Hoye Perry, who worked at the Palm Beach Kennel Club since 1937, died Friday. He was 89.

Mr. Perry worked at the kennel club for 72 years -- that's 504 dog-years -- and was regarded as the face of the kennel club, taking bets from patrons as a mutuel clerk most of his final years.

For the first 60 of those years, he worked mostly weekend and night shifts because he also held a day job as a paint consultant, with Reed Auto Supply and with Palm Beach Consolidated in West Palm Beach. In the late 1990s he decided to work just at the kennel club, his wife of 63 years, Mary, said.

"He always had a smile on his face," Mary said. He had been away ill from the kennel club since March 29, she said.

Mr. Perry, of Palm Springs, began working at Palm Beach Kennel Club about five years after the track opened. His first job was as a leadout -- walking dogs out to the start of races. He earned $3 a night. He eventually went to work in the "calculating room," where all the odds and payoffs were done with pen and paper. The tote board wasn’t electric until the late 1940s.

"There were people inside the board who would manually put up the odds on wooden placards as they receved them by phone from the Mutuel Department. There were no T.V. replays, no poker rooms and no simulcasting," said Mr. Perry, in a kennel club press release two years ago, noting his 70th year there.

As a mutuel clerk, he enjoyed for decades watching the regulars who came to his window No. 321 when they won, and commiserated with them when they lost.

"I love the action, I love seeing people win and most of all, I love the people I work with. They are like my second family," he said in the same interview.

He is survived by his wife, Mary; a daughter Vanna Mitrov, and a son, Brent Perry, of West Palm Beach, and five grandsons.

Mr. Perry will be cremated. A book signing tribute, followed by a short service, will be from 2:30-4:30 p.m. Tuesday at I.J. Morris Funeral Directors, 5411 Okeechobee Blvd. Donations can be made to Hospice of Palm Beach County.