News From Terre Haute, Indiana

Mark Bennett Opinion

Readers offer memories of their first jobs

Remembering Camp Darden Days

In the early ’60s, a favorite high school teacher recruited me to be a summer camp counselor. For the next three summers, I was a counselor for two and then assistant director.
It was at a health camp sponsored by the Tuberculosis League, which chose 25 boys and girls each for two four-week sessions. They were to gain both health and weight. We were on the same grounds as Heathwin, a TB sanitarium in full use at the time.
There was no pool, tennis court, lake or horses. We were plain and simple. We had two-hour naps and three calorie-laden meals a day. Many of our kids were from migrant families in the area, there for the summer jobs. They loved the food, showers and a bed to themselves, and they loved us. Every June 25, we had Christmas, complete with a tree and presents for all. We took field trips to swim, hike and fish. The craft shelter classes began my years as an art teacher.
Once a week, we had a weigh-in for all 50 campers. There were prizes for the best weight gain! Imagine that, these days.
Summer always flew by, and it was rewarding to see the little gaunt faces fill out and their health improve. At the end of those summers, I had to lose 10 pounds from being a role model at the table.
Those summers taught me that there were children out there who treasured a toothbrush, soap and a shower, good meals and a cot of their own. As a teen, when I read to them, did the girls’ hair, put them to bed and comforted the homesick, I had excellent training for the mother and grandmother I was yet to become. The payback was small — I had room and board, too — but the rewards are with me today.
The TB hospital is long gone, along with Camp Darden. But surely Darden Road still remains in my South Bend hometown. Now, most children need to lose weight and can attend weight-loss camps. Our ex-campers must be amazed. It’s been good to remember those summers.
Call me “Miss Laurie” sometime and watch me smile.
— Laura Mason
Terre Haute

Job puts him on Top of the World

One summer between high school years, a friend of my dad’s hired me to build a backyard patio.
He told me what to do and how to do it, while I shoveled sand and laid bricks for him all summer. That fall, he asked me to come in after school and on weekends to his company’s shop for an assignment. My job was to spread sealant on hundreds of metal parts. He had a contract with the local Stran Steel Building factory to supply this specialty item for a particularly interesting contract. The Terre Haute Stran Steel factory was supplying the buildings for one of the largest private construction projects of all time, the Alaska Pipeline.
Not only was it notable that Terre Haute companies had a hand in this monumental project, but little ol’ me was touching the very metal parts that would eventually seal off the pipe openings as the pipeline entered each pump station along the 800-mile route. The sealant I was applying prevented foam insulation from leaking out when it was injected into the openings surrounding the pipe as it entered the buildings. I remember getting blisters on my fingers and being overcome with the fumes from the sealant. I also daydreamed about the eventual installation of the pieces I worked on and wondered if I would ever lay eyes on them in Alaska. I was very proud to be a high school kid that had a minuscule role in a project so huge and so notable (if not also notorious, depending on one’s viewpoint). I even thought it would be cute to tell my high school girlfriend that I was going to be working on the Alaska Pipeline without telling her, of course, that the job was right here in Terre Haute. She did not see any humor in my story.
After high school, I was again asked to work the summer in the same shop, and continued on after that. I went on to serve an apprenticeship in the sheet metal trade, a career I knew nothing about prior to working on the pipeline parts. It’s now been over 30 years that I have earned a living in that trade.
This spring, my older brother was telling me about his plan to ride a motorcycle to Alaska. He invited me to meet him there if I could make the arrangements. I jumped on the opportunity, and within two weeks, I had a plane ticket, a rental motorcycle, and a suitcase full of camping and riding gear for an adventure of a lifetime — a motorcycle tour of Alaska.
We toured for a week and a half, then he boarded a ferry back toward the states from Skagway, Alaska, while I headed up through British Colombia and then across the Yukon Territory, solo, to see more of the region. When I made it back into Alaska via the Top Of The World Highway, my route took me right alongside the pipeline.
I pulled into the driveway of one of the pumping stations that was close to the highway. The pump buildings were not visible from the driveway, but I had come closer to that daydream from long ago than I ever dreamed possible, and I could not just leave and head back down the road. I became determined to view the buildings that may have the very parts I had worked on long ago. Of course, I had no way of knowing if the parts had long been replaced from updates on the buildings, but that did not matter. So even though there were signs warning that the FBI would investigate any suspicious activity threatening the pipeline, I rode around the area looking for a view of the pump buildings. I found a maintenance road, but still no view, so I hiked down a stream bed, then along a river bed to the back side of the complex. While hiking along the security fence, I finally came to a spot with a view of the pump buildings. I savored the moment of a quest completed, then started my long hike back to my motorcycle and returned to the road unscathed and hopefully unnoticed.
I believe I received a second reward for my Alaska adventure. The following day was clear and sunny. As I came up over a knoll in the road, I was pleasantly surpassed that Mount McKinley had granted me an audience in full regalia. It was a fitting close to a memorable journey that had inexplicably begun so many years ago with that memorable summer job.
— George Pfister
Terre Haute

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August 7, 2010

MARK BENNETT: First jobs are extraordinarily valuable

Mark Bennett The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — They’re usually easy to spot.

Wide eyes. A nervous smile. A manager peering over their shoulders.

A customer might be forced to wait longer than usual. “Sorry, it’s my first day on the job,” the young cashier says, staring intently at the register as if one wrong move might cause it to explode.

The adult standing in line might feel empathy and stay calm. Or, the customer might complain loudly, further flustering the teenager.

Such tense moments make a person’s first job valuable.

“You’re forced to think, ‘How do I make this person, who is so angry at me now, have a good experience?’” said Kristen Eastlick, a senior research analyst at First Jobs Institute, a nonprofit advocacy agency in Washington, D.C.

I learned that lesson as a 16-year-old dishwasher/busboy/room-service guy at a hotel restaurant years ago. I carried the same tray of breakfast to a woman’s room three times because the bagel wasn’t toasted to her satisfaction. Of course, by the third trip, I was ready to bring her a toaster and let her fix it herself. Instead, I kept my cool — and, thus, my job — by being persistent and patient.

This summer, teenagers who landed first jobs are fortunate. Nearly one of every four Indiana teens ages 16 to 19 were jobless. (According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Indiana’s teen unemployment rate stood at 22.7 percent as the summer began.) And of those unemployed, one of every five spent six months or more looking for work.

Just 10 years ago, only 13.3 percent of Indiana teens had no job.

The Great Recession, which hit in late 2007, forced thousands of suddenly unemployed adults to accept jobs once reserved for teens. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage increase to $7.25 an hour last summer prompted employers to lean toward the more experienced adult workers, Eastlick said.

“While there have been fluctuations in the last decade, this measure has definitely been on an upward trajectory,” Eastlick said of the teen jobless rate.

Brandi Russell landed on the positive side of those statistics. The 17-year-old Terre Haute North Vigo High School senior got her first job as a cashier at the city’s Sheridan Park pool last summer, and continued it this summer. She’s learned to help kids with special needs, tell customers they must have swim trunks and not shorts, and to be accurate with money.

Though she intends to study at Indiana State University and pursue a career as a physical therapist, she’ll benefit from her first job as a pool cashier. As a physical therapist, she said, “You have to have people skills with that, too.”

First jobs give young people a bundle of future advantages. Whether they’re grilling burgers, stocking grocery shelves, painting curbs or selling clothes, they can develop an understanding of what makes a business profitable. They get used to proving themselves, doing tasks they don’t like (a sobering moment for many teenagers), and coping with failure.

Their search for work, successful or not, is also a plus; between ages 18 and 42, the average person (born between 1957 and 1964) held an average of 10 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Life throws curves, especially these days when 30- and 40-year tenures with the same employer are rare.

Consequently, those experiences of finding and working a first job pay off, even if the teens’ intended career is in a completely different field.

“The value of a first job is a second job,” Eastlick said, “because it teaches you those experiences that are unique to being employed.”

Duke Bennett broke into the labor force as a 16-year-old high school sophomore at Terre Haute North, working at the IGA store at 25th Street and Wabash Avenue. Bennett, now the mayor of Terre Haute, bagged groceries, stocked shelves, carried goods to customers’ cars and cleaned floors. “We just did everything,” he recalled.

He kept that job for five years, through high school graduation and his college years at Ivy Tech. Bennett wound up in different lines of work, but the worth of that first job was “just the work discipline, working with adults and doing all those things that would help you develop your skill sets for [a career] and having a family,” he said.

Those two things, indeed, connect. As we learn patience, tolerance and empathy toward co-workers, hopefully, we learn to exhibit at least that much or more of those qualities toward our families. Some are lucky enough to develop those traits at home, watching their parents. For others, a first job might be their first lesson in dealing responsibly with people.

For Eastlick, her initial job came at age 15 as a part-time office assistant at a law firm. She gained “a lot of confidence,” found the gumption to ask adults a lot of questions, and learned to type. “I liked the value of earning something for my work, too,” she said.

Those first paychecks, complete with all the deductions, also impress teens. Soon, all of our questions about how our parents spent and saved money come back to us. Then, we begin to weigh that pay against responsibilities and our like (or dislike) for the job.

Russell plans to begin college in the fall of next year. And next summer, she wants to return to her job as cashier at the pool. “I like what I’m doing,” she said.

That’s important, whether it’s a first job or No. 10.



Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.

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