Unemployed?

 

Mom/Margie remembers: He worked there when I was in elementary school and we lived in Murray. At at the first of the year, in the lower grades, the teacher had each student stand and tell what their father did for a living. I would say that my Dad worked at the "Unemployment Office." They probably thought, "poor kid, her Dad is out of work!"

While Grandma Rex did have to rely on unemployment for a time (as many did in the Depression days) as the newspaper article above shows, he did actually WORK for the government in the unemployment office. Here are a couple of excerpts from his history. It was December 1940 and the young couple, with a baby girl (Nelva), had moved back to Mt. Pleasant, parking their little trailer house at Rex's parent's home.

I started drawing my unemployment checks and did some trapping of muskrats. After exhausting my unemployment benefits and still no job, I decided to go to Salt Lake and look for work. I had become acquainted with the Morrison-Merrill Lumber Co (while working with the construction company). They had once told me that if I ever needed a favor to let them know. So I went to see them and informed them that I needed a job. They asked how soon I could start and I told them at once. I went to work that day and was assigned to work in the storage yard unloading the lumber from the railroad cars. A short time later, I was told to spend my time loading the customer’s trucks. Four months later I received a letter offering me a job with the Dept. of Employment Security as a Junior Clerk. It paid $80.00 a month, which was $20.00 less than I was getting. I talked it over with the lumber co., and they suggested since it was more in line with the work I was interested in, to take it and they would hold my job for me if I wasn’t satisfied. I started working for the Dept. of Employment Security on August 26, 1941. My first assignment was in the Fiscal Department stockroom as the mail boy. In a few months, I was transferred to the Claim Section. There I moved up to Intermediate Claims Examiner and on to Senior Claims Examiner. The war, by that time, had reduced the unemployment to a low number. So they asked if any of us knew how to use a typewriter, and I told them I could. They then transferred me to the Statistical Unit as a relief operator on a key punch machine.

Then World War II was in full swing, and Grandpa Rex was drafted into the army. He moved his family back to Mount Pleasant so Zada could be near the inlaws ... another baby girl (Margie) had been added to the family, and a little boy (Merrill) was on the way. After fulfilling his service for about two years, Rex was able to come home.

On January 2, 1946, I went to Salt Lake City and back to work at my old job. At the time of my retirement, which was the age of 60, I had the classification of Computer Operation Supervisor at the salary of approximately $21,000.00 a year. I was credited with thirty-four years and eleven months of service, getting credit for seven months of unused sick leave. I was able to retire for $975.17 a month for life with a guarantee of ten years to be paid to my survivors in case of my death. With about $24,000.00 paid up life insurance until age sixty-five, then going down to about 2% a month until it reaches about $8,000. Upon my retirement, the office and my fellow co-workers gave me a nice dinner and gift of golf clubs, bag, card and golf balls. I tried playing, but I am not too good at it – someday maybe?

 

 

Being a Bagger ... Now and Then

 

Through various family updates, we learned that Adria got a job as a bagger at Maceys. She applied and they hired her on the spot. She's not the first Westra to begin at bagging. Mom/Margie enjoys the conversations between kids, and the memories that come up because of them. So here's a little more remembered store lore ...

Uncle Derek wrote: 

Congrats to Adria on her job as a bagger! That was my first job as well (at The Store). Her grocery career won't stop at bagger - I was promoted to checker, then to produce department salsa maker, and then to the prestigious role of dairy manager! ;)  I have a funny story of my days as a bagger at age 15. The Store had a strict policy that any customer with two bags or more had be helped out of the store (we had to carry their bags to their car). They were pretty serious about this policy since (as you can imagine) most customers would rather carry their own bags than to have a skinny 15-year-old awkwardly follow them out and load their car. One time, I was loading an older woman's backseat of her car, and she took the opportunity to slip two dollars into my back pocket and to pinch my back side. No joke. But that isn't even the story. :)

One day, Karl Malone came into The Store on his Harley (wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat) and bought one gallon of milk, and one loaf of bread. Two items. Because he was a big (literally - the man was a mountain) star, there were lots of eyes on him as the checker checked out his items and gave them to me. He held out his HUGE hands. 

Me: "Umm...I have to take these to your car Mr. Malone." 

Karl: "I got it kid." 

Me: "Ummm...it's a store policy - I have to take them to your car." 

Karl: (Smiling) "I don't have a car."

Me: Looking out the store window at his motorcycle. "I can take them out to your bike." 

Karl: (Not smiling) "Fine. Follow me." 

He walked out and I awkwardly followed. He opened his Harley's saddlebags and I put his milk in one side, and the bread in the other side. 

Karl: "Am I supposed to tip you now?"

Me: (proudly) No! We don't accept tips. Store policy. 

Karl: "Okay. Thanks kid." 

Karl then loudly started his bike and rode off. My boss was watching, and was pretty pleased that I held my ground and exerted my "store policy" authority, even though, by the looks of his upper body, the Mailman was perfectly capable of hefting the two purchased items. :)

Jen added her bagger memories ...

I worked as a bagger as one of my first jobs too. Skaggs Alpha Beta, there on VanWinkle. It's now Vasa (gym). I always liked bagging groceries. I'd put enough groceries away that I knew it was good to put all the freezer/cold stuff together (I hate it when there is one random freezer thing in a different bag that I have to go track down). Like things together. No foods with the cleaning supplies. Don't put something heavy on top of the bread. Once, they redid the whole store, rearranged everything. They had a few of us girls wear dresses, and we would "hostess" ... we'd learned where everything was after the change, and then would help people who now didn't know where to find things. Just easing the transition. It was fun.

Mom/Margie added to Adria:  

Once when I was shopping at Harmon's many years ago, I complimented the clerk I had (can't remember what for--maybe her friendliness/cheerfulness/helpfulness or something. I remember she said, "Thank you so much! ---- Now will you go tell my manager over there! (There was a head checker hovering in front of all the check-out stands, that would oversee all the checkers and solve problems). Maybe after you receive all these helpful hints and experiences, you will end up "running the store" in no time at all!

Reading through these recollections reminded me of my only grocery store teen experience: My friend Barbara Millet's father worked for HiLand Dairy. So Barbara and I were hired at times, to pass out samples of HiLand Dairy products, as Costco passes out samples. It was a fun easy job. I remember around the holidays, we were giving out samples of eggnog, and the men would tease us and ask if there was anything stronger in it! (I guess for Christmas and New Years, people add booze to their eggnog!)

 

Cleaning in the Genes

On the blog, we feature Adria in her new job as a bagger (Being a Bagger, Then and Now), and family emails brought up some memories from Derek and Jen, as they had also been baggers as a first job. That's not the only paralleled employment in Westra family history.

Cooper got a job this year as a junior custodian at the nearby elementary school. Going in after the school day is done, and wiping down desks, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming. Looking at family history, Ate Westra was a custodian at LDS Business College. The page above is from the 1929 school yearbook. Ate was in charge of the "Y" building there. Cooper isn't the only Westra working this way ... Camden (Chris's son, also the fourth boy, same as Coop)  cleans at Midvale Middle School in the afternoons.

Grandpa/LaMar also did some cleaning (and more) at the schools in his teens, from his history:

I worked each summer for the Granite School District, starting about age 14. My dad was the purchasing agent. The main offices were in a small two story building on State Street just north of 33rd South. My dad knew everyone at the school district, and got me jobs, first in the Cannery at about 25 cents per hour, and then on the cleaning crew. The crew was made up of 5-6 teachers, and 5-6 young guys like me. We would travel from school to school and clean rest rooms and dough clean walls and ceilings with wallpaper cleaner: soft pink stuff you would wipe over the surface and it would clean the dirt off. We would build scaffolding to get to the ceilings. It got quite precarious in rooms like the Granite High School auditorium. We would be way up there on the scaffold, walking a thin 2 by 8 plank, swinging our arm wildly from side to side. Then we would throw the dough at each other. Then I got jobs on the plumbing crew, installing and repairing sprinkler systems. The last jobs I had were watering new lawns as they were planted. They planted seed, which needed watering every day. I brought up new lawns at Granger High, and several elementary schools: Eastwood, East Mill Creek, etc.

Grandma/Margie mentioned that Grandma Lucille (Grandpa/LaMar's mother) worked in the schools for many years too, although she was a secretary, not on the cleaning crew. When she remarried though, her second husband Vic Burgener was over all the janitorial work for Granite School District.

Cooper learned about his ancestor Ate as he wrote up this report for his history class. One of the most basic things he learned, is that "Ate" is pronounced "Ah-Tay" ... not ate, like the past tense of eat!

Here's the rest of Cooper's presentation - the page above was actually the final page.

See Ate's Biography and more photos HERE.

More on the various homes the family lived in HERE.

Mom/Margie ... Model or Scientist?

Scanning old documents, this newspaper article featuring Marjorie Westra was discovered. After high school, Mom/Margie received a full-tuition scholarship to Henager’s Business College. She was voted by her classmates at graduation as “The Secretary most likely to Succeed.”  She graduated, got married, and started working as a secretary for the doctors (about eight of them) at the Cancer Research Department at the University of Utah. This article would have been published in the last half of 1962 or first half of 1963. Mom remembers ...

Since the doctors were doing research with radioactive things, one of my duties was to go around and collect their film badges each week and give them new ones---to track if the doctors and workers got accidentally exposed to radiation. One of the doctors tested me in this whole-body counter, seen in the background of the photo. It was like going into an MRI testing tube, but without open ends. Locked in. Scary! That's when I realized I was claustrophobic! 

College Complete ... Time to Work

This school ID ... looks a little like a mug shot!

Dad/Lamar finished up his mission and returned to school at the University of Utah. He graduated in 1962, then spent an additional year of postgraduate study, changing his emphasis from Chemistry to Math and Computers. He had an assistantship which paid a stipend for teaching lab and research classes in Chemistry. Newly married and done with school, it was time to embark upon a career. 

In the summer of 1963, LaMar went on two interview trips. He went to Denver by himself to check out Marathon Oil, and then both LaMar and Margie drove to San Francisco to interview with Shell Oil Company. Meanwhile, there was correspondence with a third possibility ... General Electric, in Richland Washington.

The quality of some of the scans/images isn't the best, but is hopefully readable ... Typed on an actual typewriter. Dad's responses on yellow make it easy to see which are to him and from him at a quick glance. The back and forth, in letters, snail mail, taking weeks at a time ~ very different contact than job recruitment today. 

In early February, a letter from GE to Mr. Westra, 

confirming receipt of his application.  

Later in February ... there was a job offer.

LaMar's response ... this is a big decision!

... a quick response from GE

... and LaMar accepts the job.

Now finalizing the details ... a bit of back and forth

Dad/Lamar was hired as a chemist, but never did any work in chemistry. He was assigned to work in computer programming, and spent the next 40 years as a computer programmer/systems analyst. The couple had only planned on staying in Richland for a couple years, but ended up staying for nine years before moving back to Utah.