Watch out for the Irish with a Glint in Their Eye By Frank Dewey

I first met Maureen Kelly when I was transferred to Pittsburgh as Superintendent of Car Utilization in the late 1970s. She was the epitome of an Irish lady. She had red hair, light-colored freckled skin, smiling eyes and an infectious laugh. She was about as mischievous as a leprechaun. That’s what made her fun to be around. On the other hand, she did have a look she could give you that left no doubt in your mind that you had made a mistake.

At one point in life, Maureen had considered becoming a Catholic nun. However, she always said she gave up that idea when she was told the order she was to join was a teaching order. She claimed that she hated children. I have seen her around children and I think she would have been a good teacher. The children certainly would have had fun, just as long as they followed the rules.

So instead of becoming a nun, she went to work for the B&O. That may seem like a big contrast. However, even though her father was a postman, several uncles worked at the railroad. The family lived in the Glenwood district of Pittsburgh and that meant many of her neighbors would have worked either at the Glenwood back shop or on what was once called the Pittsburgh Division and later the Pennsylvania Division.

She was smart and had good managerial skills. That is what made her indispensable to Dave Daniels, who was the Pennsylvania Division’s Superintendent of Operations. Maureen was Dave’s secretary. Anyone who worked with Dave knows that he was the man you wanted running the division operations when things went sour. If there were a major derailment that blocked the mainline or a flood that washed out large sections of the railroad, Dave was the man who could figure out how to get trains running and repair the damage quickly. However, Dave seemed to be bored by the ho-humm of day-to-day management of a smooth running operation. That was what Maureen excelled at and she handled much of it for Dave. She kept the paper work up to date, lined up the staff meetings and, in general, ran the day-to-day stuff. Basically, she kept Dave out of trouble.

She was not afraid of work and she was always willing to pitch-in to get a project completed. The annual budget process seemed to last most of the year and she was an expert at putting it together. Likewise, she was good at keeping the Superintendent’s Bulletins and the division timetable up to date. Her real forte was the various labor agreements. Fred Leif, who knew Maureen when he was in Pittsburgh, says that when he was transferred to Labor Relations, the Pennsylvania Division claim volume that was sent to Labor Relations in Baltimore for appeal was only 1-2% of the entire Chessie System volume. That was largely the result of Maureen Kelly’s work and her relationship with the trainmasters and local chairmen.

As a result of the types of work she did, Maureen knew a lot of people. She was a great judge of human nature. If she liked you, she was a great friend and would give you the shirt off of her back. If she did not like you, watch out. She was very up front and did not mince words. If she did not like you, you would know it.

One person she did not like was a mid-level official out of Baltimore. We will call him “Ralph” just to give him a name that is nothing like his real name. I, too, had some dealing with “Ralph” and considered him to be very arrogant. One time “Ralph” was scheduled to come to Pittsburgh to give a presentation at a division staff meeting. “Ralph” must have known he was not a favorite of Maureen. He tried to make his own hotel arrangements only to find out there was some kind of big convention in town that had booked all of the available rooms in downtown Pittsburgh. He asked Dave for help and Dave turned it over to Maureen. She had been booking hotel space for railroad officials and making arrangements for various staff meetings with the downtown hotels for years. She knew who to call and could probably have gotten a room or suite in every sold-out hotel in town. But she chose to call the William Penn. She got a small room that she told me was in the basement over the boiler.

On another occasion, another official from Baltimore was coming into town. This time it was a woman that Maureen had a working relationship with and did not like very much. I, too, knew her and she was very impressed with herself. Let us call her “Rachel” since that is nothing like her real name. “Rachel” had called Maureen and asked if she could get a tour of Pittsburgh Terminal since she was assigned to work with the territory and had never been there before. She arrived during a Pittsburgh winter cold spell and there were a couple of feet of snow on the ground. That is not the norm for Pittsburgh, but also not unheard of. At the time, Pittsburgh Terminal consisted of several yards spread out up and down the Allegheny and Monongahela River valleys. So to see the entire terminal would take some time and involve being outside in the cold.

On the day of the tour, “Rachel” showed up in Maureen’s office wearing designer jeans, a fancy coat and a pair of knee-high suede boots complete with high heels. Maureen dutifully took her down to the Strip District to show her the industrial work done there and interchange with Conrail on the north side of the Allegheny River; then over to Glenwood Yard to see the back-shop and interchange with the MonCon that was the source of the daily coke trains to Cleveland and Chicago; and finally to Demmler Yard that supported the interchanges with the P&LE and Union Railroads and US Steel’s huge National Tube Works at McKeesport.

For those who might never have been to Demmler, the yard is bound on one side by P&LE’s Riverton Yard and on the other side by a mountain. The yard office locates about midway in the yard at the base of the mountain. There is no road access into the office and the parking lot for employees’ cars is located not far from the P&LE Riverton Yard office some distance east (railroad direction) of the B&O yard office and all the way on the opposite side of the yard. The normal way to get from the parking lot to the yard office was to call the Yardmaster on the phone or radio and he would send the yard engine down to carry visitors or workers to the yard office. If there were no yard engine on duty, the crew would leave the engine by the parking lot. Anyone needing to get to the yard office would just get on the engine and take it up to the yard office. Not exactly according to the FRA or labor rules, but it worked for many years.

But, that is not how Maureen said she chose to get to the yard office after seeing those suede boots. Instead, she parked the car and walked with “Rachel” through the knee-high snow across the yard to the yard office. Of course, Maureen had on her work boots, so she was ready for the hike. It must have ruined “Rachel’s” stylish suede boots.

These two stories might seem like Maureen was a mean and vengeful person. In reality, I think there might have been just a bit of Blarney involved. After all, she was Irish. I really do not think that the William Penn Hotel had a room in the basement over a boiler room. The hotel was older and did have some very small rooms. I know. I stayed in one once. But she did manage to get “Ralph” a room just as requested and, in fact, she told me with some surprise in her voice that he even thanked her for it.

In the case of “Rachel”, those boots were doomed the minute she chose to wear them out into the snow of a Pittsburgh winter. I believe that Maureen may have walked her back to the Demmler yard office, but it may have been because the yard engine was not available while making a delivery to US Steel. But the story is funnier the way Maureen told it.

Maureen got me too one time. Her birthday was coming up and I asked her if I could take her out to dinner to celebrate. She agreed; and knowing that she, like I, had Celtic blood and liked bagpipe music, I got tickets to go to a bagpipe concert after the dinner. We went across the Monongahela River to the old P&LE passenger station that housed one of our favorite restaurants called “The Grand Concourse”. I had arranged to have a slice of carrot cake with candle to be brought to the table after the meal as a celebration. When the wait-staff broke out in “Happy Birthday”, she gave me one of those looks and said that she would get even with me.

After dinner, we went to the bagpipe concert and she later said she really enjoyed it. The only problem was that while my Celtic blood was Scottish, hers was Irish. At that time, the IRA was still battling with the British troops in Northern Ireland. Of course, the concert was made up of two regimental bands from the British army. Maureen and her family were very devout Irish-Catholics. She was a little surprised she had not seen her brothers outside the arena with picket signs. She had me swear that I would never tell her brothers that she attended a British army concert. I guess I have now broken my promise to her since her brother, Andy, is a member of RABO.

A few months later, it came time for my birthday. Maureen and the two women in my office, Genny Mcginnis and Debbie Watkins, had been plotting for awhile. On the day, they would not tell me where we were going and insisted that they would be the ones to drive to the restaurant. I was a little in fear knowing that they had something up their sleeves. Hoping for The Grand Concourse, I was surprised when they pulled into a McDonalds. They had made arrangements for me to celebrate my thirty-something birthday with a Ronald McDonald birthday party. We had balloons and games complete with prizes. I even got a Ronald McDonald birthday tee-shirt, but the largest size was a child’s large and did not fit very well. After a lot of fun that I think embarrassed the store manager who ran the party almost as much as me, we gave all of the prizes to the children at the restaurant (I could tell they all were very jealous of me having my own party) and we went back to work. I think I had more fun at that birthday party than any other I have ever had since childhood.

Sometime after I left Pittsburgh, Maureen was promoted to Office Trainmaster. Much of that work was the same thing she had been doing for Dave for years. She was very good at understanding the union contracts – what they meant and how to administer them in a fair manner while still protecting the company. When the Pennsylvania Division was disbanded and a large part of it went to the Maryland Division, Maureen was transferred to Baltimore. After that, she was transferred to Jacksonville into the Customer Service Department.

Fred Leif then took her into the new Crew Calling Center to work with the Information Technology Department to develop an automated extra board pay system. Fred says that when he offered Maureen the job in Crew Calling, he did not yet have the authority for the real job intended for her. To bring her over right away, he said he could give her a job on third trick as a supervisor of a group of crew callers. Maureen said, “I hate you Fred, but here I come.” Whenever Fred saw her for the brief period she was on that third-trick job, she would always greet him with a twinkle in her eye and say, “I hate you Fred.”

When she was able to start on her new assignment, even though she had no previous experience with systems development, Maureen worked with the computer programmers and turned in a project on time and one that worked flawlessly.

In 1992, Maureen went to New Orleans on vacation with her friends, Don and Betty Mossberger (members of RABO). It was in New Orleans that Maureen contacted meningitis. The doctors believed it was caused by an improperly cleaned spoon or glass. By the time Maureen was admitted to hospital, it was too late and she went into a permanent coma. She was placed in a nursing home in Orange Park, Florida, for about four months and was then flown back home to Pittsburgh on the CSX company jet. She was placed in St. Joseph's nursing home where she died on August 27, 1993.

It has been some time since Maureen died and even longer since I spent much time with her back in Pittsburgh. I still remember fondly those fun times we had laughing together.