The motto of Cornelia and James Pappas, owners of Allen Cleaners on Bedford Park Boulevard is simple. “Either you do it right, or you don’t do it at all,” they say. Allen Cleaners celebrated its 60th anniversary more than a month ago, evidence that the Pappases have done it — and continue to do it — very right.

Cornelia Pappas’ father started Allen Cleaners in 1948. She has been working there for 40 years, and her husband, James, for 35. Allen Cleaners offers tailoring services, garment preservation, leather and suede work, box storage, dry cleaning, a wash and fold service, and a self-serve laundromat.

“We’re not an average dry cleaner,” James Pappas says. “We’re a cleaner’s cleaner. Cleaners come to us to get their clothes cleaned.”

In addition to offering cleaning services, the Pappases are very active in the community. Allen Cleaners annually hosts Coats for Kids, a citywide coat drive. They do outreach at women’s shelters, help with clothing drives at Montefiore Medical Center, and sponsor Little League teams. In 2001, the Bedford Mosholu Community Association honored James Pappas with the Jack Kelly Memorial Award, a “Recognition of Exceptional Service to Our Community.”

“It’s our responsibility, I think, to help people out,” Cornelia Pappas says.

The cleaners know their customers well. Many who have moved from the neighborhood still come back regularly. Cornelia Pappas says that, every two weeks, a woman now living in Delaware stops in.

“They have the policy that they’ll clean an American flag for free,” says Barbara Stronczer, an Allen devotee and president of the Bedford Mosholu Community Association. “They’re always the first to try out a new [charity] program. We’re very fortunate to have them in the neighborhood.”

James Pappas tells a story that illustrates the cleaners’ significance to its customers, wherever they happen to end up. “One day, I received a letter in the mail from San Quentin, a prison in California,” he explains. “A [young man] was being released, and he was looking forward to getting his clean clothes back from Allen Cleaners. His lawyer contacted us to have him ship his clothes to him. He even had his ticket numbers.”

The Pappases shipped the former Bronx resident’s clothes to California. They still have the man’s letter in a file, written on yellow lined paper, dated April 1994.

As a long-standing business, Allen Cleaners has seen a lot of changes. When it started 60 years ago, Allen charged $2 to clean a suit. Now the cost is $10.75. Hangers now cost nearly 10 cents apiece. The price for insuring garments has gone up so much that they no longer store furs, not wanting to charge customers for insurance.

But the most amazing kind of change they’ve seen in 60 years, Cornelia Pappas says, is people coming in first as infants, and then as customers, grown up and married.

“That in itself is an amazing story,” she says. “To see that happen, you get to know the families, their problems, their happiness and their joys.”

Ed. note: Allen Cleaners is located at 387 Bedford Park Blvd. E. The phone number is (718) 584-9270.