Monday, October 24, 2011

THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU

This story closes the loop in my working career.
                                      
                                    THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU


Starting in 1989, SRP began to reduce its workforce, offering many long-term employees a generous severance package. I accepted the offer and retired in July 1989 at age 62.  This happy turn of events softened the bitterness I had harbored after I had been removed from my managerial position some three years earlier by an individual with whom I could simply not work or get along on any level.
In 1991 SRP initiated another round of lay-offs with far less attractive severance benefits. The list of those shown the door included the man who had removed me from my job as Manager, Supply Department back in 1986. Friends told me the news shocked him. He had not seen this coming.
Did I gloat?  Maybe, just a little. It reminded me of the axiom, “What goes around, comes around.”
Later I heard he found a job with a major utility in Florida. When Hurricane Andrew struck, I heard he housed many victims in a power plant building under his control. He certainly knew how to deal with natural catastrophes with personal courage. He and another SRP employee once rescued some employees stuck at Roosevelt Dam, sailing a small boat on Canyon Lake to reach them in a howling rainstorm.
In 1994, as I stood in line at the SRP Credit Union someone called out, “Hey, Joe.” There stood my former boss, smiling at me, extending his hand as if we were dear pals. His sudden appearance stunned me. Inexplicably, without thinking, I shook his hand. No words came from my mouth as my gaze turned away from him. We never met again.
   At a company reunion, a former HR employee told me, “Joe, did you know that he really liked you and always wanted you to succeed?”  If he did, he certainly had an odd way of encouraging me.
Then, in 2010, my former secretary phoned me to ask if I had read the obituary page. “No. Who died?”
“Your ex-boss, age seventy, in Scottsdale, Arizona.”
No words can express the range of emotions I felt on hearing that stunning news.
His obituary stated he left a widow and two sons, and had lived here for the past seven years. I offered a prayer for them all.
  

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