Arizona Republic
Career bartender Rhonda Benston Showman remembers the first time she set foot in a bar. When she was a young girl in South Dakota, she went with her father to the neighborhood watering hole.
“It was dark and it had red leather booths and it had that kind of stale smell of beer and smoke,” she said. “I had a cherry coke and I’m telling you, I thought I had died and gone to heaven, I loved it.”
After that, Benston Showman knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She s now in her 46th year bartending at the Renaissance Phoenix Downtown Hotel.