Labors of Love?
Labor Day signifies many things: the unofficial end of summer, the beginning of a new school year, the stretch run of baseball's pennant races.
But the holiday's original emphasis was on, well, labor.
After all, the first Labor Day on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City was celebrated as a “workingmen's holiday.”
For many, becoming a working man or woman may have set the course for future careers.
For example, Heather Hertel, assistant professor of painting in the Slippery Rock University Art Department, credits her first job after college graduation with helping her decide on her profession.“My first real job I was a waitress at a retirement home, the Sarah Reed Retirement Home in Erie, before I could drive,” Hertel said. “In that job, I learned people skills which does influence my current job.”“My first job out of college, I was the assistant rowing coach at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla., and that actually highly influenced my current position,” she said.“I knew I wanted to work with college students, and I had to recruit my entire team.”“It helped me reach out to talk to prospective students for Slippery Rock University,” Hertel said. “It was at that job as assistant rowing coach that I knew this was the age group I wanted to work with. I knew I was going to follow my dream to be an art professor.”
Capt. Steve Ignatz, commander of Pennsylvania State Police Troop D, also credits his first job with shaping his career.“My first job was working in a gas station when I was 14 years old. I pumped gas — something people don't do anymore — changed tires at the old full-service gas station where I worked.”“I made a lot of friends, the boss was just a fantastic guy,” Ignatz said. “I just really enjoyed it. I interacted with a lot of people, and it was a fun job. I think about it every day.”“I did it for four years until I was 18. I went to school and also got another part-time job that took me away from the gas station,” he said.“When I was working at the gas station, policemen would come in. They were always nice guys and made me think this was something I could do,” he said.
Dave Hilliard, director of the Rose E. Schneider Family YMCA in Cranberry Township for 12 years, also remembers his first job with fondness.“I loved it,” said Hilliard. “ I was a busboy at Bonello's Italian Restaurant where the current Rapp's Bicycle Shop is (on New Castle Road).“I enjoyed working with people and customer service, so I knew I wanted to do something along those lines as a career,” said Hilliard.“I was 16 years old when I got that job. I remember it because I got to drive the car to the job,” he added.
Roxann Booser, director of Butler's Maridon Museum, said her first job helped instill confidence.“My first real job, outside of baby-sitting, was in high school. I think I was in 11th grade. I was paid by a family to go and visit. I think on a weekly basis, I would go and read to a woman in a nursing home whose family wasn't nearby,” said Booser.“It was an eye-opener to walk into a senior home as a young high school girl. I liked the job,” she said, “just learning to walk into a new place and establish a relationship with a stranger and the staff. You have to go in and meet them for the first time and her and see if she is happy with you, It was real intimidating.”“I remember her name and everything. She was probably 90. I think it was a very good experience for me,” said the Mercer County native who graduated from Erie's Gannon University with a degree in business administration.
Cherie Chenot-Rose, a Butler native and co-founder of the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary in Belize, said, “My first real job, outside of baby-sitting, was when I was 25 and I loved it.”She said she worked at the Barrier Island Environmental Education Sanctuary on Seabrook Island, S.C., in 1990 after graduating from Slippery Rock University.“At that time, Barrier Island was an outdoor educational facility where school groups would come for a week,” said Chenot-Rose.“It was located right on the beach on Seabrook Island, a private, gated island about 35 minutes from downtown Charleston. There were about 10 of us that worked and lived there. We had private rooms with shared baths and a shared kitchen/common room. Very nice accommodations, and the lodging was free as part of our wages. Can't even remember what we made,” Chenot-Rose said“We worked all night and day, but it was more like play than work. Classes we taught during the day included: “Skinks” (my favorite class to teach) where we took out captive snakes, turtles, skinks, lizards, and caiman and taught the kids. Then we would go outside in the bush and try to catch wild ones for identification and re-release. Yes, I even caught copperheads and cottonmouths by hand!” she added.Other classes included a trust-exercise obstacle course, a class where they caught crabs — “talked all about them and their biology and then cooked them up and ate them,” she said — and long beach and salt marsh walks.“Then, at night we had hikes to look at stars and walk through the woods via the moonlight to observe nocturnal wildlife and bioluminescence,” Chenot-Rose said.
The Rev. James Swanson has been pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church, 230 E. Jefferson St., for 10 years.“Next year will mark 30 years in the ministry, first at Sandy Lake Presbyterian Church in Mercer County, then I went to Mount Jackson Presbyterian Church near New Castle in Lawrence County,” Swanson said.“The first paying job was at a dry cleaners in Paxton, Ill. I made a dollar an hour,” Swanson said. “I was 17.”“Up until then I had baled a lot of hay,” he said on his father's corn, soybean and dairy farm.“Harold Parson was my first boss and he was very patient, extremely patient,” he said. “To this day when I hang my shirts or anything it's facing forward with the hangar hook looped to the left. Parson said you did it that way because, in case of fire, we can grab whole armfuls, pull them off the rack and be out the door.”Swanson doesn't credit his dry cleaning experience with influencing his choice of career.“Actually in high school I had wanted to be a minister and took a detour in college because of my interest in psychology and came back around to that after my time in Penn State, This was after about eight years,” he said.
Zelienople Mayor Thomas Oliverio said his first job reflected his philosophy of public service.“My first official paycheck was probably in the military. I was in the Coast Guard from 1959 to 1963. I was stationed two years in Hawaii and then Brooklyn. I went from Hawaii to an ice breaker,” he said.Oliverio said, “I care about people, I knew the Coast Guard was more like a rescue type of thing. I don't want to be out there in a uniform in a ditch someplace. I served to help people and if felt like the Coast Guard was a branch for me.”“I was pretty fortunate that it was peacetime. Right before I got out we had the Cuba crisis,” he said.
Mike Roenigk, president of the Big Butler Fair board, said, “I still have the same job I started out with. I'm in my family business, the Roenigk school bus company. ”“I started in 1980 after I graduated from Freeport High School,” he said.“I started by running excavating equipment,” Roenigk said. “And now I just started running our school bus garage in Hampton.”“All my brothers and sisters (there are seven of us) have a school bus license. You drove a school bus or did whatever needed done,” he said.The business was started in 1945 by Roenigk's parents, William and Jeanne, he said, and today the company has 900 school buses and vans, employ nearly 1,000 people and provides transportation for 26 school districts.“I always did enjoy my job, It was always different, One day you would be driving a bus and one day you were feeding cattle. My father had a big farm next to the fairground,” he said.Not everyone has fond memories of their first job.
Donna Korczyk has been a practicing psychologist since 1995 and been working in Cranberry Township for 10.She grew up in Brookline area of Pittsburgh.“I was a short-order cook in an Italian restaurant right before I started at Duquesne (University) as an undergraduate,” she said. “I worked in the kitchen making salads and burning garlic bread.”She worked there from May until September and didn't enjoy it.“It was hot and it was difficult work. You were on your feet the whole time, and the kitchen wasn't air-conditioned, and it was summer,” Korczyk said. “But the people were fun. I enjoyed the people I worked with. They were mostly young people like myself, so we joked around and had fun.”When asked if her job shaped her career choice, Korczyk said, “No, I don't think it had any influence on what I did later on. I can't say I had any revelations while I was doing that.”There was, however, one lasting impression, she added.“When I'm in a restaurant it makes me appreciate the servers and the cooks. I like to think it makes me sensitive to the fact that those people work hard,” she said.
And Luanne Eisler, recently retired genealogist at the Butler Public Library after 18 years, found disillusionment along with a paycheck.“My first real job was as a soda jerk at Rea & Derricks Drug Store in Milton, Pa.,” Eisler said.“I worked behind the soda fountain, and probably nobody in today's generation knows what a soda jerk is. That was back in the day when every drugstore had a soda fountain,” Eisler said.“We made ice cream sodas, sundaes, hamburgers, ham sandwiches. It was just sandwiches and soups and that sort of thing,” she said. “Our claim to fame was real banana splits and, of course, the ice cream sodas.“I worked there about three or four months in my senior year in high school,” Eisler said. “I didn't like the job. It was a fantasy that didn't come true like I expected it to.”“When I was a little girl and we would go shopping in town, it was always a treat to go to the drugstore,” she said.“So I had this idea if you worked there you would have an unlimited supply of free sodas. By the time I was a senior in high school, I knew better. But I did learn how to make a really good banana split,” she said.Asked if the job influenced her, Eisler said, “Yes, I made sure that I went to college.”
