If one thing is common among employees who have dedicated 50 or more years to one company, it’s that work has become a second family.
“I don’t feel the difference that a person feels when they say, ‘Oh, I gotta go to the job,'” said Pietro “Pete” Benincasa, a cook and 55-year veteran of Chicago’s Marie’s Pizza and Liquors, which he calls his second home.
Jim White, a 53-year veteran and division manager at Chicago-based R.S. Owens, which makes awards including Oscars and Emmys, said it’s the people.
“I get along with everybody,” he said. “You’ve gotta enjoy it to put this many years into it.”
It’s family to Lee Malone, a receptionist for 50 years at Chicago-based architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. “I have 350 kids,” she said, referring to SOM’s staff.
Here’s why:
Pietro “Pete” Benincasa: Marie’s Pizza & Liquors
In 1957, Pietro Benincasa left San Remo, Italy, on the SS Cristoforo Colombo and landed in New York. Shortly thereafter, the 27-year-old headed to Chicago.
After working at a couple of restaurants downtown, Benincasa saw an ad in the newspaper for “a pizza man” at Marie’s Pizza and walked almost three miles to inquire about the job. The bartender turned him away, but a customer overheard Benincasa say he was from Italy and told the owners, who ran from the kitchen to hire him.
“I told them, ‘I can’t speak the language, but I have knowledge of pizza because I come from Italy,'” Benincasa recalled.
He started May 15, 1957, making pizzas in the front of the restaurant for $50 a week.
“A year passed by and I got to love the place,” Benincasa said. “My whole career was with (owner) George (Karavidas). He showed a lot of understanding for my (language) situation.
“We stick to the basics,” Benincasa said. “It’s genuine, made by us. We have one of the best pizzas in town.”
Benincasa met his wife, Emma, in 1958 when she would serve him coffee at the diner down the street. She later worked as a waitress at Marie’s for 20 years. Their son, John, also spent a number of years there as a busboy and bartender.
Benincasa said in 1964, Karavidas encouraged him to buy a home, where he still lives.
“I would have never bought that house if my boss didn’t encourage me,” he said. “I never defaulted or missed a payment in my 20-year mortgage.”
Karavidas further cared for Benincasa with paid leave for colon cancer surgery and four weeks of vacation so he can visit family in Switzerland and Italy.
But what has changed, Benincasa said, is the kitchen, with the oven moving from one side to the other, and the restaurant itself, which was expanded in 1979.
Same for the neighborhood. “This was an Irish and Slovakian neighborhood (when I first started),” he said of Mayfair, which is now largely Hispanic. “The building across the street and the bank didn’t exist. Little bit at a time, all those things started to form.”
Marie’s is now owned by George’s daughter, Nadine Karavidas, whom Benincasa held at her christening.
“The years passed by, and here I am,” he said. “Of course I’m 82 years old, I don’t know how long the good Lord will give me the strength to keep on it. As long as I feel strong enough, I’ll be very delighted to come and do my job. When you get a job, they treat you good, you’re satisfied, you have no reason to go look for something else. It would be foolish.”
Jim White: R.S. Owens &. Co.
Jim White took a job as a packer at R.S. Owens in June of 1959 to help his Irish-Catholic family when his father fell ill.
“I always joke with people that I started when I was only 7,” White said. “My father had gotten sick and being from a big family, everyone started helping out. I just happened to fall into the job and never left it. I enjoyed working at the place.”
More Top Picks Best Embroidery Machines For Beginners
White, who will turn 70 in November, now oversees four departments and 25 people, handling the assembly, shipping and wrapping of R.S. Owens’ products.
Throughout his career, the Chicagoan has seen the company grow from one small building on Elston Avenue to three “huge” buildings today.
“About 20 years ago, we had as many as 300 employees and two shifts,” he said. “Now it’s only one shift, and it’s down to about 140 employees. Businesses change so fast. I think it’s just the economy, the way things slowed down.”
White said another change has been in the manufacturing of their products.
“When I first started out here, we didn’t do any plating,” he said. “We bought all our stuff from the Dodge (Trophy Co.). But then (my boss said), ‘Let’s make some money.'”
From there, R.S. Owens began doing its own die casting, plating and hand casting.
Employees also have begun “working less hard, but smarter with the technology that they have,” White said. “Instead of using a screwdriver, they use an electric screwdriver, which is faster.”
White said most employees in his division are women, not much different from when he started. Except that one woman had caught his eye: Louise Stoyka.
“(Louise) was working in the wrapping department, and I was in shipping,” White recalled. “For some reason, I just said, ‘Hey do you want to go out for lunch?’ And that’s how the love affair started. We’ve been happily married for 30 years.”
The family comes from the top down at R.S. Owens. White recalls his 50th anniversary when President Scott Siegel presented him with a 40-inch flat-screen TV and a card signed by the employees.
“What’s really nice is (Siegel) was starting to acknowledge people with service, and seven years ago, (my wife and I) got to go to the Oscars (because I had been at the company the longest time),” White said. “He sent us on a nice long weekend, all expenses paid.”
White said his time at R.S. Owens will end when the real estate market picks up and he can sell his house.
“Once I leave here, I’m just going to sit back and relax,” he added. “I think I’ll go down to Florida where it’s nice and warm.”
Lee Malone: Skidmore Owings and Merrill
When Lee Malone, 71, began at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as a receptionist on Oct. 17, 1961, the 21-year-old didn’t wear her engagement ring. Women just didn’t do that then.
“Sometimes they wouldn’t hire you,” Malone said. “They would think, ‘Oh, you’re just going to get married, you’re going to get pregnant, and you’ll leave, and we’ll have invested all this time and training in you and it’s going to be wasted.'”
And women who were hired never wore pants to the office, she added.
“It was dresses, heels, nylons — not pantyhose — and some girls would try to lie in the summertime and draw a line up the back of their leg” to fake the seam in the hosiery, Malone said.
Before joining the firm, Malone worked for a temp agency and went on interviews at other companies.
“I was coming home after going for an interview, and I called my mother to tell her what train I’d be on, and she said, ‘Don’t come home. … There’s a company called Skidmore that wants you to go for an interview,'” Malone said. “But I knew nothing about architecture.”
But Malone was familiar with Skidmore’s then-headquarters at the Inland Steel Building at 30 W. Monroe St. because her friend worked across the street.
“At that time, I thought, ‘What fun! Now we can have lunch together,'” Malone recalled.
The South Sider grew passionate about the firm, trying her hand at the switchboard in a tiny room behind a sliding wood wall between the receptionist and the mailroom; overseeing each partner’s personal secretary; and scheduling conference rooms.
That, and when the firm was building its next headquarters, at 33 W. Monroe St., is when Malone got to know something about architecture.
“I really learned a lot about what goes into the design work of getting a building up,” Malone said. “It was an experience. It was hectic.”
Her favorite Skidmore-designed building is the John Hancock Center, completed nine years after Malone started with the firm. She likes its shape and location, as well as the memories of it being built.
“The field supervisor invited me to the Hancock building and I got to ride on the construction elevator up to the 94th floor,” Malone said.
She settled into the company’s current home at 224 S. Michigan Ave. in the mid-1990s. From these various vantage points, she has watched the evolution of Chicago’s downtown.
The workplace has evolved too. She remembers when business was conducted over a handshake; when typewriters were the highest form of technology; when the firms’ partners were less accessible to colleagues; and when the architects drew on drafting tables, something she particularly misses.
But the biggest change has been attitude, Malone said, of a younger generation that seems to be a bit cavalier, depending on computers a great deal and not always tapping into the experience of colleagues.
“You would think that with the economy, they would be more cautious, Malone said. “But (they’re) like, ‘Well if this doesn’t work out, I’ll leave and go some place else.’ In our day, we were scared to death. You would never overstep your bounds, ever.”
Malone has become such a part of the fabric of the firm, she is referred to as “Mama Lee” and “den mother.”
“I’ve had my bad days, trust me,” Malone said, adding that she doesn’t foresee retirement anytime soon. “But then the more you think about it, it’s just so gratifying.”
More Top Picks Water Leak Detectors