b"What kind of calls would you get in the middle of the night?I don't think you have enough tape in this machine to hear about them all. It had to do with entrapments. When youhave the five boroughs in New York, working 24/7, even City Hall, you have elevators in City Hall and elevators are goingup and down. If you have an entrapment, you're getting a phone call. You have to reach out to your members who are notworking as our hours were seven to six o'clock. Court houses are open, there's people stuck. It was tough. You were responsible for a lot of things. And just think about blackouts, just think about hurricanes, just think about Sandy. Justthink about earthquakes and you had to check motor rooms, water coming into motor rooms. You had 9/11. I was off thatday, getting a new HVA system put in my house and I couldn't get into the City quick enough. I felt terrible, I reported toStaten Island. I was able to get to downtown Manhattan two days later. We had a commissioner for DCAS-Department ofCitywide Administrative Services, Mr. John Castellaneta. He asked my group to provide services at 1 Centre Street whichbecame the main hub of providing services to the City. Basically, it became depot for supplies, for Trade Center and PierI think it was 63, 64. So we provided services through vehicles and delivered supplies to the workers at the sites. So that'swhat we did. 1 Centre Street was the depot. They came from all over the country to deliver supplies to the City of NewYork, all the states. It was a tremendous endeavor. My Commissioner, John Castellaneta, I have nothing but respect forthat man. He's a tremendous man. We worked hand in hand with that man to provided services for the City. People werevery willing to help. And, it was not only our group, many groups were wonderful with outpouring of love at this time.You had a lot of extra responsibilities at this crisis time. And were you compensated when you retired?Oh, my salary was quite high when I retired. It depended on my extra services that I provided as an inspector and24/7 responses. It was close to 100,000 dollars a year. The good news is that our union, Local 237 after 30 years of hardfighting and good representation, was finally able to prevail and get us the prevailing rate of an outside Local and paritywith the prevailing rate. Even as my retirement was happening, they still invited me to be on the negotiating committeeeven though I was on leave from the City. I am very appreciative of that. After a 30-year fight to obtain that, I was still onthe negotiating committee and we obtained it. We finally got the prevailing rate. So, in 2012 we prevailed after 30-something years.That was a great accomplishment.It was great. It was a real victory. When Mark Messier won the Stanley Cup for the New York Rangers and they heldup the sign, I felt that way. They say: Now I can die in peace. That's a famous thing for the New York Rangers and that'sthe way I felt when that finally happened. It was fantastic. The membership benefited from it, and I did benefit from italso. They had to go back to retroactive pay, partial. It was great.And I hope the guys that I left are happy about it.So, what does it mean to you to be a union member now that you've retired?Well, we have a saying here, you might be retired, but you're not retired from the union. And I believe that. Beingthat I was so active, I'll be quite honest with you, I felt like the feet were cut out from under me. Retirement removed mefrom the excitement of it all. It was very hard for me to transition from being so active on a daily basis to not being active.And it wasn't only with the union stuff, it was also with the job stuff. I used to love to go to work, take care of business andnow I don't have work to go to. After 39 years of activity, it all comes to an end. It's good, but it's a big change to get used109 "