Retirees Share Millenium Memories

Ruah Livingston, age 104

Lake Oswego, Oregon

“If I can live to the year 2000, I will have lived in three centuries,” Ruah Livingston (born Lindsey) says with a laugh.

Livingston is 104 years old and has just moved from her home in Everett, Wash., into a retirement community close to her daughter. It was a very difficult move for her but not as difficult as the move her family made in 1904. They packed up their belongings and took the train to Oklahoma in search of free land. It was flat, bare and dry. The closest water source was two miles away.

Livingston was the oldest of three brothers and a sister. So when her father took a job and her mother was weakened by pregnancy, she had to bring home the water. “We had big barrels on the wagon, and I had to go and fill those barrels and bring them back. I was very small, and I had to climb up on the divisions in the barn to get the horses hitched up.”

Her family moved on to the Puget Sound area in the state of Washington where she and her siblings spent the rest of their lives.

After completing 8th grade, she faced a crisis: “Momma wasn’t well. She was pregnant, and it wasn’t working out very well,” she recalls. She was needed at home, so she dropped out of school. Livingston didn’t get up enough courage to return to school until she was 20. She finished in two-and-a-half years and went on to Bellingham Normal School to become a teacher of home economics, art and calisthenics.

At age 26, she married Francis Ingman and soon lost her teaching job. It was considered unpatriotic for a married woman to work when jobs were needed for soldiers returning from World War I. They were married 18 years and had three children: one girl and two boys.

It was in the 1950s that Livingston took a job with the state treasurer’s office — hand-processing returned checks. There she experienced some of the problems technological change can bring. “The legislature put in new machines,” she says. Many jobs were wiped out. People retired or were transferred.

She was transferred to Washington’s gas tax refund department. She loved the job so much that she kept it until — at age 72 — she had to retire to care for her ailing mother and husband. She joined the Retired Public Employees Council, now AFSCME Retiree Chapter 10, and remains an active member.

So many of Livingston’s days were spent working in the home, it’s no wonder she has a special affection for the inventions that made housework easier. “I thought it was great when we got an icebox,” she says. “Every so often, the iceman had to bring a big hunk of ice to put in the top of that thing.” The refrigerator came much later.

“Man, oh man, it felt like heaven when I got a washer and dryer. I don’t know how many washings I did in a wash tub with a washboard — and those copper boilers on the stove to boil our clothes. When we got the Maytags that were automatic, boy, we thought we were sitting pretty.”

Livingston’s extraordinary life has given her a treasure trove of memories: crossing the frozen Mississippi on a horse-drawn sleigh at age 7; washing her hair with rainwater from a cistern; listening to music on the earphones of the crystal radio set her brother made; hanging on to the reins while the horses ran all over the prairie after a train’s whistle scared them; her first flight — to Hawaii.

And on Dec. 31, as the clock strikes midnight in Lake Oswego, Ruah Livingston will begin making new memories in her third century.

Louis “Duke” Colby, age 87

Holiday, Florida

Louis “Duke” Colby’s early days play like a movie: filled with action and people. Many parts are played by real stars of stage and screen he met over some 40 years working — and playing — in the world of golf.

In the early 1930s, Colby, now 87, caddied at a country club on Long Island, N.Y. His clientele included Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Norma Shearer, Eddie Cantor, Ruby Keeler, Al Jolson.

It was the depths of the Depression, and good jobs were hard to find. With money from the federal Works Projects Administration, the state built a recreation center in Bethpage on Long Island — providing good jobs for the unemployed and a top quality complex of golf courses, tennis courts and picnic grounds.

“I started there as a part-time state employee in 1937,” says Colby. And, barring time out for war work in the 1940s, he stayed there until he retired in 1975. He started out as a caddie. With about 2,200 golfers in a day, the center “used to have up to 1,000 caddies from age 14 to 78 or 80,” he recalls.

“At first, I didn’t work year round. I was a temporary worker,” Colby says, at 50 cents to 75 cents a round, plus tips.

Around this time he also got married to Mary. Their union has lasted for 60 years.

Back then the superintendent’s attitude of “I hired you, and I can fire you” was taking its toll on his sense of security. So, when a co-worker talked to him about a union, he was ready. “That’s how I got involved in CSEA [Civil Service Employees Association/AFSCME Local 1000],” he says.

“I represented part-time workers in the union,” he says. “As a matter of fact, I made the first contract for part-timers with the state of New York.” He also helped establish a career ladder for parks workers. Colby served in a number of union positions including CSEA’s executive board and took part in the deliberations that led to CSEA’s affiliation with AFSCME.

Then he retired and moved to Florida. “I was down here about six months, and I started getting restless,” says Colby. He put an ad in the paper looking for other New York state retirees and drew 19 to a meeting. “From that, we have now about 6,000 in the state of Florida,” he says proudly.

One memory burned into Colby’s mind occurred in his early days as a caddie. It was a slow day, and the caddie master told him help was needed at another course. He was sent out with five golfers, but one “golfer” kept his hand in his golf bag instead of playing. He later showed Colby the machine gun he was carrying.

Later, Colby described the strange group of players — including the man with the big scar on his face. The caddie master started to laugh and said, “That was Scarface Al.” Colby later learned that he had caddied for Al Capone, Walter Chrysler and two New York City investment brokers.

But most of all, his memories center around people like Charles Lindbergh, who prepared for his big flight not far from Colby’s home. “The day he took off, I had to come 10 miles on my bike. It was overcast and raining, and I was a little late. I saw him run down to the take off, and I, like hundreds of people, held my breath because this little plane was loaded like a bomb with gasoline everywhere — even in the cockpit,” he says. “We collectively held our breath, and he made it over the telephone wire. That flight over the ocean for the first time in history — that’s hard to believe.”

It’s memories like this that have enriched Louis Colby’s life, just as his work and union involvement have enriched his community and the lives of his co-workers.

Solomon Marble, age 84

Cincinnati, Ohio

The music world’s loss turned out to be AFSCME’s gain.

Solomon Marble, who turns 85 in November, became a musician in high school. “I joined the band, and then I got into the orchestra,” he says. “I was number one trombonist in the orchestra.”

Finishing school wasn’t easy. His father constantly pressured him to quit and get a job. Marble’s mother had died when he was 12, and he and his sisters pretty much raised themselves. He had a paper route that covered his own expenses; he contributed to the family. And he fought to stay in school. He got good grades, but it was the music he loved.

He looked forward to attending the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, but prejudice stopped him. The conservatory did not take blacks. It was a real jolt.

Like many young men of the time, Marble turned to the federally funded Works Projects Administration (WPA), where he worked as a laborer. He married Jennie in 1935; they have one daughter, Cora.

The war years were spent building planes in a defense plant. “I started out in the cafeteria and worked my way up to the machine shop,” he says. “When the war was over I was really an expert machine setup man.”

He had learned a lot about cement finishing, and brick and block laying with the WPA, so, when jobs started opening up, Marble went into construction work again. He planned to complete his apprenticeship and go out on his own. Again race got in the way. “The bricklayers weren’t accepting blacks in the city of Cincinnati at that time,” he states.

Marble’s life made an unexpected turn in 1955 when he took a job with the city. The job, and his experiences with AFSCME, opened horizons for him that he would never have imagined. But first he had to face racial prejudice once again.

“There were two blacks; the rest were whites,” Marble says about his work area. “They segregated us. They didn’t want us to use the restrooms in the facility. That was the way it was when I went there, but it didn’t stay that way very long.”

The superintendent who had hired him was fair and acted when Marble brought up issues of discrimination.

“Martin Luther King gave us the initiative,” he says. “If King was fighting in the South, I had the right to fight here.”

Marble was hired as a laborer, but his skills and sense of responsibility brought promotions up to the position of florist. “I took care of flowers,” he says. “We had greenhouses where we grew flowers in the winter months. In the spring we planted them in parks and places throughout the city.” They also helped set up flower shows at the Krohn Conservatory, a Cincinnati landmark. “It was a nice job. You had to feel proud of it. It was a peaceful job, too.”

Marble joined an AFSCME organizing drive. “We had to meet in the back of saloons,” he recalls. “A lot of folks were afraid to join.” But they won recognition and a good contract.

“One of the most important things we got in the contract was the guaranteed annual salary,” he says. It was outside work, so “if it rained you went home,” says Marble. A skeleton crew would remain, but they were selected by favoritism. Workers couldn’t depend on a regular income.

Marble was elected president of AFSCME Council 51 (later part of Ohio Council 8) in the early 1970s. And he spent 10 years on the Cincinnati Retirement Board overseeing the city’s pension system — a good experience. “I learned a lot about investments and that sort of thing. It started me on my way to really taking care of my money.”

Retirement in 1978 did not separate Marble from his union. He worked to organize one of AFSCME’s most active retiree chapters, pulling together retirees from the state’s three AFSCME affiliates. Marble was its first president — for 10 years. The chapter has worked to make life better for Ohio’s retirees. Just this year they won an increase in the cost-of-living adjustment for Cincinnati’s retirees, an increase in dependents’ benefits and an increase in the death benefit from $2,000 to $7,000.

Marble was elected as a delegate to the last two national Democratic conventions — a high point in his life.

“Being active in the union taught me a lot about taking care of myself and my family and helping other people,” explains Marble. “It taught me how to go about being a good citizen. I learned to figure for myself in political situations. Nobody made up my mind for me.”

That spirit of independence helped Marble get past barriers in his early years. It will keep him active and involved in years to come.

By Susan Ellen Holleran