“I’m Working Here! “

I'm Working Here
By J. Glenn Eugster
May 12, 2008

On May 2, 2008 I retired from the federal government after working for four agencies for nearly 33 years. Prior to joining the feds I worked for another 7 years for local, state, and regional governments and the private sector. Earlier this year I turned 60 years old and my departure probably caught many people by surprise. Most days I look younger than I am but after 40 years of working with and for governments I need a change.

As I went through the process of withdrawing from the federal workforce I found myself avoiding the “R” word--retirement. Retirement has always seemed so foreign and far off to me and it wasn’t until the last several years that I started to think that a change and a federal pension would be good for me. I never dreamed that I would retire at 60 but I must admit that when I was younger I thought I would always have plenty of time to think about the day when I would no longer go to the office and follow the routine of a full-time public servant. The last twenty years has flown past me at warp-speed and the decision day arrived sooner than I expected.

I announced my intent to retire in late November 2007 with measured statements and slogans and a pretty good strategy. I knew it was time to move on from the job that I had taken with the National Park Service in 1999. Over the years I found that it never made sense to stay anywhere for too long a time and by 2007 I knew it was time to move on. Ideas, relationships and routines tend to get stale if you linger someplace too long. Although I didn’t want to stop working I did want to stop working where I was working for good and not-so-good reasons.

As I broke the news to family, friends, managers, partners, and co-workers I carefully stated that I was going to continue working both as a consultant and in pro-bono arrangements. My passion for the work I do, and want to do, remains and I’m not foolish enough to believe that one day, after nearly four decades of landscape architecture, regional and ecological planning work that I can just walk away. After all I don’t play golf and I’m still deeply committed to helping people and protecting communities and landscapes.

My work ethic, more than my retirement strategy, comes from my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The members of my family have always worked and their work ethic rubbed-off on me at a very early age. Our family was very blue, or actually no, collar and whether you worked or not was never discussed. Everyone worked without question, for all the right reasons.

My first job was when I was 6 years old. My Mother, Josephine--Jay, loaded up my red wagon and sent me down North Oakwood Road, an unpaved road in the hamlet of Laurel, NY to sell vegetables to our neighbors. Jay would bring the vegetables from her Aunt Cha-Cha’s farm in Aquebogue, NY, load my wagon, give me some basic pricing instructions and send me down the road. I was an extremely skinny and shy child and the idea of going door to door to sell vegetables to people I didn’t know was most challenging.

The vegetable sales route was the beginning of what has been, up to this point, a wonderful work experience for me. Over the last fifty-four years I have had an interesting array of jobs of all shapes and sizes. My work selling vegetables was fortified by ten years in Catholic school. With the help of priests and nuns I was trained, at the earliest age to sell chocolate bars, raffle tickets, and Christmas cards to help raise money for the school and the church. Although selling vegetables to rural neighbors was challenging the act of regularly hawking candy, cards and books of chance to complete strangers was frankly a bit traumatic.

When we moved to Laurel I soon became friends and a traveling companion of Dave and Steve Nostrum who lived on our road and also went to school with me. Dave and Steve were as extroverted as I was introverted and I found comfort in following them around because they seemed to know what to do and were able to talk to people with comfort and ease. They also were well-versed in finding work. Their motivation to work rivaled the philosophy of my family and added a creative dimension that in hindsight was purely entrepreneurial. The Nostrum brothers knew how to find jobs and make money mowing lawns, raking leaves and shoveling snow and Eastern Long Island had an abundance of each.

After serving as a work apprentice with the Eugster-Stazweski family, Catholic school and the Nostrum brothers finding jobs and working soon became second nature to me. My interest in and motivation to work would lead me to many interesting jobs that came my away or were a creation of mine. Over 55 years of time I would work as a: short-order cook; a pool-cleaner; an asphalt paver; a grocery store clerk; a college athletic department staffer; a chrysanthemum bud pincher and flower picker; a sod and shrub planter; a college dorm switch-board operator; a library front-desker; a parking lot attendant; a county inventorier of street furnishings and traffic accident sites; a writer; an inside and outside painter; a Presidential campaign worker; a newspap er delivery person; a driver of cars and trucks for people and belongings; a planning and architectural draftsman; a landscape architect and regional planner, a manager of government agencies and projects; a fundraiser, community organizer, public interest advocate and board advisor.

In hindsight the direction of my working pursuits has never been vividly apparent to me or others but it always reflected my belief that it is always better to work than not to work. Up until recently my motivation has never really been about the money, although over the years I have been paid very well for the services I provide. More importantly my joy has been my love of doing things that help people and the satisfaction that I get from trying to do something large or small and do it as well as I can. I continue to believe that the work we do belongs to us, and we alone decide when and how well it gets done.

Despite my recent decision to retire I can’t imagine that I will ever actually stop working completely. My pension and our life-style provide the freedom to break from the routine of the last 40 years and slowly meander off into the soon-to-be-discovered opportunities and excitement of a future that is less known. More importantly, many things have changed in my life and the lives of the people that I love and care about. I envision an array of new jobs, travels and experiences that are far more important than anything I could be doing for the government in a regular job. Hopefully the tasks I take on will draw from my life list of jobs of the past and a new set of skills I will develop as I continue to stay involved, engaged and passionate about my life, family, community, and work interests. Without a doubt from this day and beyond I’m working here!