Bobby Tomsik, the guy on the far right in the orange shirt, is doing what I've always seen him do: smiling, laughing, and he's probably busting someone's balls. He's one of the best men I've ever worked with. My favorite story of working with him was on a job where he was the foreman, and I was there for a few days to help with a hot job. We had some rooftop work to do on a large building. Bobby instructed me to stay in the electrical room, and that he'd go on the roof. Unbeknown to me, while he was on the roof, and I was in the warm, dry electrical room, it started to rain. When he came down, he was soaking wet! Every guy in the place gave me shit for making the old man go up on the roof while I stayed inside, nice and dry. Finally, since we had to get that part of the job done that day, we both went up top. We brought an umbrella....we wore rain suits....it didn't matter. The rain wasn't coming down, it was coming sideways! We got the job done, laughing and joking the entire time. Bobby Tomsik is one class act, and I hope I've learned a few things from him.
Next to him is Mike Pilange. Though you can't tell by the picture, Mike CAN actually smile when he wants to. I only worked for Mike for a few months, and there was another level of management between us, so I'm sorry Mike, I don't have any cool stories about you.
In the middle is Dave Stretar. Dave was my first partner down at the tandem mill. Our first job together was under the mill, in a maze of electrical, hydraulic, and water pipes. Everything was covered in either grease, or oil. We had to weld a bracket onto the structure to support a conduit we were running. After I got in there, got covered with oil, wiped all the grease off the steel I could and welded the bracket on, I asked Dave, "This was a test, wasn't it? A test to see if I'd climb in here and do the job or not, right?" He just smiled a big shit-eating grin and nodded. Well, Dave, it took some digging, but I finally found it, in a hall closet at my parents' house:
Remember that day?
Next guy in is Brian Stadtler. He's one of my favorite guys to work for. He was always laid back, in control, never yelled or got angry. He was always smiling and laughing. He had a knack for being able to needle you when you made a mistake, which was good-natured, but let you know you needed to fix it. When the job needed to get done, he expected you to bust your ass to get it done, which happened often for the customer he took care of. After that he'd take care of you.
The fifth retiree is Nick Sivik. I've worked with Nicky time and time again over the years. He's one of those solid electricians who could do anything, whether it was terminate a panel, like he's doing here, or run banks of 4" pipe. He's a true mechanic.
The local is going to miss these guys, and their centuries of combined experience. Good luck to you all.
Oh, I need to mention Turtle too! He retired from Local 38 a few weeks ago, but I haven't gotten any pictures from Bruce yet. Some people call him Earl Coe, but I don't know any of them.
I got my Turtle pic. He's the guy on the left, while his best friend, Lenny, is on the right. Over the years, I can't count the times I've heard Turtle say "Me and Lenny....." It used to be a running joke to see how early in the day it would be before we heard a story from Turtle about him and Lenny. Rick and I would laugh and say "We have a 'Lenny'!"
