b"Did you ever get feedback from your customers, the inmates, what people liked or didn't like?Yes, I did. I'd always get: Why do you have to make this all the time? We don't like this that much. I said: Listen,I'm not the boss here, you have problems with that, put it in writing and give it to my boss over there, over there in the office, but I can't do that. I can't make changes like that. If I made personal meals for my inmate workers in the kitchen,then I had freedom to switch up. One thing I know, inmates love fried chicken. Id tell my workers: You help me, I'll lookout for you, we gonna have fried chicken tomorrow and salad. They love salad. But fried chicken, oh, yeah. Hepbourn,we gonna be there, what you need done? Yeah, I'm there for you, you ain't got to dip that vat, I'll do it for you, go start thefried chicken for us. That's how I got along with Correction. Even with the officers, I made food, I know how to cook, I could make things that everybody likes. I used a wicked recipe for chicken lo mein. I made enough so everybody ate, not only my staff. They would say: Hepbourn made this, right? They love your lo mein, when you gonna make that.I enjoyed working for the Correction Department.Sometimes you learn from them. One day a guy said: Hepbourn, I want to make something.I said alright.He wanted ketchup, mustard, and grape jelly. [I said] What do you want that for?He said: I'm making barbecuesauce. And I said, Alright. You know, I'm a cook. It wasn't bad [laughs]. Wasn't bad.Is there anything else that you'd like to tell us about your job and your time in the union?I enjoyed my time on the job. I'm enjoying my time more in the union, being I'm a long-time union man. My pastexperience helped me get along well working with the City. I think that was the foundation that brought me through.Being a union man all my life, I could see things that the union would stand for and what they didn't stand for.Like I saidabout that wildcat strike, no you don't do that, that's the last thing you do in a City job. If you're contracted, you're subjectto being fired. The majority of those cooks who started that nonsense didn't get fired, but they laid them off for X amountof days. They got mad at me for that: Well, what's wrong with Hepbourn? He was No, he wasn't, Hepbourn came towork. Like I said, my co-workers, not the inmates were a problem.Tell us about your early life.I was born in New York City in Mount Sinai Hospital not too far from here. I grew up in New York City on 117th Streetright here in Manhattan. I moved to the Bronx in 1966, and I've been in the Bronx ever since. I had four sisters, onepassed. Everybody's in New York. I was the only boy of four sisters.Were you spoiled?They say I was; I don't think I was. They still get mad at me about that. My oldest sister, she never lets me forget, I changed your diaper, she tells me.I'm 60 years old, I'm hardly anybody's baby. I was the youngest. She's like: Youwere my first baby. I say: No, no, come on. To this day, she would tell you the story: I changed your diaper.So, you said, you went to the high school at Food Maritime High School.Graduated from Food Maritime. I got my cooking training. My father cooked. I used to watch my father cook all thetime. He wasn't a professional cook, he just cooked. Cooking became my hobby; it was something I liked to do. So, as I got older, somebody suggested: Why don't you go to school for cooking? It's something that you like to do. And that's183 "