New Retirees:
Baquiring, Rebecca - 7/26/24
Boone, Kathleen - 5/8/24
Cox, Ramona - 4/3/24
Dickson, Lance - 6/1/24
Duong, Kellie - 5/3/24
Fenske, Jeannette - 4/10/24
Foley, Daniel - 4/2/24
Gabrielson, Mike - 5/8/24
Gonzalez-Bonifant, Joe - 5/30/24
Hagen, Sally Jo - 4/24/24
Jipson, Mark - 7/16/24
Kenczka, Jeanne Rae - 5/1/24
King, James - 6/5/24
Krabbenhoft, Robert - 7/11/24
Loyola, Jr., Filemon - 7/4/24
Manzari, Ann - 7/27/24
Menard, Rosemary - 4/2/24
Meyer, Thomas - 8/3/24
Ohashi, Richard Ken - 5/8/24
Peterson, Robert - 6/29/24
Pimentel, Jeffrey - 8/14/24
Skala, Robert - 4/13/24
Snider, Raymond - 5/1/24
Soto, Oscar - 6/15/24
Van Holde, David - 6/1/24
Deaths:
Anderson, Dale - 7/10/24
Batchelor, William - 3/20/24
Brazel, Eleonore - 5/10/24
Bugbee, Roger - 6/9/24
Dringman, Glenn - 7/7/24
Esterberg, Ela - 7/1/24
Ferguson, Stuart - 4/24/24
Hanson, Matthew - 9/16/24
Lafayette, Donna - 5/16/24
Little-Strong, Beverly - 8/31/24
McDougall, Alan - 5/13/24
Powell, Helen - 5/19/24
Sharp, Robert - 8/10/24
We are proud to announce that we now have a Facebook page, thanks to Steve Hagen.
If you do facebook, just search for "RCLEA". The FB page will be for members to connect, share memories, events, photos, and learn about RCLEA events.
Also new on the website, check out short bios of our Board Members on the Board tab.
RCLEA is an organization of retired Seattle City Light employees. Our mission is to provide opportunities for members to keep in touch with each other.
(Note: RCLEA is not the same as ARSCE which is an organization of Retired City of Seattle Employees. Many RCLEA members are also members of ARSCE; www.arsce.org.).
Welcome
Our Fall 2024 Newsletter will be here shortly.
If you want an electronic copy of the newsletter, please send Mary Pat DiLeva your email address at mpd12000@hotmail.com
If you do not have access to a computer and require a hard copy, dues-paying members can drop us a note and mail it to our PO Box. We will snail-mail you a copy of the electronic version.
Mailing Address
Board meetings are the second Wednesday every month. The meetings start at 12:30pm and generally last an hour or so. We hold the meetings in a branch of Seattle Public Library.
Don't delay!! Reserve your spot for the RCLEA Holiday Party which will be Tuesday, December 3rd at Ivar's Salmon House. The doors open at noon with the buffet served at 12:30pm. The cost if $35 for dues paying members and their guests and $45 for non-dues paying members and their guests.
The holiday luncheon is always a good time. Make your reservation NOW!
RCLEA Newsletter
RCLEA
P. O. Box 27204
Seattle, WA 98165-1604
Upcoming Events
Please contact Board President Tony Raimondi at tony14007@hotmail.com if you would like to attend the meeting or are interested in joining the board.
Board Meetings
Can Retirees Build a House?
Mary Pat DiLeva
mpd12000@hotmail.com
All retired employees from Seattle City Light, are automatically a member of RCLEA. But by becoming a dues-paying member, you become eligible to vote or run for the board, attend luncheons at a discount, and help defray our administrative costs.
To have SCERS automatically deduct your $10 dues from your February check, please print and mail this form to us. Thanks!
*Dues were raised from $6/yr. in 2022 because of increased costs.
ARSCE Website is here.
Retirees/Deaths
Updated 11/4/24
ARSCE
Dues just $10*/ year
In Case You Wondered
Webmaster
By Tom Parks
Hey! Don’t start laughing just yet, because the answer is yes. It all depends on the size of the house, the number of retirees and the amount of time they have in which to complete it. RCLEA members recently put the question to a test, and we learned a lot. I volunteered to manage the project and we put out an appeal in mid-May for crew members. Having done around 30 tiny houses with high school students and young adults, I assumed that a crew of eight to ten committed retirees could do it in a reasonable amount of time. After all, it’s for a good cause and it’s rewarding to build something of consequence. I learned a few things about retirees:
They don’t move as fast as teenagers and 20-somethings.
They travel. Some of them travel a lot!
They can’t lift as much as teenagers and 20-somethings.
They last about six hours before they run out of gas.
They live all over the place and they aren’t wild about dealing with Seattle traffic
Who knew!? And now you all know as well.
Nonetheless, we started at 10:00 AM the day after Memorial Day with a crew of six and began setting up. The crew consisted of retired distribution civil engineer, Paul Croom, retired mechanical engineer, Dee Smiley, Dee’s spouse, Tonya Gisselburg, retired customer service specialist, Larry Works, Melinda Nichols who held nearly every position at the Utility except Superintendent, and me. We did a quick instructional session on basic carpentry with whomever wanted it before the material package arrived in the early afternoon. And with that, we were off to the races (stop it now, I can hear you snickering). Grace Baptist Church in White Center, true to their name, provided us with a power source and a location on which to build. Many thanks to Paul Croom for facilitating things with Grace Church, where he is a member.
The Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) provided the materials and basic specifications, then later picked up the house and took it to their yard to await being sited in a future tiny house village. The houses have no plumbing or heating, although a space is provided for a small air conditioner to be added later, along with surface-mounted wiring. The tiny house villages have a common bath house with showers and toilets as well as a common dining hall. Roughly 40% of the people who occupy a tiny house after living on the street eventually find permanent housing through LIHI. With a footprint of 96 square feet (8’x12’), a tiny house does not trigger building codes and, in most cases, has very limited impact on land use codes (NIMBE reactions notwithstanding).
We divided our small crew into three teams - one dedicated to walls, one to the floor structure and one to the roof structure. On day three when the floor platform and roof structure were framed, most of us discovered forgotten muscles because all of them hurt.
The weather was only somewhat cooperative the first week, resulting in a couple of welcomed breaks in the action while the late Spring rains blew in. One short squall would have really drenched us had it not been for the portable shelter that Larry brought for us to hide under with the power tools. The collection of experience and wisdom really materialized when it became evident that we didn’t have all the technology available - necessitating the use of pre-historic tools and methods in order to maintain the “momentum” we had established. Suffice it to say, the Amish would be proud and the millennials would be baffled.
Eventually all the basic components were done and it was time to really dazzle the neighbors. First we had to move the floor platform over about twenty feet in order to not impact the outcome of a real estate deal the church was working on. Not a problem, “This thing can’t weigh more that 400 pounds, can it?” were the famous last words uttered just before we all tried to carry the floor platform. I think we got it about 1/4” off the ground! One of the crew members had access to some moving dollies, which together with some of the yet-to-be-used plywood allowed us to shove the floor to the new location. Once the floor was leveled, we lifted the wall frames into place, HAND nailed them together, then plumbed and braced them. Sliding the roof structure into place took all the ingenuity we could muster, as well as a picnic table, a new friend and some fleeting physical strength that miraculously manifested just in time. And POOF, like THAT we had a three dimensional structure!
Little by little, one tedious task after another, it started to look like a house. The new friend, Bob DeChaineau, a retired carpenter for KING5 studios, worked with us tirelessly for several weeks. While he said he had never built a house before, it was clear that Bob’s skill set was entirely appropriate if he ever chose to do so. It is also noteworthy that, thanks to Bob, our original schedule came back to life after the rest of us had abandoned it out of resigned desperation and defeat.
Suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel and we actually began to think about paint colors! Dee and Tonya had tested one scheme out on a chicken coop that proved to be successful, so we adopted it for our tiny house. Sage green and dark plum doesn’t necessarily sound like a marriage made in heaven, but it looks really nice in actual practice.
For the interior we went with a sunny yellow with white trim. Another discovery - small spaces can be tricky to decorate. What seems like a “happy” color turns out to be a little “loud” when the ceiling is about seven feet high. On the other hand, it’s impossible to be in a bad mood occupying this house!
In conclusion, we consider the project to be a success because we built what will be the first personal space someone has ever had, we got some exercise, and we made some new friends. Stay tuned because even though we all said we’d never do this again, it’s hard to buy this kind of entertainment - most of us haven’t laughed this much in a long time. We will, however, form a much larger crew the next time.
The Crew:
Tom Parks, Bob DeChaineau, Paul Croom (Grace Church)
Dee Smiley, Tonya Gisselberg, Chris Bemis (Grace Church)
Melinda Nichols
News
Retired City Light Employees Association (RCLEA)
Can You Help With an Oral History Project?
The RCLEA board meets once a month. Our PO Box is located out north and our Treasurer lives down south. Another northend board member checks the PO Box and either brings checks/mail to the next meeting or mails them to the Treasurer. This means our process isn't speedy and it can take some time for your check to get to the right place. If you'd like to help you can join the board.
I received the following email:
My name is Salma Elmallah and I'm a researcher at Arizona State University. I'm emailing because, along with Veronica Jacome, we are working on a project where we are collecting the oral histories - the recorded memories and experiences - of Seattle City Light workers who were employed by the utility at any point in the 1960s through the 1990s. I got your information from the Retired City Light Employees Association (RCLEA) website - we've also interviewed one of your officers, Larry Works, who pointed us to the association.
This is their ask:
Share your experience of working for Seattle City Light! We are a group of researchers who are capturing the oral histories - recorded memories and experiences - of Seattle City Light workers. We hope to speak with people who worked for City Light as an employee or a contractor in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s and interacted with customers in your role (e.g., as a clerk, customer service representative, meter reader, maintenance worker, in residential wiring, or in another role). If anyone is interested or has questions, they can reach out to Salma Elmallah and Veronica Jacome by email at utilityhistories@gmail.com or by phone or text at 862-772-1754.
It could be a fun. Hope you'll consider reaching out to Salma or Jacome.
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