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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 11 – MOSCOW, MANHATTAN AND THE FBI
Readers of these essays may recall a story I wrote about Howard Pappert, Dave Dietz and myself setting out to visit some countries behind what Winston Churchill called “The Iron Curtain.” Visiting communist countries in the 1970’s and 1980’s was not a pleasant task for those of us at AT&T who had the responsibility for…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 6 – L’AIGLON AND VOGA E VA | TWO GREAT ITALIAN ARTISTS
In the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament, there are two biblical injunctions or commands to “make a joyful noise.” If you are skilled at reading Roman numerals, you can look them up yourself to make sure that I know what I am talking about. One comes from Psalms, Chapter LXVI, verse one and…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 5 – “SORER THAN A BOILED OWL”
In Part 4 of this New York series, I dealt with a Personnel Vice President of AT&T who earned my complete disrespect and anger over a period of five years. Now that we are free of Jack Marsh, we can return to some men who had my respect and admiration. In this section of the…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 3 – A MAN NAMED BEVERLY
In my long experience, I have only heard of two male Beverly’s. Where I come from, Beverly was usually a female name. The other person, aside from the subject of this essay, was a baritone who seems to have devoted his life to Billy Graham. His name is George Beverly Shea. I am not a…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 2 – THE MAN WITH A COMB
In Part I of this series of stories about people I knew after coming to New York City, I told you about my friend Bob Creasey who never saw a steak that he could resist. You may recall that lots of those nearly raw pieces of steer meat were consumed at the old time saloon…
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK PART 1 – A CASE OF CHOLESTROL POISONING
In a recent essay, I grumbled that it had been my misfortune to write about politicians for some time. I observed that writing about politicians is a sordid business. I believe that now is the time to write about some people I liked and respected. In this new phase of my life as an essayist,…
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HARD BOILED EGGS
This is a morality story about people I knew when I was President of the Federation of Long Lines Telephone Workers (Local #5) in St. Louis. Among other things, my job was to present grievances to the Company on behalf of the workers. At its peak, there were perhaps 800 to 1000 members of Local…
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MISTAKEN IDENTITIES
This is a seldom told story of mistaken identities, a nervous decorator, a Polish waitress, a Florida bon vivant and telling the time of day. That is quite of bit of ground to cover but with the help of my long time friend, Charlie Miller, I think we do it with ease. During the late…
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LILA
AT&T Long Lines had its headquarters at 32 Sixth Avenue in New York City. At its peak, that building housed about 10,000 employees with telephone operators accounting for about 80% of that total. Because the operators and the telephone craftsmen worked around the clock, the Company provided two cafeterias and one dining room. The dining…
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FOUR GOOD GUYS AND A VERY BAD GUY
When I sat down to write this essay, my intentions were to deal with four good guys. John Rosenburg, Dick Lewin and Emory Wilbur were all my colleagues when I was the Labor Relations Manager for AT&T Long Lines from 1955 until 1963. Lowell Wingert, the President of Long Lines, came later. Unfortunately, my efforts…