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| The four views are of the same house, top two are from 1990 and the bottom two views are from 1932. The house was repaired mostly by Elmer and Gene----3119 Elim Ave. Zion | |
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After getting out of the Air Force and starting work at Warwick again. Gene tried very hard to be a good husband and Louise tried to be a good wife. It worked for a while (1960-1966), but all good things come to an end. In the time things were going good, Gene was, able to be promoted to the top job at Warwick. Life was good! Gene’s best job at Warwick was running a television chassis line for testing, analyzing and repairing the chassis before it would be put into the cabinet. Gene loved this job. A job that he would of done for free if he didn’t need the money. This job consisted of all the following things; most important was keeping the automated line running as much as possible, as the girls who worked on the line, testing the T.V. chassis required a lot of Gene’s time. They had to be trained and if they were sick or didn’t show up for work, he had to find a replacement to fill in.
By law, the girls had to have breaks away from the line, also we had a lot of testing equipment that would break down from time to time. At first every time some equipment would break down, Gene had to stop the line and wait for the Test Lab to fix what was wrong. This cost a lot of production time. So we decided to have as much test equipment right at the line as possible and then the lost production (Line shutdown.) was kept to a minimum. When a T.V. chassis didn’t test out right it was pushed off the moving line and another repaired chassis would be put into its place. The bad chassis that had been pushed off the line, would be sent to a analyzer who would fix it, or send it to a repair person, to have a electronic component replaced. After being repaired the chassis was ready to wait for a space on the line, to go back into production again.
Gene had about 30-40 people to supervise at a time, depending on what model of chassis was running at the time. Gene had test people, analyzers, repair people, set handlers, relief persons, etc., to keep the whole line running. Gene had to know how to do every job in the department, as he also had to train all new employee or those who transferred from another department. he was busy, but would get, much more busy, later in his work life at Warwick. Keeping the line (Department) running was a big responsibility.
The people in Gene’s department, elected him as their union steward, as they trusted him to do the right thing for them. Being a union steward and a group leader at the same time, was in conflict with each other. But he tried to do the right thing, and he was elected again. Gene as steward had to keep all employee over-time records, but as group leader he also kept all production records, inventory records and meeting with the higher level bosses. Gene being very busy, spending many hours away from home took a toll on Louise’s emotions, and she sought other men to fill her time. He had bought Louise two new houses, one at 8645 17th Ave and one at 1839 22nd Ave in Kenosha, WI. Gene also bought Louise a car, just for her own use. Louise didn’t work outside the house, but still could not take good are of the children the right way. During this time, he and Louise had three more children, Jeanne Marie, born Dec. 19, 1961, Ronald Dean (Born April 18, 1966 and died the same day.), also Pamela Ann was born on July 11, 1969.
Warwick started to manufacturing color T. V. in 1961. Gene took a color television course and passed with a grade average of 95%. He was able to get one of the jobs that was offered, (Color Analyzer.) and soon rose to be a group leader over one of the automated color production lines. He again had the test, analyzing, and repair section of the line and had 30-40 people at a time, depending on what model was being run at the time. The job was the same as before, except the people were more skilled, and skilled people are much harder to supervise.
In 1967, Warwick was sold to Whirlpool Corp. and Gene told some of his friends, that he was sure that Warwick was sold to Whirlpool, as a tax write-off, and in 1971-72 this proved to be the case. In 1970 Warwick gave notice to all employees at the Zion Warwick plant, that the factory would shut down, as they had newer plants in other parts of the country that could do the manufacturing cheaper and better. Television production stopped in 1971. Gene was able, to stay on, because of seniority, as a group leader of a semi-automated line for the production of stereo phonographic and radio consoles. The manufacturing at Zion stopped in 1972 for good. Gene was offered a job in Niles, IL.. But he turned this job down, as he would of had to travel through bad traffic, 60 miles one way and the job would not of lasted very long, anyway. This was the start of a very, very bad period of time for him, as will be seen in the rest of the story.
After 18 years at Warwick, and at age 39 years old, Gene realized that finding a good job would be hard to do. He looked at many jobs and it was a fact of life that most manufacturers would not even think of giving him a good job, because of insurance problems and pension considerations. Bad jobs could be had, but this would not help him!!!
Such is life!!!
After trying to find a decent job in the Ken0sha area, so that he, could be near his children. And because Warwick shut down and let so many skilled people go, he had to do something. Gene did find jobs, sales clerk, truck loader, etc., (Jobs of no skills).
During this time in Gene’s life, he had a lot of trouble with his wife, (Louise). He was working a full time job and two part time jobs in Kenosha. So Louise was free to do her thing, and that included not taking care of the children at all. Gene had separated from Louise and was living in Zion with his parents. He went up to Kenosha each day, to his work and while there he would also try to see his children. Gene saw that it was his daughter Jeanne that was really taking care of Jim and Pam. The house was a real mess and at one time, when he went to see the children, only Pam was home, and she was only four years old. Gene went into the house and there was, at lease 100 piles of dog poo on the floor and down the basement there was another 100 more piles of the dog poo. He called the Welfare Offices in Kenosha and they sent a woman out to the house to see what was going on. This Welfare woman told him to leave as she would wait for his wife, Louise to return and would take care of the problem. Gene called the Welfare Offices later and they told him that they were going to give Louise another chance to do a better job of taking care of the children. Gene was really, really upset, but there was nothing else he could do at this point. For without the help of the Welfare people, his chances of taking the children away from Louise were not good at all. Remember this was 1973. Now days he could of taken the children, but now its too late.
Gene realized that he had to do something different, so he did. He went to Milwaukee and looked for work in that area. Gene was able to find work in Cedarburg, WI., at Allen Bradley Drives, as a production layout man, laying out electronic components on panels and cabinets for elevators and power drives. AB built 10-250 HP power drives. Then he found a one room apartment, with an old lady in Grafton, which was only a couple of miles from his work at Allen Bradley Drives. He liked this area real well. He was hoping that this would be the start of a new life, but in the end it turned out to be for nothing. This was 1973, and Gene was to divorce Louise in Aug. 1975, he still tried to keep contact with Louise, but really the marriage was in free fall sense Warwick shut down in 1972. Gene had the same old problem of low pay and only a medium skill job. But he liked the job just fine. Soon Gene moved up to inspector of electrical panels and cabinets and then to a good job of Design Tech. at Allen Bradley, and doubled his pay.
Gene was being trained by a man who didn’t like people. After two weeks, this other man told him that he would have to learn the job by himself. Gene tried his best, but without information, his best would not be good enough. He soon found out that he had another problem as the group leader in his department was an alcoholic and didn’t pay any attention to what was going on. The design tech. job was to be a two year training program, and without the training, Gene was making all kinds of errors. This was not the way that he could work. There was only one thing that he could do, because of departmental politics, (Gene never did like office politics!!) there was no way for him to get any help. So he had to quit. So who said that life was fair!!! He had heard that there was a lot of work at Boeing Aircraft Co. and decided to go out there. Allen Bradley was real nice in that they gave him a going away party. Probably they were glad to see Gene go as he was talking to anyone who would listen, about the problems in the design department!!!!
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