Belated birthday wishes, Mom...

Hope everyone had a happy St. Patrick's Day.  We enjoyed Dublin Coddle and Irish Soda Bread for supper.

Yesterday, St. Patrick's Day, would have been my mother's 109th birthday.  (Why, yes, she was 71 when she gave birth to me.  LOL  Okay, okay, she was really 41.)  So in memory of her and my dad, I would like to say a little about federal employees.

This is my mother in a photo taken in Washington D.C. (circa 1940) where she started her Civil Service career during the build up to World War II.  She and my father moved from small-town Nebraska to the big, over-crowded nation's capital, which was stretched to the limits with the influx of citizens coming to do their part.

Before Mom and Dad married, my mother had taken a civil service test responding to the nation-wide call for clerical workers to fill the vacancies left by men who were leaving to join up or otherwise assist in the war effort, as well as to staff the new offices preparing for global war.  The offer of employment was mailed to her grandparents' home (where she was raised), and her grandfather thought that since she was married, she had no business going off to the Nation's capital, so he did not forward it to her.  The first time she and my dad went to visit her grandparents and picked up her mail, she was crushed that the respond-by date had passed.  But she was not one to give up easily, so she responded anyway, and was told when and where to report.  

(Now, I like to say that my mom was ahead of her time...she made more money than my dad, she had a lot of respect in her workplace, heck, on at least one occasion I remember, she helicoptered to a business meeting...in the 1960s!  But I have to give my dad his due here, because he was ahead of his time too, in signing up for a badass wife and not letting it get to him...most of the time.

So Mom worked for the government in Washington, D.C. throughout the war.  She lived and worked as a single mom while my dad went off and did a U.S. Army gig called the Battle of Okinawa. (He was pretty badass too.)

When the war ended, and the war work in D.C. started decreasing, Mom and Dad  moved to Texas.  On the gulf coast of Texas (Gulf of MEXICO, that is), the U.S. Navy trained pilots.  My dad went to work on one of the bases' fuel farms supplying jet fuel to all those planes.  My mother went to work in the comptroller's department keeping the base fiscally on target.

A very common occurrence for me, was being awakened in the middle of the night to the smell of coffee and the sound of Mom's adding machine preparing payroll.  Not too often, but not uncommon, were trips to work with her on weekends.  As the civilian supervisor of the department (working under the authority of a Naval officer head of department), there were times that things just HAD to be done.  The comptroller department was located in the same building as the parachute 'loft' and they shared a bathroom.  A trip to the bathroom on the weekend meant walking through a huge dark empty room full of large tables, and being warned not to touch, because touching anything could possibly cause a parachute to malfunction and cause a fatality.  

Did she claim all the overtime?  Doubtful.  

The part of the job that affected me the most was rarely having my mother there when I was home sick from school.  I would get farmed out to a neighbor.  What kid wants to lie on a couch at a neighbor's instead of being home in their own bed with Mom bringing in tea and toast?  I hated it so much that I was hell bent on not subjecting my kids to it, so we became a one-paycheck family pretty early.  

All this to say that federal employees are not slackers, and they quite often work hard enough to be a detriment to their family and/or personal lives.  Is there government waste?  Undoubtedly, but it is not going to be found by rank newbies to the intricacies of what it takes to keep a country running safely, healthily, and successfully.  

So this is my song of love and thanks to all of the misunderstood and underappreciated people who work for you and me...the lawyers, the accountants, the people who process our taxes and Social Security, the custodians, the doctors and nurses, the scientists, inspectors of our food supply, and park rangers...and so many more.  I pray this crisis of craziness and upheaval does not cause any permanent damage.  Unfortunately, I am not hopeful of that.