A Place for all the Old Timers to Get Together

 

The Pioneer's Club

The Pioneer’s Club Newsletter

Volume 8, Issue  11

December 2013

I think I’ll pat myself on the Back

December Events

       Dec 7st —Pearl Harbor Day

       Dec 21st—First Day of Winter 

       Dec 23rd—Emperor’s birthday (Japan)

       Dec 25rd-Christmas Day

       Dec 26th-Kawanzaa

       Jan 1st—New Year’s Day

Obituary Page

December Birthdays

Lifespan of Rochester

There were only four members lost this past month.

 

 

Kilroy was Here

I received this email just before Thanksgiving. It just points out that each and every one of us is responsible for our retirement benefits. I firmly think that all our benefits will be going the same way Kodak’s have gone. Keep your eyes open and pass anything you notice along to me so that I can share with all the rest of us. Example below.

 

Tom,

Thanks for pointing out the problems with RGE/Iberdrola not notifying retirees of their 2014 Benefits.  I did not recieve a darn thing in the mail or via email from RGE.  I did sign up for Health Insurance through Aon Hewitt and verified that the FSA was in place for 2014, and it was funded at $2300, down from $2600 in 2013.  I also learned that the YBR website, or the phone number in your message below, take to you another division of Aon Hewitt.  All roads apparently lead to Aon Hewitt, to which Iberdrola has outsourced all of our Benefits Administration.  A different section of Aon Hewitt deals with Health Ins and FSA, another with other benefits such as life insurance.  They provided no good answer as to why no formal notifications were sent out, explaining what needed to be done, who would do it, and by when.  This is especially alarming (and upsetting) since we all know of people who have been "thrown off the bus" regarding Health Ins and never allowed to reboard.  Where's the Attorney General on that one?

 

By phoning my "navigator" and spending close to an hour on the phone with them, including a mandatory call back portion, I am now comfortable that I am covered for 2014.  Shouldn't be this complicated.  Makes me appreciate the old HR Dept!

 

Gilda Ricci - October 31, 2013, Greece, NY. My records indicate that Gilda worked in the Mailing Department,

 

Michael A. McMahon - November 2, 2013, Victor, NY. Mike worked in Appliance sales.

 

LaVern Morrison - November 11, 2013, Walworth, NY. Vern worked in the Electric T&D Department. He died of complications after a tractor accident.

 

Steven Woznick -November 25, 2013, East Rochester, NY at age 94.He retired from Russell Station. He was a WWII veteran (a Pearl Harbor Survivor) and also a Korean War Vet.

 

A remembrance of Steve from TenBroeckFXR1986@aol.com:

 

       Steve retired from Russell Station sometime in the early eighties. He worked in the boiler gang. Quite a guy, proud of the fact that nobody could out-work him, even to his last day on the job. They broke the mold after they were done making guys like Steve. His sound advice, and skilled hands were never really replaced. The "Woz" was sorely missed the day he left. God bless, God rest

With the Holidays and all Julie and I did not make contact this month.

 

But I got on their web Site and decieded that it was up to you to get any information you wanted  from their web site at https://www.lifespan-roch.org/information-request.htm

 

This is where you can gain information on what they offer.

 

Good Luck,

Tom

He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in Washington, DC- back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it.

For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known- but everybody seemed to get into it.

So who was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering aprize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts , had evidence of his identity.

'Kilroy' was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy . His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the che ck, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.

Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. It’s message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo . To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived. over Europe and the South Pacific.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.

And The Tradition Continues...

EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden's House!!!

 

While I don’t believe it, it makes a good story

 

Tom