40 years ago today

Forty years ago today, on November 10, 1969 I began work as Assistant Manager for C&P Telephone Company in Fairfax, VA.

I had just completed my military service in the Navy and considered myself lucky to land a decent white-collar job at a time when thousands of other veterans were competing for scarce private-sector jobs during an economic recession.

Here I am in Service Representative training, which lasted 12 weeks. There was lots for me to learn about a very complicated business.

The "new guy" always gets assignments like coordinating the United Givers Fund ("UGF" - now United Way) fund drive. Here I am receiving an award from Alan Sharett, General Manager of the Northern Virginia area, for achieving 100% participation in the 1970 UGF drive.

A few years and lots more hair later, I arranged for the donation of an old coin collector's truck to the Fairfax Jaycees, of which I was a Director. The Jaycees in turn donated the truck to Central Fairfax Services, which provided transportation to mentally disabled adults.

I was put in charge of the Service Order Bureau, which used machines like this to cut paper tape to transmit the details of telephone service orders. These orders were transmitted over wireline facilities to central offices, traffic intercept and comptrollers for setting up billing records. I successfully campaigned for more modern equipment (including Touchtone telephones if you can believe it) when we moved the office to a new location in 1971.