Lee Note 22 Jack McCartney April 13, 2001

Kay,

Got this note okay and several of the following that you have sent out. I have enjoyed reading the notes from people I haven't seen for 30 - 40 years. I had planned to try and attend the 40th reunion last year, but one of those unavoidable conflicts that have kept me away from all but the one held at Newport in Crosby came up.

It is amazing how many people you went to school with years ago can be found living around you in an area that is some 300 miles away from where you spent your youth. I check the Baytown Sun on the Internet occasionally, but very seldom see any names I recognize.

I think I submitted an update to the reunion group, but when you get to our age, the short term memory of things that happened in the last year or so tends to go while you can still remember a lot of the little things that happened when you were young. Anyway, the following will provide a short review of what has been going on at my end.

Sandra Annyce (Wilkin, LaMarque HS, 1960) and I have been married for almost 39 years and have two grown and married children (Andy, 38 and Laura, 36) and two grandchildren (Matthew, 4 and Justin, 10), one from each side. Andy and his wife live and work in the Fort Worth area so we see them and the youngest grandson quite a bit. Laura and her husband live in the League City area so we only see them a few times a year.

Sandra and I have lived in south Fort Worth since 1985 when I transferred to the home office of my company (an investor owned electric utility) from the Texas City area. I started working with the company in the engineering department in Texas City and lived in that area for 23 years after getting married and leaving Baytown in 1962.

Until 6 years ago, I still enjoyed going to work because it was a small enough company (some 1100 employees) where you knew everyone on a first name basis from the President on down and had some knowledge of their family and history. At that time, the company got into financial difficulty over building a power plant that it shouldn't have (in hindsight) and went through a change in senior management, which was followed by a reduction in force.

If you haven't gone through one of those, it is a sad, sad process to see friends and co-workers you have known for years escorted to the door and told they can call to schedule a time to come back in to pick up their personal items out of their desk when an employee could be scheduled to watch over them. Out of the 25 people in my department, only 12 remained after what is referred to in the company as the black day of November 1994.

This came only some six months after the new President stated in a shareholder meeting that the company was right sized and no layoffs were anticipated. Since then, about half of the remaining 12 have left for other jobs or just got tired of the environment they were in. Had I not been getting close to retirement, I would have left in 1994. In fact, the company offered a great early out program just a year or so before that which I was too young for by some 16 months.

My plans are to retire at the start of next year, shortly after I turn 60. It appears now that my retirement may come sooner as there are plans to eliminate the department I currently work in. The electric utility industry is undergoing drastic change due to deregulation thanks to our legislature. Over the past 5 years, I have spent a good deal of time in Austin with numerous other stakeholders trying to figure out how things should work in the new world of providing electric service.

If I learned only one thing, it's that Texas is going to be much more fortunate than California in that we should not experience the rolling blackouts that have occurred in that state. In the end, I don't think that everyone is going to experience the lower rates for very long that were being touted by the politicians. If you haven't already started receiving them, you are probably going to start getting a lot more calls at dinner time from someone wanting to be your new electric service provider along with those from the unregulated telephone service providers that you currently get.

As far as retirement goes, I will have plenty to keep me busy with yard work and woodworking projects that I can't seem to find enough time for now. Sandra is big into quilting now and keeps active with several quilting bees and the Trinity Valley Quilters Guild in Forth Worth. She has been chairperson of their annual show and serve on various committees responsible for putting on the show each year. Most of our trips each year seem to be tied to a quilt show or some related store or event wherever we go.

We have property in the White Bluff development on Lake Whitney that we hope to build on in the next year or so. Sandra and I will spend part of our time there playing golf, fishing and doing whatever else suits us. I suspect we will see more of the youngest grandson since he seems to enjoy staying with us so much and his mother and dad seldom have any objections. They would probably ask if he could stay more if they didn't think it was being an imposition. A 4 year old can keep you feeling young when they are around, but make you feel your age after they leave to go home.

Keep up the good work Kay and keep the notes coming.

Jack D. McCartney