b"Once you were working for the City when you were with the Teamsters, was there someone on the job, acoworker or a supervisor who encouraged you in your job? A mentor?Yes, absolutely. I had a couple of Nursing Director mentors, when I was working at the former Cumberland Hospital.It's no longer a hospital, it's like a clinic. They encouraged me to go back to school while my children were young. Fortunately, I had a very helpful partner, my husband, who took care of the kids while I went to school at night. I did thesame for him when he went back to school. And yeah, they really encouraged me to go back to school. They knew I wasbored being a clerical worker.I wasn't really excited about my job. Did you take Civil Service examinations in order to get promotions on your job?The first exam was the one that I took to get back into the City, that was the Office Aide exam.After that, it was experience and education. I would just apply and they evaluated it. Now, for the health education position, they felt thatbecause I didn't have health education coursework in school, I didn't qualify, but I appealed [laughs] They wanted experience in domestic violence and different things. I said, Listen, as a caseworker, I used to have to work with parentsin the pediatric clinic, some of whom were being abused. I had to talk to women that came to the emergency room. Also,I was covering OBGYN [Obstetrics and Gynecology Department]. I just explained all that. They also wanted experience inhow to put together health education materials. I said, Well, my artistic background falls into that. They gave me thelowest possible grade to get in. So that was it. I got interviewed and everything and I got selected.Do you have any other family members who work for the City?My husband worked for HRA. He was an accountant and management auditor. My brother was a postal worker. I have a cousin, but she's upstate. She works for the Duchess County Health Department.Did you attend Union meetings? Not really. They did have meetings here for the health educators. I would encourage my colleagues when I worked inschool health to attend. In the school health program, we had one health educator per Borough, which was really a bitmuch. But I would encourage them to come to the meetings. The meetings ended up addressing issues that the healtheducators that worked with STDs had. They really had a rough time. So, I would encourage my colleagues to come tothose meetings if they could. I was covering Brooklyn West and part of Staten Island. Then I had a colleague covering Manhattan, someone covering the Bronx, someone covering Queens. Did you attend any other union meetings? Rallies or events? Not really. After I left the school health program, I worked for the Bureau of Immunization, which is how I got mypromotion. They actually sent us to Orlando, Florida, for a health education conference there. That actually wasn't union-sponsored, but that was exciting. It was to encourage us as professionals, to advance in the field of health education. Tell me about a typical day or week on the job, when you were in health education and you were in Local 237. I really enjoyed working in school health. I was able to mold that position. One of the first things I did was to put 186 "