Posey’s Restaurant on Route 210—where her sister-in-law worked as a waitress, wanted to know if she could make draperies for his restaurant.

“I told him, ‘I don’t have a sewing machine,’ ” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’ve got one,’ and that’s how I got started.”

She worked at several dry cleaning establishments in the town before buying her own sewing machine and setting up shop in her home.

Her business can do any type of alterations to suits, trousers, dresses and what-not.
“I don’t do draperies anymore,” she said.

She explained that even though she knows one day she will have to retire, her customers don’t want her to leave.

“They’re used to me,” she pointed out. “I love the military people. They’re so young. They’re just like my children to me.

“I love doing this,” Rhoades-Carpenter admitted. “I love it. I love what I’m doing.”

Another person handles her dry cleaning business, she said. “I just do alterations.”

She likes the new mayor, she said, and wishes him well in his efforts to revitalize the town.

“He’s very young,” she said. “I think he tries very hard, but he’s going to have a hard time. We’ve got to get more interest in the town. At one time, the town had two cleaners, two grocery stores and so much more. The town was doing well. Now everyone does their shopping somewhere else. People do not shop in town. Even the military shop at the commissary. We have to bring businesses back to town and the people need to support them.”

Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com