I Have Retired!
[By Allen Brougham] . . .
After 30 years, seven months and eight days of railroading, I have retired.
My last day of duty was Sunday, December 10, 2000. At the time of my retirement, I was the second-shift operator at HO Tower in Hancock, West Virginia, doing what I had enjoyed through most of my career, that of an interlocking tower operator. It has been fun.
My last day on the railroad was a peaceful one... But more on that later.
I suppose at a time such as this, it is excusable that I should devote the feature space of an entire issue to the career I have just completed, and to share thoughts germane thereto - all within the context (now) of having been there, done that! Some of this may be repetitive to other thoughts I have shared within this publication along the way, but this, too, may be excused in order that those thoughts can appear in their proper perspective. So here goes!
I cannot remember a time that I did not have a fascination for railroads. My earliest exposure to trains was during the second World War, a time when trains were a necessity for almost any travel outside of the immediate area. This included visits to my grandmother in Silver Spring, Maryland, on the B&O. There was also frequent exposure to trains at the stations in Baltimore when meeting relatives. Then there was one spring, at the age of four, when we lived in Norfolk, Virginia, where my father, a Navy officer, was stationed. During the day my mother would take me places to occupy my time - sometimes to ride the ferry across to Portsmouth and back, and sometimes to watch the switch engines working near the docks. On one such occasion an engineer asked my mother if she might let me accompany him in the locomotive while they switched the yard. Wow! What a thrill THAT was! At the age of four... My very first cab ride! (But for the life of me, I do not remember it. Oh well!)
But something I do remember, at the age of five, was a cross-country journey with my mother to Seattle, Washington, to meet up with my father, then returning from the War. I can remember sitting in the observation car going into the mountains (somewhere in the West) with a pusher engine (steam) shoving on the rear. On the return trip, with my father along, we left from San Francisco. Very clearly I can remember a particular spot, while descending the mountains into Denver, where the train made a sharp turn to the left into an S-curve - and I can identify that very same spot today!
Later that year my family moved from Baltimore to Monkton, in northern Baltimore County, the place being selected for its convenience to the Parkton Local commuter train (of the Pennsylvania Railroad) by which my father could commute to his then-civilian job in Baltimore. I loved those trains - both steam and diesel - and their whistles and associated train sounds along the Gunpowder Valley offered a symphony unmatched by the finest orchestra. Monkton was (and still is) a quaint, quiet village, we living just over the hill and within walking distance to the center of activity, which included a general store, a post office, and the train station. I got numerous chances to ride the Parkton Local, too, early on by trips into town with my parents, and later by myself to Cockeysville where I attended fourth through sixth grades.
It was during this period, at the age of ten, that my mother took me to San Francisco to once again meet up with my father, now back in the Navy, and we took the Capitol Limited to Chicago and the San Francisco Overland from there to destination. Returning (my father, too), we rode the then-new-with-dome-cars California Zephyr (in a drawing room of a Pennsy sleeper), I identifying the very same spot I had seen as a five-year-old upon descending the grade toward Denver.
From 1957 until 1959, I commuted regularly on the train to Baltimore for my junior and senior years of high school. That school (Boys' Latin) was then situated across Brevard Street from B&O's Mount Royal Station. The Howard Street Tunnel actually ran beneath a corner of the school, and directly beneath the school's paved yard, the rumbling of trains being clearly felt (much to my delight) frequently throughout each day. Often was the time after school that I would stand on the sidewalk along Brevard Street just above the east (geographically north) portal of the tunnel watching trains passing beneath. The students had a rule to not go into Mount Royal Station, except to catch a train, but often I'd disobey this rule. At times I actually would catch a train and ride it to Camden Station (the fare was 26 cents), a rather speedy way to get to the other end of town.
I loved the B&O, but it was the Pennsy that heralded my dreams of some day joining, and it was to it that I applied for a job, in 1963, upon finishing my four-year enlistment in the Navy. "I don't have a thing right now," said the personnel officer at Penn Station. So I took work elsewhere, not within the railroad industry, which lasted seven and one-half years. Still, I kept my interest in trains, riding them at every opportunity, sometimes at great distance.
It was during this period, in the spring of 1964, that I saw the inside of an interlocking tower for the first time. That opportunity came about as part of a hiking adventure on the towpath of the C&O Canal in Western Maryland. I and two others had taken the B&O to Paw Paw, West Virginia, and then walked eastward from there on the towpath along the Maryland side of the river to the next place where we could catch another train on the West Virginia side for our return trip home. That evening, when we got to that place, we learned that the train we were catching was four hours late. With the station closed and only a waiting shelter available (and it getting rather cold), the friendly operator at the nearby interlocking tower allowed us to wait for the train in his office.
That tower was... HO Tower, Hancock, West Virginia.
In 1970, I decided to change jobs, and I looked to the B&O. It was Jim Smith, manager of contracts for the B&O (and C&O), who rode the same commuter bus as I into town, who suggested the position of tower operator. He had been told by the division superintendent that there was a need for operators, but due to the length of the training period, only those specifically applying for the position (without prompting from a help-wanted ad) would be accepted. Thoughts raced through my mind, whetting my appetite to the happy visions (along with the recollection of my earlier visit to HO Tower) of working in my own private office, getting paid to watch trains...
I began as a student operator on May 2, 1970, posting (training) on the sidewire job on the second floor of Camden Station. It wasn't exactly what I had expected. The "sidewire" operator was not in a tower at all. Instead, he served a clerk's position in the division train dispatchers' office, the only likeness to a tower position being that the operator was responsible for copying train orders, messages and clearance forms. But these were handed directly to the conductors of passenger trains that originated at the station, not hooped up in the traditional manner as was done in the towers.
Toward the end of my initial day on the railroad, I happened by the nighttime terminal trainmaster, whose office was just up the cavernous hall from the dispatchers' office. A rather whimsical fellow, he said to me: "Before you do anything else, quit! You'll never regret it!" I replied by asking his reason for being a railroader, if (as he implied) it made so much sense not to be one. To this he said that he was too dumb to be anything else... Ha! Anyway, I knew he was only kidding, but I did at least ponder the wisdom of his advice for the particular moment. After all, I had wanted to be a tower operator, not a clerk. But in retrospect, the sidewire job was a good primer toward learning the ways of the railroad. I decided to stick around.
I began working on my own on June 26, 1970, thereby establishing my seniority and a slot on the operators' extra list. For the next several weeks I worked vacancies of the sidewire job. At one point I got a chance to work my first "outside" job, an as-needed position to assist contractors working along the right of way by telling them when trains would be expected. In this instance, a sewer line was being buried next to the tracks along the Old Main Line near Union Dam Tunnel.
Then, in late July, I got my first taste of life in the towers...
HB Tower, just outside of Camden Station, where the upper and lower levels joined each other, next to Camden Yard, was to be my first of many towers. "Heaven on earth" is what I eventually referred to the place, and I worked there for about a month (including a week or so of posting time), before being reassigned back to the sidewire job. Extra operators served wherever they were needed, and the third-shift sidewire job had become vacant. If I had wanted to, I could have bid on that position, thereby claiming it as my own. But I didn't want it. I wanted to be in the towers. No tower positions were available, except for temporary vacancies, and there were a number of other extra operators who were qualified to fill them. So, I being one of only a few extra operators qualified to work sidewire, and nobody interested in bidding its third-shift position, I got assigned to work it on a regular basis. This continued for several months.
By the spring of the following year (1971), others became qualified on the sidewire position, and I, in turn, began to reexperience life in the towers. In addition to duty at HB, I was sent to the towers at Brooklyn (BX), Carroll (CX), Halethorpe (HX), and North Avenue, posting and then working each one for several days, or a week, and then to another, etc. I also saw duty at a number of outside jobs, also as a bridgetender at the Curtis Creek Drawbridge. They even sent me to some of the agencies (both freight and passenger), again for duty for a day or two, or for up to several weeks, before getting put back in the towers or to sidewire.
One of my most interesting (and yukky!) assignments was that of an outside operator accompanying a survey crew inside the Howard Street Tunnel. It was a fun place to visit, but I certainly wouldn't want to stay there very long.
There were seven towers in the Baltimore Terminal when I began with the railroad. One of them (Riverside) closed before I got a chance to work there. My final qualification before leaving the extra list was Bay View (BA), which I only served for maybe three or four days.
I had been on the extra list for just shy of five years when I was finally awarded my first regular position. It was second-shift at Brooklyn (BX). And such a thrill it was to report for duty there that first day, to a job I actually "owned." I clearly remember Coleman Terry, the daylight man (and office manager), show me my locker as I came in the door. Wow! My very own locker. Such is one of the perks I had not enjoyed in five years of nomadic existence on the extra list.
I had enjoyed the extra list and the variety of assignments it offered. But in the first few hours on my new job, I came to value knowing, in advance, where I would be working from day to day, and the luxury to make plans based upon an established workweek, not one dictated by the whims of random vacancies.
Still, I was looking for something else. In all due respect to the legacy of BX Tower, it was not my ideal assignment. Sure, it had (for me) great days off (Friday and Saturday), and it was a tower. But it had something missing... Trains. On average, there would be no more than about six moves in an eight-hour shift. Moreover, sequestered where it was at the end of a two-track subdivision with a mere three tracks leading into the yard, BX offered but a fraction of the activity enjoyed by the other towers within Baltimore Terminal. In short, I wanted to be where the action was! (Picky, picky!)
So, it was without hesitation that I submitted a preferred assignment request, known as a step-up, onto the second-shift job at Halethorpe (HX). The incumbent on the Halethorpe job was an extra train dispatcher, and with he being pulled frequently from his tower job - sometimes for weeks at a time - I decided that I would rather work those vacancies than the job I had. Moreover, both jobs had the same relief days, so no matter which job I would be working at any one time, I could still make my plans interchangeably.
Indeed, in the five years of working on the extra list, I had grown very fond of Halethorpe. In fact, I came to enjoy working there more than I did at HB, notwithstanding my description of HB as "heaven on earth." I was determined to make HX my railroad home, and I did.
Halethorpe, unlike Brooklyn, was uniquely busy. With four main tracks to attend to at the tower itself, plus a remote control model board for the switches in the area of West Baltimore and Mount Winans, the place was at times a veritable beehive of activity. It was not uncommon to have three or four things happening at once.
By this time it had become more than evident that towers carried with them a fascination shared by railfans. Indeed, HX Tower had started to become a sort of a clubhouse to some who lived nearby, and visitors from all over the world (literally) stopped by for visits. It was never a secret that operating rules frowned upon such visitations in towers, but management rarely did much to discourage them. Anyway, I considered myself as a forum to "bridge the gap," so to speak, between railroader and railfan. To this end, more than once I counseled younger visitors about safe practices, something that may have saved themselves from possible harm later in their pursuit of the hobby.
In the due course of time, my second-shift position at HX Tower became permanent. And except for a couple of instances when I got displaced (each time moving to the relief position at the same location), I remained on the second-shift job at HX Tower for ten years. I loved that place!
But not to be outdone, since I liked being busy, in the late 1970's I tried a stint at train dispatching. I took an extra dispatcher's slot, to be assigned in seniority order for vacancies as needed. But before I could do that, I had to get qualified. This meant learning the characteristics of the railroad, etc., providing me with a number of cab rides throughout the territory involved to see things first hand. Fun? Well, I guess it was, in retrospect, but I had to concentrate on the task at hand, in all hours of the day or night, with long layovers, all on my own time. Accordingly, I never thought of it as much of a fun-based experience. Then I had to post on the position, again on my own time, until I, the chief dispatcher, the territory's trainmaster, and the rules examiner felt that I could handle the duties. There were three dispatching positions at the time - two territory "sheet" jobs, and a chief's job. I qualified and worked all of the positions involved, in each instance being pulled from my operator's job at Halethorpe to do so, and had a rewarding experience in the process. But after a year and nine months of being an extra train dispatcher, I relinquished the position and returned to Halethorpe full time. I have no regrets.
From a standpoint of job security, sticking it out as a train dispatcher would have been the way to go. While there were still six towers open in the Baltimore Terminal, all were slated to be closed within the next several years. Still, I wanted to be a tower operator, not a train dispatcher, and I gambled that returning to the towers full time would not be the kiss of death.
Working in the towers was a railfan's dream. I, too, was a railfan, but it took a small cadre of my local buddies (who had adopted HX Tower as their clubhouse) to appreciate even more the hobby. I went railfanning with them at times. On one occasion, while in Cumberland, we had learned that several trains were about to operate in different directions from or to both ends of the yard at the same time. We had their respective engine numbers, but herein we were faced with a dilemma. We did not know the engines' paint schemes. There were at that time some six different schemes within the then-Chessie System roster, and we lacked the scheme information that would have greatly assisted us in a decision-making process over which of the trains to set up for. Thus was born the idea of writing this information into notebooks, with input coming from me, in the form of a mostly-daily listing of engines and current schemes I would see while on duty at the tower. The listings, along with other items of interest, were carbon-copied onto note sheets and distributed to the other members of the group. They, in turn, added this information to their notebooks for use in future railfanning assignments. The name we gave to my engine report effort was... The Bull Sheet.
On August 10, 1982, it was announced that all towers in the Baltimore Terminal were going to be closed. It was then anticipated that all could be closed within a year (but it took longer).
Such as it was from March 1984 until July 1985 that five of the six Baltimore Terminal towers did get closed. The only one left was Halethorpe. I had survived. I still held second-shift. But not for long. On October 1, 1985, it closed, too.
As heart-wrenching as it was to see my railroad home of the past ten years go by the wayside, I was faced with making a vital decision, one which had implications for the balance of my career. Should I stay in the Baltimore area and take a clerk's job, or should I stay with the towers I truly loved, albeit at much greater distance from home? I chose the latter.
Alexandria Junction Tower (JD) near Hyattsville, Maryland, added about 55 miles to my daily commute (round-trip), but this, I felt, was a small price to pay for the honor of staying in the towers. JD, too, would close eventually, but the one-to-two-year timeframe estimated by the signal department seemed an eternity at the time. So it was to JD Tower that I went, displacing onto the second-shift position.
I never regretted taking the job. It was a wonderful place. It was located at the junction of the Washington (now Capital) Subdivision with the Alexandria Subdivision (now Alexandria Extension) in Prince George's County, just outside of Washington. And, in time, the tower became a clubhouse for the many fans of the area.
The Bull Sheet, the mostly-daily rendering of locomotives and paint schemes, had been discontinued when HX Tower closed. One year later, in October 1986, in order to fill that void, I reintroduced the concept using a new and expanded style as a newsletter. It was a five-page typewritten production in essentially the same format as what survives to this day. Its front page contained current news; the following pages were devoted to reminiscences from the Bull Sheets of the HX era and reproductions of the tower's last train sheet and final train order. A distribution list was published with the names of 20 recipients.
It was only intended as a commemorative issue, and this may very well have been the Bull Sheet's final contribution to the annals of railfanning. But some things happened in the early days of that issue's month that sowed the seeds for continued tenure. First, I recalled the enjoyment in producing the sheets of the HX-era and the enjoyment in producing that commemorative issue. Then I received a "letter to the editor," which I knew would be ripe for inclusion into a presumptive November issue. The letter was from Bob Uhland, a former B&O operator (now deceased), which offered great encouragement. In it he wrote: "My compliments for the fine job you did in editing a special edition of the Bull Sheet. It was nice to reflect back on some very special times had with friends in a very unique setting of fast disappearing Americana. Truly, the end of an era. I will forever treasure my eleven years with the B&O and WM and hold valuable indeed the friends made there. No amount of photos can compete with the memories. If only one could put emotions and good feelings, that which the memories evoke, on film, we would have the perfect communications medium." He went on to reminisce upon the Ma and Pa Railroad, near where he grew up, of the B&O at Camden and Mount Royal stations, of B&O E8 locomotives, and of reflections on life in the towers. His letter was printed on the second page of the November 1986 issue, a four-page endeavor distributed to 18 readers. Other features that issue included a list of Seaboard units sighted locally, and a miscellaneous page of tidbits. Thus the Bull Sheet had been reborn, and it has continued ever since.
The one-to-two-year timeframe toward the closing of JD Tower, as had been told to me in 1985, came and went. JD was still alive and well.
In 1990, five years following the closing of HX Tower, I came up with an idea to return to the place, with all my friends, for a day of nostalgia. The division manager agreed to the plan, and on September 29 of that year, two days prior to the actual fifth-year anniversary of its closing, it was reopened for an event known as "Remembrance Day." The second-floor office portion of the building (still used by the signal department as a maintainer's headquarters) was put to use for the showing of videos, the parking spots became a picnic area, and an RDC Budd car (borrowed from MARC), with tables, was spotted on the track in front of the tower for use in socializing. Approximately 90 people - including employees, retired employees, friends and railfans - came to the tower for 12 hours of pure fun. As day turned into night, an outdoor slide show emerged in a corner of the parking lot. It was an event long to be remembered, and I consider Remembrance Day to be the fondest moment of my career.
It was about that time that plans were finalized for the closing of JD Tower. It would be part of a $13-million project, substantially funded by the state and federal government, to improve the signaling system on behalf of MARC commuter service on the Capital and Metropolitan subdivisions. One other tower - QN in Washington - would also close, but JD would get the axe first. Summer of 1991 was the estimated time for completion, but it took longer.
As the date for the closing became imminent, I asked the assistant superintendent if he might schedule the precise closing of the tower to occur on my shift. He agreed. Such as it was on March 5, 1992, that the tower closed.
There was a closing ceremony. About 20 people assembled at the tower; active participants including myself, a drummer, a clergyman, and two former operators. Following a benediction and a reading of the final entry from the tower's logbook, a "recessional" was rendered for the symbolic departure of operators from the past who were there "in spirit." The tower's horn was then sounded for the final time, the curtains on the door were drawn together, the lights were turned out, and the door was locked. Thus ended the 98-year life of JD Tower. I still get tears to my eyes when I watch the video of that ceremony.
I had long before decided that I would stay in the towers. if at all possible, and I set my sights to one in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, to wit: Miller. But for rather subtle reasons, I decided to make a "stop along the way," by taking the second-shift position at QN Tower in Washington. I wasn't too excited about going to QN - which itself was slated to be closed in only a few months - but Steve Owens, the incumbent on the job, talked me into it. It seems he actually wanted to be displaced. Steve wanted to transfer to a position in Jacksonville, Florida (which he would have done eventually, anyway), but if I were to displace him then, he could effect his move that much sooner. "Please bump me, Allen, PLEASE!" he said. So, I did.
QN Tower, built in 1906, next to Rhode Island Avenue, within sight of the U.S. Capitol, had once been an extremely busy place. At one time it controlled moves to and from Eckington Yard, just across from the tower - but that yard had been torn up a decade earlier. By the time I took the position, only two main tracks, and the lead into Union Station, were still a part of the immediate plant, plus the operator controlled remotely the switches at Georgetown Junction, just west of Silver Spring.
The tower's neighborhood had retrogressed into one of decay, and I can accurately describe the area as somewhat of a "war zone." The windows were screened with hardware cloth, and its outside door had a bar on the inside to be inserted for protection. Gunshots could be heard nearby on several occasions. Moreover, all of the operators who regularly drove their cars to the tower had them vandalized. I drove my car to the tower sparingly, without incident, but usually I parked outside of town and then took the Metro red line to work (the station was just to the rear of the tower). My commuting time from home was an hour and a half.
If friends wanted to visit, I advised that they should call me in advance. I did not want to leave the door unlocked, and (the door being downstairs) I might not even hear them knock. QN Tower did become a "clubhouse" at times, but much less so than my two previous duty stations.
My last day at QN Tower was September 26, 1992, and it closed two days later.
Then it was to Miller Tower. Following a week of vacation, I displaced onto the second-shift position on October 7.
Upon arrival at the place, I instinctively locked my car. "Wait a minute," said I, to myself. "This is Miller... I don't have to lock my car anymore!" And then I unlocked it, and I never locked my car at work again. By comparison to the "war zone" I had last served, Miller was sequestered within the splendor of the Potomac River Valley, peaceful, and in company with nature. No finer place had I ever been on a full-time basis on the railroad; I knew I had found a tower I could truly call my "home."
Never mind that Miller involved a commute of two hours - about 215 miles round-trip from Baltimore - this, again, was well worth the pleasure that resulted - doing what I had come to love in the span of over 22 years of railroading. In fact, I might even have questioned the wisdom of not coming to this wonderful place sooner, except for the long commute. I even told folks that I would plan on staying at Miller until I was 90. Ha! Perhaps I would have, but for the fact that the place would close long before that. Anyway, with no immediate plans that the place be closed any time soon, I was more than ready to stay for whatever its duration.
Many of my railfan friends from previous stations did drop in for a visit, and we even had picnics on the grounds next to the river on a number of occasions - nine, in fact... until... the company put a stop to them! Oh well! Still, we were having such fun with the picnics that we took the idea elsewhere, becoming a nomadic group, staging events at trackside parks, etc., maintaining the name Cherry Run Railroad Club.
For all of its virtues, there were a couple of hardships at Miller Tower. One was due to its isolation and the difficulty in getting to the place in ice and snow. Those roller coaster hills leading to the place presented challenges, and on several occasions I had to reach the place on a freight train from Martinsburg, once being stranded at Miller for all of 30 hours before I could get back out. The other "hardship" was one of logistics: Miller also served as a callers' office for the clerical personnel in the area. Yes, somebody had to do it, and we were the ones stuck with it. The anguish and stress associated with filling vacancies would sometimes multiply by having to make several reassignments (to fit people based upon their qualification) in order to fill just a single vacancy. Payday weekends typically presented the greatest challenge. And the positions had to be staffed, no matter what was involved in doing so. If there was any consolation, the calling duties likely prevented me from getting displaced from the job; most folks would avoid having to make calls as though they were avoiding a cruise on the Titanic!
Probably my happiest remembrance of Miller Tower is one which lives on... Rex, my faithful and loving hound dog, strayed to the tower in a snowstorm in February 1994. He stuck around and decided to adopt me as his own. After a unsuccessful attempt to find his original owner, I took him home with me, where he has lived happily ever since.
Miller Tower held its own - as did the other towers in the area - until plans were approved in late 1999 that it and three others would be closed. First one to go would be... Miller.
The timing, for me, was fortuitous. In 2000, I would achieve both 30 years of railroad service and 60 years of age, both vital milestones toward taking retirement. I decided that I would remain at Miller until its very end, and then go someplace else if I could enjoy it, and remain there until there was no place left to go that I would enjoy, and then I would probably retire.
Miller Tower closed on September 24, 2000. I had requested to be the one to close the place, and my request was honored. The closing ceremony was similar to the one staged at JD Tower in 1992, with a couple of things added. Twenty-five people attended, including the same drummer (Mario Hendricks) who had performed at the JD ceremony. In addition, live guitar music was provided. CSXT engineer Tom Kraemer, whose love for Miller Tower was probably equal to my own, graciously accepted my invitation to perform in three segments of the program, culminating with a rendition of Romanza's Spanish Ballad for the symbolic recessional to honor the operators from the past departing in spirit. Thus concluded the life of Miller Tower and its legacy extending back 100 years of faithful service to the railroad. May it rest in peace.
My next, and last, duty station was HO Tower at Hancock, West Virginia. My first day on the job was October 5. In a sense, this is where it had all begun. As noted earlier, HO was the interlocking tower I had visited in 1964, the very first time I had seen one on the inside. I remembered that first visit, with whoever was serving there at the time, accommodating the three of us with refuge from the cold while we awaited our tardy train, he throwing those antique mechanical levers that now I would be throwing.
No doubt I would have remained at Hancock, maybe even until the age of 90, if it stayed open, never minding the opportunity to retire at any time after reaching the age of 60 (and drawing a pension that would about equal what I would be making by working, after deducting the cost of commuting), as you can't always put a price tag on having fun. But the harsh realities of the seniority system were staring me in the face. I had acquired the position through seniority when Miller closed, but two months later the tower at West Cumbo closed as well. This set in motion a ripple effect of continued displacements, and I found myself being displaced from Hancock.
Once again, the timing was incredible. It all happened just a week before my 60th birthday. Well, I could have made another displacement, somewhere, and possibly been very happy with whatever I was able to take, or possibly not. But being that I had reached retirement age, and not really needing to work any longer, I was faced with the reality that to take somebody else's job, and having that person take yet another's job, etc., with the person having the bottom seniority then getting furloughed, I felt that it would be somewhat selfish of me to take a position that I did not need (and maybe not even enjoy) at the expense of someone else who really needed to work... (Well, you get the picture.)
My last day was a quiet one. It was a Sunday (actually, not my regular day to work, but that's another story). I took some notes, knowing this would probably be my last day on the railroad. As my final minutes of duty unfolded, I took refuge next to the tower's model board (it not being busy at the desk). I remembered my first visit to the tower in 1964. I fondly recalled the many happy times spent through the years and how thankful I was that I had the good fortune to serve in such a happy function. The tune "Bless This House" (a hymn we had sung at the closing ceremony at Miller Tower) played in my head, over and over. And I had thoughts of serving here once again - as a volunteer - if and when the B&O Museum acquires the building for display after Hancock's turn to be closed.
At 11 o'clock, Doris Smith came in. She was there to post the third-shift position. Then Debbie Mentzer arrived. She would be my relief. The three of us made transfer, then talked for a while, a few moments of reminiscing, until the time came for me to leave. With hugs from Debbie and Doris, I left. It was 11:41 P.M.
Five days later, the day before my 60th birthday, I officially tendered my resignation due to retirement.
It has been fun.
.