Memories – Working with Carol

I think it was 1971, I was working for a mortgage company as the VP of Data Processing. At that time, computer cards were used for making monthly mortgage payments and other transactions. Keypunch operators were very important to our daily processing and some women were better at that than others. Some of the work was fairly simple and was mostly numeric data to be entered while other tasks like keying computer programs were much more difficult. There was a period when we had 2 or 3 keypunch operators that did not work out and my Keypunch Supervisor was getting tired of the training of new people.

She came into my office one day and asked if I would interview one of her friends for the job instead of going through the agency. I said yes and told her to set up the interview on my calendar. On the day of the interview, she came into my office with her friend and handed me the application. I looked up to say Hi and quickly told her to close my door. Her friend was my cousin, Carol. We both laughed for a few minutes and explained that we were cousins. The company had a hiring policy of no relatives. We talked for a few minutes and I listened to my supervisor as she pled her case. I agreed to hire Carol, who was well qualified, but it had to be kept a secret or we all could get fired. That was not always easy to do. Back then, I had Christmas parties at our house for my staff so everyone had to be careful about family talk.

After a few months, Carol had taken over the managing of the keypunch operators and was the “go-to” person. In 1973, Houston had 3 different “snow days” with one of those closing many of the streets to driving. I felt I needed to get to work to ensure that the daily processing got done. If the mail got delivered, there would be payments to be processed. None of my staff was able to make it into the office, but I called Carol and she agreed to come in if I could get there to pick her up. When we got back to the office there were just a few people at work so a little while later, we all decided to go home. By that time, there were more cars on the road and there were wrecks all over the city.

Our 1972 DP Department Christmas party was at the Swiss Chalet with meal and dancing. That was the only time I ever danced with Carol, but she was a great dancer. We both laughed about how some of our coworkers were looking at us because none of them knew we were cousins. I left the company in January 1974 to go to work at Toyota. Over the years I have thought about those days but most of the times that we have seen each other since have been at funerals.