A new dad, a new mom, and a young guy from Southwest Philly picked up brooms in 1991. They never put them down.

Sherron Dudley was a young woman when she picked up her broom, a new mom trying to get on her feet. She hasn’t gotten off them since.

The 59-year-old West Philly grandmother has given a lifetime to sweeping Philly streets. Of the 68 sidewalk sweepers in the unmistakable teal hats and coats assigned daily to the 233-block Center City District, only Dudley and two others have been sweeping the streets since the program’s inaugural year in 1991.

Dudley, a petite woman who smiles widely and with her eyes, joined the program on its very first day.

“We’re the soldiers of this,” she said, talking about her fellow lifers — Tom Fitzmaurice and Ed Vinlaum — while sweeping near 15th and Sansom Streets on a recent morning.

The sidewalk-sweeping soldiers, who clean our cigarette butts, candy wrappers, soda caps, and much, much worse through rain and shine and wind, received a tribute last month.

In its annual state of the Center City report, released by officials April 29 during a breakfast reception at the Bellevue Hotel, the business advocacy and services group detailed a downtown on the mend from COVID-19 with a booming residential population, development, and a high office occupancy rate.

Tucked into the tome of promising data, on page 12, is a photo of Dudley, her worn, robin’s-egg blue hat pulled low over a broad smile as she poses in front of City Hall. The mention served as a thank you for her 35 years sweeping Philly sidewalks.

“I proudly serve as a sidewalk sweeper,” Dudley wrote in an inscription. “I take great pride.”

Prema Gupta, CEO and president of the Center City District, even gave Dudley a shout-out from the podium.

“Sherron Dudley is one of our city’s quiet, unheralded heroes,” she said.

While the officials talked inside, the sweepers swept outside.

Leaning on her lobby broom and portable dustbin, inscribed with her first initial and last name in neat marker, like a walking stick, Dudley stopped to explain how things go for sweepers. For cleaning purposes, the district is broken into quadrants, halved by Broad Street. Dudley has swept them all.

North Broad. South Broad. Filbert Street, from the cigarette-strewn sidewalks outside the Criminal Justice Center to the bustling byways outside the Reading Terminal Market. 13th Street, with all its back alleys. The splendor of Rittenhouse.

“I know every nook and cranny,” she said with a laugh, sweeping some butts up across from the Sofitel Hotel.

On her very first route, she swept the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a place she rarely visited as a child. As a sweeper, she marveled at museums she had never entered or heard of, but now took pride in tidying the outside of. She has worked her current route — a swath west of Broad, along Sansom Street — for about 13 years. The shop owners, residents, and students she has watched grow there have a name for her: “The G.O.A.T.”

Greatest of all time. Dudley laughed at her initial confusion over the reverential sobriquet.

“At first, I could tell they thought that I took offense,” she said. “Because they were, like, ‘No, no, no, that’s a compliment.’”

Back on day one, all those years ago, Dudley never thought she would last.

“The city was trashy,” she said of 1991 Philadelphia.

At the time, she didn’t know Chestnut from Walnut, she said, laughing. Growing up, her father, an ironworker, was strict and did not let his four daughters venture downtown. But Dudley liked the stability her new job afforded her. Sweeping helped pay for a house, and helped put the kids through school.

“I was staying on my own two feet,” she said.

So, she swept. Eight hours a day. Five days a week. For 35 years. She slipped and broke her ankle on her way to work, and had two surgeries. The people on her route were so concerned, they quizzed the former district president about her recovery, said her manager, Karl Tyler. When she returned, they feted her gifts and meals.

Tyler, director of operations for sidewalk cleaning, has also been with the district since day one. He said the sweepers are called inside only during the toughest of storms.

“We’ve all watched each other grow up on the job,” he said of Dudley and the other veteran sweepers. “They are the hardest workers. They do their job not only for the pay, but to inspire others.”

Once, after complimenting a woman, whom she knew from her route, on her posh Aldo boots, the woman soon returned with a gift card, so Dudley could get a pair.

“I don’t go out much, so I only wear them when I wear my good stuff,” Dudley said, sweeping and describing the boots at home in her closet. “Then, I put them back in the box.”

Like Dudley, Fitzmaurice, 64, of Port Richmond, has witnessed the city change around him as he swept.

Time blurs with the trash, he said. Years pass, and all of a sudden you peek up from your broom and see a new city around you.

“There were a lot more pizza places,” he said of the early days, when he was a young dad with a broom, hoping for solid and steady work. “There wasn’t as many coffee shops. There were record shops and movie theaters downtown. And arcades even.”

A sturdy, thick-shouldered man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut who lives with his wife in his lifelong home on Belgrade Street, Fitzmaurice laughs warmly and speaks in a soft voice that sounds as if it is transmitted through a phonograph.

His route these days takes him along Sixth and Seventh Streets, between Market and Chestnut.

He was on the streets when the world stopped for COVID in 2020.

“It was like, ‘Wow, it’s too clean,’” he said of the deserted downtown.

People care, he said. Because they see he cares.

“People stop and tell me how clean it is,” he said, adding that he has had visitors from as far away as Seattle and Alaska compliment his work. “A lot of people tell me, ‘Thanks a lot.’”

Vinlaum, 66, who lived in Southwest Philly before moving to Delaware County, sweeps Jewelers Row. On his route, he allows himself to stop to admire the tidiness before the trash returns.

“It looks good,” he said, sweeping up the row.

After 35 years, here are some of the things a street sweeper knows.

Stay moving. Keep on your route. If you see something, pick it up. Rain and ice are cruel but wind is a sidewalk sweeper’s mortal enemy. The work is not easy and some people don’t last a day. The broom and the dustbin grow heavier over time. Shoulders stoop. Gaits slow. Backs and legs and thighs burn. Most people want to help, especially those experiencing homelessness, who will move their blankets and boxes, and collect trash with the sweepers. The tides of trash can become depleting. But the pride remains.

Dudley knows this too: A sidewalk sweeper has all the time in the world to think. On her route — in between waves to shop owners, and gushing hellos to her favorite dogs, and sweeping up the hard-to-reach corners — she likes to think of her retirement, which she plans to take in about seven years. She thinks sometimes about going to live in her own apartment, near where daughter lives by a creek in Georgia, with two of her grandchildren.

Those days in the future, when she can put down her broom and get off her feet, she won’t miss the sweeping, she said.

“I’ll miss the people.”