b"So, you had family who worked for the public, working for municipalities or government agencies.Yeah, I think my older brother was the first. I think I might have been the second.Once you started working for the City, was there someone on the job, maybe a coworker or a supervisor whoencouraged you in your job? A mentor?It's curious that you should use the word mentor. When I started in Housing, they send you down for a couple ofweeks of orientation. Part of that is being sent out to the field to work with somebody who is doing the job. I went and I met this guy by the name of Rick Schmitz. He was a very smart guy. He told me that every development pretty muchruns the same way. He told me I should find someone like him to help myself. He offered his services if I needed helpwith something; give him a call on how to do this, how to do that, or whatever. He said to just keep in touch with him.And I did that and through the years I called upon him every once in a while, to find out what to do when certain situations come up. How do you handle this? How do you handle that? And he gave me pretty good advice. He was one person I kept in touch with quite often, including at the union, later on.Was your job location the same throughout your career? Or did you move around to different job sites and locations?I was at Mitchell Houses for about four years. An exam came up for assistant manager, and there was another part ofthe Housing Authority dealing with leased housing, or what they call Section 8. I didn't know anything about that job orwhat it entailed, so I transferred down to Central Office. I was working with the people in leased housing and the peoplewho were giving out the housing certificates. I met a lot of people down there, a lot of housing assistants, there was a bigstaff down there. At the Projects Mitchell there was four housing assistants. When I got down there, maybe 50 peopleon the floor. So, I met a lot of people who I kept in touch with through the years. It was interesting because most went onto higher jobs. We competed against each other, but in sort of a friendly way. We studied together, we set up studygroups to take exams. Once people got promoted, we still kept in touch. I had a network of a whole bunch of people thatwere moving on to influential higher jobs. So, I moved from being a housing assistant to an Assistant Manager whenI passed the exam 1982.Were you ever a shop steward or a grievance representative, chapter chair?No, but I did go to the meetings. As a housing assistant I went to the meetings and as an assistant manager I went tothe meetings. A lot of the people that I had met at Central Office would also go to these meetings, so we would see eachother and make it a social event as well. You learned what was going on and they were interested in moving ahead and I was interested too.Were you kind of a rank-and-file leader?At that point, no, but I was encouraged to participate more with the union. My friend Jack Jolly, who I started withthe very first day, and I kept in touch all those years, was involved with the union. He became a chapter chairman whenhe was a housing assistant.There was a guy named Kramer, Mike Kramer, who was involved in unions and union politicsand what not and he was another friend of mine. Eventually, I went in to become a manager in 1985, I was an assistantmanager for three years. The assistant manager job was the hard one to get.92 "