Masonry Magazine June 2002 Page. 6
From the Editor
Gray Hairs and Nightmares
Tom Inglesby, editor
tom@editor7.com
My wife worries when she finds a few gray hairs amongst the dark ones. I worry because gray hairs are all I find and they are too few.
As the new editor of Masonry, I should explain how I got here. I guess I'll introduce myself by saying, "My name is Tom and I'm a workaholic." Some things just run in the family.
My granddad was an ironworker who put his fingerprints on dozens of bridges throughout the Midwest in the 1920s, then raised buildings and a family in Chicago until "The Big War" (as we always heard him call it).
My dad took off during the war, running away from college and into the fledgling Air Corps, getting his wings and leading his family on a wild chase across much of Texas. We moved so often, going from training fields to air bases, I grew up not knowing where I lived except it was "Texas" and, as an avid cowboy movie fan, that was good enough for me.
After the war, dad turned some surplus rivet guns and spud wrenches, a beat-up Dodge 6x6 ammunition truck, and a lot of enthusiasm into a new company, Cragin Construction in Chicago. By 1948, Cragin was doing some serious industrial and commercial iron erection supported by more war surplus, one of the first hydraulic cranes in the city, a lot of Irish and Norwegian workers, and everyone else in the family.
It was a heady time for all. Mom worked the office, dad did the estimating and ran the jobs, granddad acted as super and three of his brothers were ironworkers. My uncle joined the crew in the 1950s, and I started working summers in 1956, making the company a true family affair.
By the time I hit my late teens, I knew what I wanted to do for my career. The family business made it clear, anything but construction! Summers working as a punk-apprentice ironworker, also known as "Hey, kid!" and "Go-fer" taught me that. Even later when I ran the crane and learned to weld, the call wasn't there.
But working for the company taught me a lot, some of which stuck deep down and didn't surface until many years later. It taught me the value of hard work, the good feeling of exhaustion at the end of a day; on the other hand, it taught the importance of not working all the time, so life had meaning beyond the jobsite.
Yes, it taught me that work wasn't the only thing in life, that we had a community and family and that unlike building buildings, we have to put more than sweat into building our relationships.
The company and the way my dad ran it drove my family apart. His work was all he had, all he wanted, and all he cared about or so it seemed to my mom. They split up and he died shortly afterward, working as a super for whatever company would hire him, living in a basement apartment, making model airplanes and remembering the better times.
While I vowed to never let that happen to me, I catch myself slipping from time to time, work becoming more and more my life, isolating me from my family.
Then I wake up in the middle of the night and remember my father and know: There is more to life than work.
Many of you are in family businesses, second, third, fourth and more generations of mason contractors working hard for your families. It's hard to not want more for those close to you, more that you can provide by working a little longer, a little harder. It's important. But is it the most important factor in your life?
Maybe you'll wake up some night and remember my father. It works for me; it might work for you.
MASONRY
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