"My first title was office girl," Zerbe recalled the other day. "Then it was telephone operator, gopher, you name it. In those days you had to work your way up to be a secretary."

In nearly a half century of office work, Zerbe rose to become executive secretary to the president and chairman of one of Honolulu's biggest companies, Pacific Resources Inc. Eventually, she became a legislative lobbyist for PRI, the forerunner of today's Tesoro Corp.

Thousands of other office professionals across Hawai'i are eager to follow similar upward career paths, industry officials say.

So if you're planning on doing something nice for the professional in your office life today — the holiday formerly known as Secretaries' Day — skip the flowers and the lunch and offer a little training instead.

"Better yet, buy the lunch, flowers and training, too," said Bernice Fujiwara, president of the Hawai'i Chapter of the International Association of Administrative Professionals, the organization that more than 50 years ago launched the first efforts to improve the working skills and conditions of professional secretaries.

When the group started Professional Secretaries Day in 1952, the goal was to recognize secretaries for their contributions and to promote them in their career. While the day's name has changed — it's now known as Administrative Professionals Day — its aims remain the same, Fujiwara said.

"In the olden days, the job was mostly clerical, involving correspondence, transcribing, typing and filing," she said. "Today, it's a lot more. We do projects, reports, departmental budgets, Excel, Powerpoint presentations, research. Everything that comes through the office, we take care of."

All that for what one state survey shows is an average secretary's salary somewhere between $27,000 and $34,000 in the private sector. Average executive secretary salaries can reach $45,000, according to the 2000 survey by the Hawai'i Employers Council.

Zerbe said her first salary was $185 a month, after she graduated from Sacred Hearts Academy and Honolulu Business College and went to work for Pacific Chemical and Fertilizer, which supplied most of the chemicals needed by O'ahu's sugar and pineapple plantations.

The work didn't include any of the modern conveniences in today's office, said Zerbe, who joined the newly formed Hawai'i chapter of what was then called the Professional Secretaries Association right after it was organized in 1956.

"There was no such thing as a correction," she said." "There were no computers or word processors. We only had electric typewriters, and things had to be letter perfect. Either you did it right or you did it again."

The rewards, though, went beyond money.

"Each day was exciting," Zerbe said. "We just worked till the job was done, no matter how long it took. It was exciting but tough. We cared about the work and were loyal to the company and felt like we were doing things that mattered."

Eventually after almost 25 years with PRI, the company's president, James Gary, suggested that Zerbe move out of the executive offices and join the government affairs office, which did legislative work.

While professional assistants tend to be more mobile these days, they still care vitally about their work and want to learn new skills and take on more responsibilities, Fujiwara said.

"People still look for those opportunities to move up," said Zerbe, who retired several years ago and leads an active life volunteering for several efforts today. "A lot depends on timing, but you have to look for training and other possibilities, too."

The Hawai'i IAAP chapter, which has 200 members, meets at least once a month and always includes a professional speaker or educational workshop on the agenda. The group is also planning a big weekend seminar on May 14 that will bring in a nationally known motivational speaker and offer other kinds of training.

"The whole Professionals Day has become so commercialized," Fujiwara said. "It's nice to be recognized, but there are other ways to show it. Tell the boss you'd like to come to this for the day instead."

Correction: Bernice Fujiwara's last name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.