Yesterday was the official close of a long chapter of my life.

Being actively involved in any organization inevitably involves meeting new people and like any sample of people, you have the good, the bad and the ugly. Here's a tribute to the good. Good grief, what an ugly bunch, including me. But here's a tribute to just a few who stand out in my mind-there are others-I wish I could list them all.

Bob T (living)

Thanks for all of the big-brothering over all those years-the patience, the encouragement, the training and the basic "do I need to smack you?". I couldn't have learned all those tasks without a primary mentor-so thank you.


Bernard C O'Brien (deceased)

For those that knew Bernie, he was quite the man. The one thing that I will always remember him for is the focus on humility and consistency as the key elements of safety.

He had a great story about taking a D&H train downgrade, only to have it react a little differently than he had become accustomed to experiencing (this is where he told you about complacency) and concluding the story with a colorful phrase that conveyed so much, so artfully: "and then I checked my shorts". His best injunction was "son, do it right every time, and you won't have to worry about the one time you did not. In the late 90's, there was a trip to Analomink and for a variety of reasons was really late-I was on the final leg, and passing through the train, I got to the first car -just as we entered Nay Aug tunnel the fire lit up the darkness and seeing Bernie at the throttle-cigar in mouth-made me think "we'll be fine".

Thomas D. Shore (deceased)

Tom started off with the intention of being a lawyer-not unlike a high school and college classmate named Scalia, but took a different route and became a small business owner. He should have been a wrestler-because he never, ever quit. On the day after the worst day of my life, I reached out-flailing-to him because my apparently healthy sister passed away without warning and I knew he suffered the loss of son in a car accident. I think he realized my own father was in no position to offer paternal counsel and gave me the hard advice that many well-meaning will tell you-it will get better. In his own inimitable way he told me, ignore that-it will get more tolerable, but the loss remains. He was right and maybe because he himself was more experienced at dealing with loss than I knew-he himself lost not one, but two sisters-both as children.

Tom's particular passion was improving Steamtown and for years attempted to get authorization for a new friends group. Finally, he prevailed upon the then Superintendent to authorize the formation of the group-unfortunately I think the motivation was more to complete a check box on an annual appraisal than to provide for the future of the facility.

The great irony is that the IRS authorized the group's tax exemption on October 11, 2016-the same say he passed away while vacationing in Germany.

In 23 years there, I met a lot of great people, and unfortunately many are now gone.

My once confident decrees that no Big Boy will run again makes me reluctant to declare impossibilities, but in all candor, I don't see much of a future for a Steamtown that I fondly remember but I am glad that I that I was there for the "good old days" of three running steamers, double headers, summer weekends, visiting equipment.

Congratulations!

I'm also on the third phase of my life. It's the best one!

Remember all those recruitment ads that wanted a "Self Starter"?

Self start your tinkering and retirement is a blast.

Brian

Phase Three is when my money works for me and I don't work for my money.

I'm close, but close only counts in hand grenades and horse shoes.

May you have the longest, happiest retirement you can imagine. My husband retired in 2014 and neither of us has a single regret about that except that he didn’t do it earlier.

"May you have the longest, happiest retirement you can imagine. My husband retired in 2014 and neither of us has a single regret about that except that he didn’t do it earlier."

Thank you, but I didn't retire- and as much as I'd like to be retired, I don't want to be older.

I formally ended my volunteer service that started shortly after the Grand Opening in 1995.

Consider it practice.
I understand leaving long-term volunteer gigs too. Even when you know it’s time, that’s a big chunk of your life.

Now you have time to watch the RailRiders!

Phil Mulligan

Check your PM