|
|
| Career
Highlights |
9/50: Claims Representative--New
Rochelle, New York
1953-1958: Claims Supervisor/Field Rep.--Yonkers, New York
1955-1958: Senior Claims Supervisor--New York Downtown Office
1958- 1960: Staff Assistant Management, New York Regional Office
1960-1961: Assistant District Manager, Midtown New York Office
1961-1962: Assistant Regional Rep. Intern Program
1962-1965: Assistant Regional Rep., Cleveland Regional Office
1965-1968: Regional Rep., Cleveland
1968-1970: Assistant Director for Administration, Bureau of Retirement
& Survivors Insurance
1970-1972: Program Advisor, Assistant Commissioner, Field
1973-1976: Assistant Director for Operations, Bureau of Supplemental
Security Income
1976-1979: Assistant Director for Operations, Bureau of Disability
Insurance
1979-1980: Director, Office of Disability Operations
1980-1986: Associate Commissioner for Central Operations
11/84-10/86: Acting Deputy Commissioner for Systems
10/86-12/88: Senior Advisor to the Deputy Commissioner for Operations |
Some Reflections
on Art Simermeyer
Art Simermeyer had a long and distinguished career of more than
38 years with SSA. Starting as a Claims Representative in New
Rochelle, New York in 1950, Art came to Baltimore in 1968 where
he rose steadily in the organization due to his management skills
and his reputation for prodigious hard work. He was a demanding
boss whose external demeanor could appear gruff, but whose real
nature was as gentle and sweet as anyone I ever met.
Those who worked for Mr. Simermeyer, as I was fortunate enough
to do, never minded how hard he expected us to work, because
we knew he worked himself even harder. He was notorious for
taking home stacks of paperwork every night, which would then
appear on the desks of his subordinates early the next morning,
with terse, imperative notations outlining exactly what he expected
of them in regard to the paperwork he had reviewed the night
before.
During the early 1970s Art had a key role in running the SSI
program. By the late-1970s he was running SSA's disability operations,
and eventually, all of SSA's Central Operations. In 1984, despite
the fact that he had no technical background in computer systems,
Art Simermeyer was put in charge of all systems operations at
SSA. He was Acting Deputy Commissioner for Systems during the
most critical period of SSA's Systems Modernization Plan, which
Art helped manage to a successful conclusion. Art was called
to take on this challenging role because the Acting Commissioner,
Martha McSteen, felt that the Office of Systems needed strong
and stable management--from someone with an unquestioned reputation
for probity. She knew of no one who better fit that bill than
Art Simermeyer.
During the last phase of his career, Art was put in charge of
the launch of SSA's new 800# telephone service. This was a service
innovation introduced in SSA in October 1988. When Commissioner
Dorcas Hardy tasked SSA with creating a nationwide 800-number
telephone network, there was widespread skepticism within the
organization that such a network could be put in place as quickly
as the Commissioner demanded. Hardy announced her intention
to create the system in January, 1988 and set its launch date
as October 1988. Art Simermeyer was put in charge, and put on
the spot to deliver on the Commissioner's promise. At SSA's
Operations Conference in Baltimore in April 1988, Commissioner
Hardy gave a determined speech in which she restated her insistence
that the system would go live in October 1988. To emphasize
her point, she said she had been making Art Simermeyer practice
saying "OC-TO-BER, OC-TO-BER." Art got up to speak
following the Commissioner, and with his best dead-pan humor,
he opened his speech with, "The Commissioner said to practice
saying OC-TO-BER. OC-TO-BER. OC-TO-BER. I think I've got it.
Now if she will just tell me which year." It brought the
house down, because hardly anyone in SSA believed it would be
that October. But Art Simermeyer was responsible, and so the
national 800-number went live nationwide on Monday, 10/3/88.
On October 31, 1999 Art Simermeyer and his wife Marie boarded
EgyptAir Flight 990 at Kennedy Airport in New York City for
a flight to Egypt, where there were planning a vacation. When
Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Nantucket, Art
and Marie, and 215 others, lost their lives. Art and Marie had
been scheduled to travel a week earlier, but rescheduled their
flight so they could stay in Baltimore to attend the wedding
of a daughter of long-time friends. Art was 72 years old, and
Marie was 61.
This interview, conducted in 1996, is being published here on
the Internet for the first time now so that those who did not
know Art personally may be able to gain a more vivid sense of
his career and the many contributions he made to the operation
of the Social Security program.
Larry DeWitt
SSA Historian
November 1, 1999 |
|
Audio
Clip From the Interview--Simermeyer's Closing Comments |
| Note: This 8 minute and
18 second audio clip is available in two formats, RealAudio and Windows
Media Player. |
| RealAudio Format |
Sound
Clip |
(1.0 mb file) |
| Windows Media Player Format |
Sound
Clip |
(1.9 mb file) |
| Art
Simermeyer Oral History Interview |
| |
This is an interview in the
SSA Oral History series. This interview took place in four sessions
on 10/22/96; 10/30/96; 11/14/96; and 11/27/96. All interviews took
place in Mr. Simermeyer's home in Randallstown, Maryland. The interviewer
is Larry DeWitt, SSA Historian.
The tapes of these sessions were transcribed by Robert Adams, Barbara
McIntyre, Gail Hooley and Mary Haskins of SSA's Braille Services Unit.
The transcripts were edited by Bob Krebs and Gloria Tong of the Historian's
Office. |
| (Note:
Approximately 100 printed pages.) |
|
| |
Q: Okay, Art, I would like
to start at start of your career. And the question that always interests
me is the first question: how in the heck did you come to SSA? What
were the circumstances? Were you planning to come here? Did it happen
by accident? Tell me where you started, and what job and what the
circumstances were; how you started at SSA.
Simermeyer:
Okay, I started in September of 1950. I had been in the service
and then in the first real college class following the service, that
is, I went in 1946 and I got out in 1950. And the job market was flooded
with applicants--people who had gotten a degree under the GI bill
and who needed a job, wanted a job.
So it came up to about June of 1950, when I graduated, and I had become
engaged and needed a job, looked around, things were tight, as I said.
I had an opportunity with the A&P, which was the forerunner of
what's now Super Fresh. And my uncle was a supervisor in that business
in New York. And he said that he thought he could find something for
me down the road, but first thought I first ought to get some experience
working in supermarkets to get a feel for the whole operation. Which
I did.
I was working there, and, actually, my mother found out about this
Federal Service Entrance Examination, I think, and encouraged me to
apply for it. So I did, with no real expectation of anything happening.
It wasn't called that. At that time, it was called the Junior Professional
Assistant Exam (JPA, I think). Anyway, I took the exam, and did pretty
well, and got nothing out of it--I mean no contacts. I had a few leads
that didn't materialize.
And then suddenly, I got a contact asking if I was interested in a
job in Social Security. Because by coincidence, the 1950 Amendments
were being passed. And that was really a tremendous expansion for
Social Security. I mean at that time, my recollection is that there
were 12,000 employees in Social Security throughout the entire organization,
as compared to, I believe 65,000 today.
So it was really a very small organization relatively speaking. But
it was going through tremendous growth, because of what they call
"New Start." The insurance requirements for people to collect
benefits had been reduced from whatever it was going up towards 40
quarters. It was reduced to 6 quarters to collect benefits. (Prior
to 1950 a quarter of coverage was credited according to the amount
of wages earned in a calendar quarter. The 1950 amendments credited
quarters of coverage based on the amount of income reported annually.)
And millions of people were being included for the first time under
Social Security: self-employed people, totally, and other groups of
workers who had been excluded in the original program. And the liberalized
retirement test did a whole lot of things to create a tremendous workload
suddenly.
So there was a tremendous expansion suddenly. So I was called down
to New York for an interview, to New York City, and passed the interview.
And within a matter of weeks, I was told that I could have a position
as a claims representative trainee. And at that point, I was living
in Mamaronack, New York, which is in Westchester County. And there
was an opening in an office in New Rochelle, New York, which was 5
miles down the road. So that was a tremendous advantage for me to
be that close--to have a job to be able to commute 5 miles to work.
In any event, I started in 1950. And after a week or two of orientation
in the office, they sent me to Baltimore for 3 weeks of training,
which was the basic claims rep training activity at that time. The
manual--the claims manual--was 1 volume. As I recall, we had 8 applications.
I mean, they were relatively simple in compared to today's world.
And the 3-week training program was to teach you how to take an application,
how to get an earnings record, how to adjudicate the claim, to handle
the public, and to answer questions afterwards in terms of the subsequent
activity, when they worked and so forth. So it was a good program.
It was downtown in Baltimore, because we didn't have any headquarters
building out in Woodlawn. And we met all the top people. The trainees
in that class were basically from the New York area. And it sort of
fits the stereotype of the New Yorker, I think.
I think that at least one thing I remember when we were coming to
the end of the 3-week training program, Francis McDonald, who was
the pioneer in training in Social Security back then, had a habit
of coming to the classes to give a little pep talk and do his thing.
So he came one day, and we were all sitting there. And suddenly, he
started asking questions. He said, "Well, what do you want to
be in Social Security?"--"What's your goal in Social Security?"
And I sat there and listened to these other guys. And I was amazed.
I mean, they wanted to be Commissioner or in charge of the region.
Or they had all these lofty goals, and they were holding forth. And
I thought to myself, "Here we are; we haven't gotten our feet
wet yet and these guys are ready to take over the reins."
My answer was, "You know, I'd like to learn my job and get my
feet on the ground and move ahead," and something a lot more
down to earth in my view in terms of what to expect. But I thought,
you know, I'm probably going to get marked at the bottom of the list
because I have no high ambitions. But I thought that was a lot of
baloney anyway.
And I look back 10 and 15 years later, and all of those people that
I can recall had all disappeared. I mean, they were not in the organization,
there were none of them in high positions, there were none of them
that had really achieved their goals as they stated them in September
1950.
So I came back from Baltimore.
Q: Can I ask you a couple
of things about the training? One of the things I think we used to
do in that training class is sort of program philosophy and principles,
that we used to sort of give our employees a grounding in the philosophy
of social insurance. Did that happen in your training class? Did they
do that? Was that significant for you, was it important? Was it not?
Simermeyer: Yes. They did it. I don't know how
much time we spent on it, or how much it meant to me at that time.
It did give me a foundation. In those days, my recollection is the
conversation went (or the presentation) went along the lines that
the country was moving from an economy where people had been agricultural
and living on farms or in the same city in the same place. And the
parents, as they aged, tended to stay in the home. And the young people
and they grew up together, either farming the farm or they went out
to work, and the grandparents watched the children. And there was
always an accommodation--the young people took care of the older people.
And that was the mores or whatever at the time.
But since the war, and since the development of industry, and women
going into the labor market and farms in decline and a whole lot of
things changing, the old people did not have that kind of role to
play. And the young people, conversely, didn't have the homes to accommodate
them or a lifestyle they could be compatible with. And so the old
people tended to become more on their own, had to look out for themselves.
And Social Security really was coming on as a way to provide them
with the income and resources so they could maintain some decent standard
of living. And that kind of thing was the one foundation for what
was taking place now with the expansion.
Q: What about
the experience of coming to Baltimore and seeing the organization?
This is an interesting topic to me because we don't do this anymore.
Simermeyer: It's regrettable.
Q: We don't
send trainees to Baltimore, either to see Baltimore and the operations
and see the leaders of the organization or to get this background
and the philosophy of social insurance. And I'm wondering--it looks
to me like that's a loss. And I'm wondering what you think about that?
Simermeyer: I thought it was a loss. I thought
it was a loss for years later, when we did it for years and years.
And then they stopped it because there were too many trainees coming
in and budgetary reasons and other things curtailed it. But I agree
with you. I always thought there was a tremendous loss in terms of
getting to see and hear the leaders of the organization and people
like Francis McDonald and getting a perspective of the whole organization
from the central office point of view. And then the environment of
coming to Baltimore was interesting.
When we came down here, the first day, they gave us a list of names
and addresses. And we went around the area on our own. The addresses
were gathered from previous trainees and from people in training who
had made some contacts and whatever. (I don't know exactly where it
came from.) But it was a list of places where you could go and rent
a room. And we teamed up - I forget why I teamed up with this particular
fellow, he was very nice.
We went out. And they gave us directions. You had to take streetcars
and buses and go out to the community, find our way, knock on the
door, talk to the lady in charge who lived there. And in our case
anyway, we got a very nice double room with a private bath adjoining.
And I think it cost something like $10.00 a week, which is phenomenal
in terms of cost. And it was very comfortable. And I think for $3.00
or $4.00 a week more, she did our laundry. So it was really a good
setup.
And they kind of took care of us that way. And the people in central
office made us feel a part of the organization. And that was a loss
when that stopped. Later, I think it became much more sophisticated.
They stopped the rooming houses and those kinds of facilities for
others who came along. And also because it was downtown, it was very
convenient. I don't know if they had training classes out in Woodlawn
after they built the headquarters, because it wouldn't be very difficult
to get back and forth, the way we did.
Q: Okay. So you
finished training and went back to New Rochelle to start, to be a
Claims Rep?
Simermeyer: To New Rochelle. I turned
out to be the first claims representative in that office. The office
was that new. They had a person who was a field representative who
had been handling the claims part of it until I arrived. And then
he was able to go out and do contact stations and field visits and
so forth, and I stayed in the office and handled the claims, plus
doing the other work on the account number desk and other things that
had to be done in the office.
In those days, it was all really paperbound. I mean we had file cabinets,
and everything was on paper. And each paper was in a folder, and every
folder was in a file cabinet. And we had piles on our desks. The pending
was kept on a tally sheet, and every week, when you cleared a claim,
you put a red line through it, and so forth. And you did your end
of the week report for the old.
Q: We were still doing
that in 1983 and 1984, when I left the field, Art. In 1985, we were
still doing that. Exactly the same way.
Simermeyer:
That's right. It was very easy to keep up with things in those days,
too. because things were much simpler. You know, the 6-quarter rule
and other things made life relatively easy in terms of technical complexity.
The other side of it was the volume. I mean, there were a lot of people
who were coming in and starting new, getting Social Security cards,
and having their accounts established and claiming benefits. And then
all the growth problems that Social Security had, trying to handle
that workload.
Not everything worked perfectly either. Because it was paperbound,
it was very difficult if there was a problem, you know, to have it
corrected. You did not have the kind of access to information that
you have today. But in any event, I worked in New Rochelle for 4 years;
a little less than 4 years, seemed to be getting no place--I mean,
in terms of progress or promotions. So my ARR (Assistant Regional
Representative) Dave Culperman--I got him one day when he came around
and said to him, "You know, I don't see any progress. And if
I don't see how I can make progress, I don't think I can continue
with the organization," or words to that effect. It wasn't a
threat. It was just to let him know that I was getting a little frustrated,
and he didn't make any commitment or anything at that point. But it
was a relatively short time later that he let me know that I could
be a--they were establishing a-- claims supervisor job in Yonkers,
New York. (Yonkers was about 15 miles from new Rochelle.) I don't
think I had to go before a panel to do that; they just promoted me
to supervisor in Yonkers. So I went over there.
It was a larger office, had a bigger territory, a larger territory.
There was a technicality there, because I had not been a field representative,
which is the normal line of progression. They kind of labeled me a
field representative and put me out in the field. They let me continue
as supervisor; I had that job, but, in addition, they gave me field
things that sort of met the qualifications of I guess of field experience,
which was on my record. So I went through that as well. And that was
all kind of informal and ad hoc. But, I did work in contact stations
and made all the contacts and do what good field reps are supposed
to do.
It was while I guess I was in Yonkers that I had my most memorable
interview, when the manager had a call from Henry Wallace, who had
been the Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt. And after he finished
as Vice President, he retired to Salem in Westchester County, to his
estate. But he started to raise or develop hybrid corn and either
strawberries or chickens, or maybe both--I forget which.
But anyway, he had heard that farmers were covered by Social Security,
and he wondered if he was covered. And so the manager felt that I
should go out there and visit him and discuss it with him, and let
him know what the situation was. Which I did; I went up to his estate,
met him, and we talked. And I had gotten some advice from the Regional
office beforehand because of the sensitivity of it. Anyway, sensitivity
in not wanting to make a mistake.
He was very nice and very personable. And we talked. And as it turned
out he was not covered, because it was not actually a business and
it was not producing any income. It was just strictly research. Although
later, it did develop that his hybrid corn, as I understand it, it
did develop into some very productive strains. I don't know what finally
happened to them,whether they became patented or how they got into
the marketplace. But at that point, he had no income, and really wasn't
concerned; he just wanted to do what was right. Anyway, it was a memorable
event for me.
Q: Did you tell him no?
Simermeyer:
Yes.
Q: Did he take that with good grace?
Simermeyer: Yes. He said he really wasn't concerned whether
he could get coverage like he wanted to be insured so he'd get benefits.
I mean, he didn't need it. He just wanted to do the right thing, and
he was satisfied with that. And I often wondered later if you know
if and when anything changed. I met him again, and so that was the
end of that.
At any rate, in 1954, it's also when the disability freeze started,
and that created a lot of work in the Yonkers office in terms of people
coming into file. It was a whole new world for us in terms of getting
into medical evidence and the questions that we had to develop--very
laborious and detailed. And it was only to establish a freeze. People
didn't understand that. I mean, all it did was to protect their earnings
records so that they would not suffer a loss of benefits later on.
And they were totally dissatisfied, because they came in expecting
to get something, and all they got was a lot of questions. And if
we made a determination of "Okay, you're allowed a freeze,"
I mean so what? They were disabled. They were out of work. They needed
help. It wasn't any answer for them at all. But that was a problem
we dealt with.
Plus I think what--farm coverage started after 1950, right? And we
were detailing people out to (not from my office--I didn't go) but
to the Midwest to handle the farm claims that were coming in. And
they got into all people, particularly from the New York Region--if
you can imagine going to Kansas and Missouri and all those places
and having to deal with questions like grout sows and all the things
that they get into out there. These people--it was a totally different
world for them.
We used to hear about those stories in amazement, you know, and all
of the things that went on at that time. But it didn't affect me directly;
it was sort of a tone of the times.
Q: Now these two
offices that you worked in--in New Rochelle and Yonkers, how big were
they? How many staff? They don't sound very large from what you've
told me so far.
Simermeyer: Well, the first one,
as I said New Rochelle, I was the first claims representative they
had. And then they got another one--Jack Scarengella who, ironically
and interestingly, is still the manager of New Rochelle, New York.
He went on from that job down to the city, worked in the Regional
Office, and came back to New Rochelle as a manager some years later.
And he remained there from 1958 up till the present. If he's retired,
it's not more than a year or so. And he loves that. So he was there.
And Jack Wallman, who later migrated to Baltimore, to a job--some
staff job. But at any rate, I think the most we ever had were 3 claims
representatives, 1 manager, we each had 1 clerical assistant, I think;
an account number clerk--an office of about 10 people in New Rochelle,
after it got fully staffed, in 1952 and 1953, after the first impact.
And then when I went to Yonkers, that was considerably larger. It
had field representatives and a manager, an assistant manager. I was
a supervisor. You had to have I think 6 claims representatives to
have a supervisor, in those days, plus clericals. So there was a staff
of maybe 20 or 25 people; probably 20; not large by any standards
today.
But I got into large later. I mean, from Yonkers, after about 2 years,
I was invited downtown to meet Harold Schaefer, who was in that picture
you saw before who was the manager of the Downtown district office
which was located at 42 Broadway. And I went down to visit him, ostensibly
to be interviewed for a job as a claims supervisor in Downtown which,
I think, was a higher grade, because it was a larger office.
At any rate, I arrived with pad and pencil and sat down for the interview
prepared to take notes and so forth. Things like that impressed him;
I mean, that was one of the big things, you know, that I was that
much into it. Instead of walking in, cocky and just telling him how
I was going to run the world or something, I was there to take notes
and get direction and on and on. He liked that. So I ended up being
promoted to Downtown, which was in the same building as the Regional
Office. Which is kind of another amusing anecdote.
At any rate, when I got in there, it was a big office. We had a couple
of supervisors, a couple of training classes. We were spread out in
a U-shape. The building was built in a U-shape. But we had so many
people, we occupied the whole floor. And there were claims representatives
in each arm of the U, and across the front was a reception area, and
in the back, were the manager, assistant manager, and so forth.
And they decided to establish a job ,which they never had a formal
title for. They called it "the third man." And we used to
say, it came with a zither--the third-man theme. But what it was a
supervisor who was above all of the people in the office: the other
claims supervisors, the claims representatives, and also the field
representatives. It was an experimental thing. And there was one in
downtown New York; that was me. And there was one in midtown New York,
that was Des Burns. I don't know if you know the name Des Burns, but
he was a brilliant guy. And he eventually migrated to Baltimore too.
He died some 20 years ago, I guess. But he and I were both in this
experiment to see if this would be a new way to operate,a new advantage
to trying to keep all of the activity coordinated, and so forth.
So that put me basically under the Manager and Assistant Manager:
Harold Schaefer, Sid Wexler, and then there was me. And they liked
that arrangement. Because I was running and jumping. I mean, I had
a lot, I had my hands full, I had all I could handle.
Q:
So you were like the operations manager in the office, in effect?
Simermeyer: Right. And Sid Wexler was the public-relations
guy. I mean, Sid sat in that office at his desk on the telephone all
day long, talking to people. It wasn't social business. He was calling
the welfare people, he was calling people at different places in the
city and State level. It was a relatively key office in New York,
in downtown Broadway. And he was maintaining all these contacts, getting
all this information, which tied into things that the field reps needed
help on, or they wanted assistance with, or he would kind of grease
the wheels for them by his contacts.
So he was really filling a vital role. But he did not like walking
the floor. He did not like worrying about technical things and claims,
and so forth. He also reminds me of Bob Dole; he had polio, and he
had one arm withered. His body was very much like Bob Dole--he could
only use one arm. And he used to have a telephone in that hand. But
he was a great guy. I had great respect for him. He had over 50 years
of service when I think he died in the Fordham District Office or
else the one out in Westchester Square, or something.
At any rate, we went through that. And one anecdote there was well,
our office faced on Broadway and upstairs was the regional office.
Joe Tie was the regional representative. And he and his ARRs, who
were in town, loved to go to lunch across the street; Child's Restaurant,
in those days, was very popular. Had a light lunch, and it was on
the second floor, and it overlooked Broadway. And they'd go up and
sit there and have lunch, usually overlooking Broadway at a table
right by the window. They were there every day so they probably had
a standing situation, you know.
But one day, these guys played a prank on me. There was something--I
don't think anything really happened in the reception area. But there
were windows in the reception area that you could see out onto Broadway
and, conversely, they could see in. So they came back, and there was
some kind of a little rumble or rumpus--I forget what it was. Nothing
to speak of, sometimes a claimant gets unruly or something. But anyway,
they came back from lunch. And the next thing I heard, they were calling
Harold Schaefer to ask what had been happening in the reception area
at 12:30 when this claimant had been, you know, waving his hands and
so forth. So Harold Schaefer got me and wanted to know because he
was all upset because the regional representatives saw this, you know?
So I explained to him that really nothing of any significance. It
wasn't even worth reporting it to him, you know?
Anyway, I couldn't figure out how they what was happening in my office.
You know, none of them were there. Then it dawned on me that they
were peering over across the street and somehow caught enough of it
and decided to make a joke out of it and pull my chain, you know?
Q: So you were already a manager, an operational manager
at a pretty early point in your career that this point? I mean you
were--
Simermeyer: That was after what--6 years.
You call that an operational manager? A claims supervisor is not really;
he was down here in the status ladder, and the manager was up here.
Q: Right. But this job that you had--this experimental
job--is a lot like being the office manager; a lot like being the
operations manager of an office.
So you've gone from being a claims rep to being a supervisor to being,
what I would call generically, an operational manager. And did you
like it, I mean already at this early stage in your career? Because
a lot of your jobs that you've had you were operational manager, in
many ways, and in many places in your career. And I sort of see you
that way, as an operational manager. And I was wondering if the seed
had already been sown here or did you realize that this was your area,
that you liked it?
Simermeyer: I never planned from
one job to another to another. As I said, I didn't sit with those
guys and say, "I want to be in Baltimore in charge of the operation,
or whatever in 1970." I just said, "I want to do the next
job as good as I can and think about the job after that baby, and
point towards it." But I didn't have any lofty goals. I just
was busy doing what I was doing. In a way, I was a product of my environment,
okay?
The organization was dynamic. It was growing, it was expanding, there
was opportunity. There was a lot of flexibility in that respect. I
mean, we still had to live up to the personnel rules and regulations
and fill out all the forms and all of that. But there was opportunity.
I mean there were promotion lists all the time because of all this
expansion and more people coming in underneath and trainees, and so
forth. Which I got into more later on too, when I got into my--two
stages down the road, I landed up in a district office in midtown
New York, which was tremendous.
I had no pre-direction that I was going to be operations per se; I
liked it. And I consider myself a pragmatist, okay? And I consider
myself hardworking and driving, but respecting those that perform
and not respecting those that don't. And so I got along pretty well
with the people. I was never the most popular person in the office,
maybe one of the most respected, you know? So I enjoyed that. And
I worked hard. I mean I tried to set a standard.
From the days that I became supervisor on, I always brought work home--to
the detriment, maybe, of my family and my wife and my own well-being
in some respects. But on the other hand, I felt like I wanted to be
on top of it, I wanted to be ahead of it, I wanted to be comfortable,
not feeling like I wasn't sure what was happening or what I was doing.
And I'd rather spend the time and make the effort and be ahead of
it.
And I think that's really why you know Harold Schaefer and I got along
so well. He was a good little Dutchman. I mean, he had his own lifestyle;
he worked hard, came up at the beginning of the organization. And
he was fatherly, very nice, very pleasant. But he had a very keen
sense, I think, of evaluating people, very quiet, laid back, smoked
his pipe. He liked what I was doing because it gave him what he wanted,
you know, without having to worry about it, that kind of thing. So
anyway, all of that was bubbling along.
And I was anxious to get ahead to something and also to get away from
the commute. I was commuting from Mamaronack, New York; taking the
New York-New Haven Railroad to Grand Central in New York, and then
I had to get off and get on a subway and take the subway down to Wall
Street, get off, and then walk 3 or 4 blocks to the office. And that
was to me, in those days, a long commute. And I had to do it the same
way going back. I lived about a mile and a half from the office; that's
why those pictures you see show me fairly thin, you know? I had to
keep my legs moving.
But anyway, after a couple of years, I was on vacation in Fairfield,
Connecticut. And a call came through--we didn't even have a telephone
in this little cottage we went to--the neighbor got the call. I don't
know how they found me, but they did, and they wanted to tell me that
there was an opening in new Rochelle, New York, the office where I
had started as a manager. It was only a small office; it was only
1 grade higher than the job I had. But it was great, you know? Because
as I said, on the status ladder, a manager was somebody. He was in
charge, even though it was only 1 grade up. I said, "Great, I'll
take it." And I was in heaven for about 2 days, and I got another
call.
In the meantime, this Jack Scarengella who was the other claims rep
in New Rochelle with me, had gone on into New York to the Regional
office as a Staff Assistant, a junior Staff Assistant. But he got
a promotion or two down there. I found out later that first, they
had offered him the job and he turned it down, and then they offered
it to me, and I took it. And then he decided he'd like to have it.
So then they decided, well, they'd give it to him, and I wouldn't
have it, you know? So they called me up and said, "Well, sorry,
but it was a good idea at the time." So I was very disappointed.
But that was it. So Jack became the manager. And as I said, he's been
there ever since. And I often think, "What if I had taken that
job instead of him? Would I have been there ever since, you know?"
I'll never know the answer.
I came out of that and went back to the office downtown. And Harold
Schaefer was very sympathetic, but said, "Don't worry, something
will happen; something good will happen. I'm sure it will come."
He didn't have anything specific in mind. But he just was trying to
build me up. And I was happy enough to be there, but after you've
been offered something, and it's taken away, then it's different involvement.
So within a matter of a month or so, I get called to the Regional
Office which is upstairs then about 6 flights up. So I went up, not
knowing at all what was happening, and I got in to a meeting with
Joe Tie, who was the Regional Representative. And he probed around
with some general questions. And he said, "Fine, how would you
like doing staff work here?" Well, I had never really thought
about it. I didn't know if I'd like it.
Joe Tie had a reputation. They used to call him Tiger Joe. And he
was a rough customer in his day. He was toning down even at that point.
He was becoming more gentle and easy to get along with. He was an
interesting guy. He commuted from Philadelphia every week, came up
on Monday morning and stayed in a hotel room in New York until Friday
night. Then he went home to Philadelphia, which was where his family
home was and that's where his sister lived. And he just maintained
that arrangement, except when he was traveling out some place in the
Region. But he was there in New York sort of on a commute basis.
Anyway, we got into conversation. And he said, he'd like to have me
come to work for him in the management area which was what they called
them SAM and SAP. SAM was Staff Assistant Management; SAP was Staff
Assistant Program. And there was big SAM and little SAM and big SAP
and little SAP. Now I don't think the managers called us that; we
called each other that, you know? But it got to be a permanent moniker.
Anyway, I agreed to do it. And I came to work. And I don't think I
was little SAM very long. For whatever reason, I can't recall whether
it was an expansion or what, but I got to be big SAM. And that became
a very interesting part of my career, because I was big SAM to the
Regional Representative, but also had to provide to all those ARRs.
They didn't have any staff of their own. Each had a secretary. But
if they wanted something, they came to me.
Then the different personalities of ARR's started to emerge. Like
Vic Broom--I showed you the picture before)--he was a graduate of
West Point, retired from the military, very meticulous, very neat,
very perfunctory, you know, still thought he was a general when he
walked around the office.
His desk was clean. He arrived at quarter to 8 in the morning. He
wanted his mail by 8 o'clock in the morning. His desk was clean by
8:30. Because what he couldn't or wouldn't handle, he delegated to
everybody else, through me. He would give me all this stuff, and I
would get the responsibility for assigning it out and reporting back
and all this. And he was free and clear to do what he wanted to do,
you know? He was more that way than the other ARR's. If I had four
of them, I would have gone crazy, you know? Because he was...that's
the way he operated.
Each one of the others had a totally different personality. Some didn't
care about the paperwork, others did their own paperwork--not just
signing forms, but going through memoranda, and identifying things
that had to be done, action items and things like that. So anyway,
it was interesting.
But as I built up a relationship with Joe Tie, placing more and more
confidence or faith in me, it became more comfortable in terms of
dealing with people like Vic Broom, you know. Because in the beginning,
if I didn't have things back when Vic wanted them like tomorrow afternoon,
you know, he'd begin talking to Joe Tie. Well, after Joe Tie could
see that Vic Broom was not being totally reasonable and so forth,
it got a little more balance into it. I could then negotiate a little
more with Vic Broom, you know. Because I was not just a staff flunky
running around but, you know, Joe Tie was backing me up.
It was a whole different kind of experience for me, working in this
environment. Because where I had been an operations manager with claims
reps and field reps and supervisors to deal with and delegate to,
now I was ,you know, on the other side of it. And I had a few staff
people but nothing like I had had before, you know. But again, we
got along, and it worked out fairly well.
So we worked in that environment. And that was interesting because
we were Region 2A--which was New York, the eastern half of New York
and New Jersey. And Region 2B was the western half of New York State
and Pennsylvania. And Joe Fraker was the Regional representative of
2B. But we were co-located on the same floor; we had regional reps
and staff on one side, regional reps and staff on the other side.
And those two guys didn't like each other: Joe Tie and Joe Fraker.
And they're both deceased now, so it doesn't matter, right? And Joe
O'Connor, who was the Regional Director, sat a couple of floors above
and wanted to see peace and harmony and everybody getting along. But
he didn't do anything to make it happen. He was just a nice guy. And
he was too nice, probably. But that was not his forte either. It was
political.
And that all went back to earlier days with Anna Rosenberg--do you
know that name?
Q: Yes.
Simermeyer:
She was a famous person in her day.
Q: Hugh McKenna told
me about her.
Simermeyer: Yes. Well, he would
know more about that cycle. Anyway, Joe O'Connor, I think, was sort
of the tail end of that group. And he came in as Regional Director.
But anyway those two regional reps, they had a whole staff, just as
we did. They had a big SAM, who was Ed Sabatini. Ed Sabatini, who
later became the PSC Director in Philadelphia. So we got to know each
other. We went to conferences together when they had big SAM come
down to Baltimore, you know, and things like that.
But back there in New York, when we'd write regional letters all the
time to get the message out. Every week, you had a regional letter--all
the things that were happening and things that had to happen, and
so forth. And Joe O'Connor's great dream was to have us write a joint
regional letter, you know? But we never did, never would. Because
whenever we tried to do it, Sabatini and I tried to do it. Those two
guys--Fraker and/or Tie--would get a hold of it and object to something,
you know, making it impossible for us to do it. And I don't know if
they had any real political motive like they figured if we started
to do things like that, somebody would decide they could put the region
together?
So we went through life like that. It was not a major obstacle. I
mean, we basically got the same information out to our managers. And
we basically got along. But we didn't get into things like joint conferences
or joint anything. It was always we had ours and they had theirs.
It was almost a rivalry, except that there was no prize for the winner.
It wasn't like the World Series. It was just a matter of running the
best region, I guess, or running a good region. And our region was
a good region.
So we did several things there that were very enjoyable. Some of these
conferences--like Ed Sabatini coming to Baltimore--I mean that was
where we got more of the feeling for headquarters and the people in
headquarters. And that was really something that I got more out of
than I guess than I did as a claims rep. Because now you were dealing
with the people who were not the policymakers, but they were implementing
the policy. And they were making decisions, and you could have more
of an impact on them and they on you. And you just had a better working
thing. They did have a lot of conferences and meetings.
I think back now to that and think of today, when we talk about doing
things by conference calls and other types of devices which are effective.
But you don't have the rapport, you don't have the relationships,
and you don't have the follow through that you had then.
Q: Now let me just make sure I've got the years right that this
is happening. What years are we talking about here that you are doing
this job?
Simermeyer: In New York, in the Regional
office? I went in there in 1958, and I got out in 1960.
Q: Okay.
Simermeyer: So in the meantime, I
had been married before. And my wife developed leukemia, and died
in 1960. No career decisions resulted from that, except that after
her death in August of 1960, I went back, for a short time, to the
Regional Office.
It was very shortly after that Joe Tie said, "You've got to go
out and get more experience in the field." Because I'd not been
a manager; never been a manager. So he said, "You need that to
get ahead." And I really wasn't--at that point in my life--wasn't
that interested in starting on something new, but he prevailed.
Anyway, I went up to midtown New York as the Assistant Manager, to
another pioneer, Charlie Ferber, who is now dead. But he was one of
the great old guys in that region. Charlie Ferber was a wiry little
guy, read the-- what were the original Social Security laws? What
did they call them? Regulations, Social Security regulations or whatever?
Q: Yes, there was Regulation No. 1.
Simermeyer:
It was something else though. There was some kind of a book of fundamental
Social Security rules, maybe rules and regulations. Anyway, that was
his manual. He had them in the office. And when he had a problem,
he'd go to them instead of going to the claims manual. I had to go
to the claims manual and tell him what they were telling us to do,
and it didn't agree with what he thought from the original regs. And
I had a hard time getting him to come on with it.
Anyway, it was an interesting office. It went from 51st Street to
52nd Street on Broadway. It was a city block long. And we had two
training centers; I mean, like 18 trainees in each one, running almost
continuously. We had 10 field representatives. And we had well, 30
claims representatives and a tremendous workload. And the Third Man
theme had disappeared somewhere along the way. I don't know whatever
happened, but there was no more, you know?
So I was Assistant Manager there. And a really interesting kind of
job because of all the variety, you know? And trying to keep track
of these field representatives who were--some of them had been there
10 and 15 years. And they knew their way around the city. And they
knew their way around everything, you know, including me. I had to
try to keep up with them and make sure they're out working. These
guys could find their way across Manhattan without ever surfacing,
you know? They knew where all the tunnels were. They could literally
get any place around that whole area. On a rainy day, they didn't
need a raincoat, you know; they'd never get wet if they were out there
working; at least, they seemed to be working.
Anyway, it was a great experience for me. And then, at some conference--I
forget where--maybe that picture you saw there, we started talking
about this ARR Intern Program. And I'd heard about it before that.
But at this conference, I was in and around after hours and we hung
out in the local pub, and whatever, having a beer. And Hugh McKenna
was there. And Hugh McKenna warmed up after a couple.
So he got into a conversation with me about the ARR Intern Program.
And he said, "Because of your home situation, meaning that I
was a widower, I'm not going to consider you for that program, because
I don't think you have the mobility that I need." And he said,
"You would have been a candidate." And I said, "Well,
I really thought that point could be a turning point," because
I did, after working in the Regional Office, wanted to be an ARR.
That was one goal.
And I said, "Well, ARRs, as I'd seen them before, were always
class I District Managers who had had 30 years of service. And they
kind of went into this job in their dotage, you know?" And I
figured, "That's the only other way you're going to get in, unless
you get in through the Intern Program." And so I said, "Well,
let me think about it, and I'll get back to you; maybe I can work
something out."
Some of the conditions of the ARR Intern Program were that you had
to be mobile to go to wherever they sent you,and, I mean, out of the
region. That's one thing he was trying to do, these Class I managers,
they were so long in the area that they didn't want to go any place.
And they were so entrenched and had so many relationships that you
know, they really were not able to be impartial and objective and
effective and bring in new ideas.
So he wanted to start this kind of new breed. And that's the way he
was going to do it: by having you go to a region where he assigned
you. And also, if you hadn't been to Central Office, you had to come
into Central office for an assignment, so you could get that exposure,
experience. Those were the things he said I wasn't going to be able
to handle in my situation, you know?
So I came home and I said, "Well, I've got my mother and father,
who are in their 60's, at that point." And said, "this would
be a great opportunity for me." I had 3 children at that time.
But I said, "I can't do it, under those conditions, unless you
could help me with the children, while I'm in this program."
And they agreed. They said, "Okay, if it means that much to you,
it's an opportunity, we'll do it." So they did. They took the
children and they put them to school every day and all the things
that go with that--feeding and caring and loving and all that.
So I then told Hugh McKenna I was available for this. So then, I had
to come to Baltimore. And there were interviews and discussions. And
that led to that other picture you saw with Jack Malane, and there
was George Demott, Jim Hoss. Jean Reagler didn't get into it; (he
got into it later), Tom Hart, me. There were five of us anyway. We
were the ARR interns to start the program.
Then we got assignments to different regions. And I was assigned from
New York to go to Boston; the Boston Region. Which was good, it was
adjacent. I think McKenna was trying to be a little understanding,
instead of sending me to San Francisco, you know, or Atlanta. I went
up there anyway.
And I got into a relationship with--I don't know if you've ever heard
the name--John Campbell. He was another one of those pioneers, like
Joe Tie, a real pioneer. He was in the program from the beginning--a
real crusty old guy. I went to the Regional office there and worked
for him for a period of about 4 months, which was again an interesting
experience because he was kind of-- took it upon himself to show me
that any smart, uppity new Yorker coming up here doesn't just walk
in and take over, you know?
He gave me an assignment to write a regional letter explaining thus
and such. And I'd write it in my New York style, laying it all out.
And I'd take it in, and he'd take it like some of these things you
see where you shred it down to where the only thing left is the word
"the?" Well, he would do that to me. "Why do we need
to say this? Don't you think they know that?" And you know, on
and on. And he was giving me a lesson in you know, how other people
live. So anyway, I had to absorb it, but I did. And I got along with
the staff there pretty well.
So I stayed in the Regional Office, doing that kind of thing for about
oh, a month or 6 weeks. His staff meetings every morning were like
nothing I'd ever seen. We had an office on the Boston Common. You
know the Boston Common?
Q: Sure.
Simermeyer:
And Welson Street, I think it was. And the third floor, I think was
the Regional Office. The second floor was a coffee shop. And every
morning, we'd go in the coffee shop, sit down, have a cup of coffee,
sit around a table--his staff was that small. And John would hold
forth on the activities of the day. And the other guys would chime
in because they had been in the Regional office. They didn't have
any turnover at all. They were there for years and years, most of
them. And if the ARR were in town, they would join in.
We'd sit there and talk. And out of it would come the plan for the
day, you know? That was it. There were no staff meetings as such.
We didn't sit around the table and have an agenda or anything like
that. We had to learn to live in that style, you know? And of course,
I had no voice, no vote. I was just there as a learner. So I finally
learned enough, and after about 6 weeks, he decided I could go out
with other ARRs and visit other offices.
So they each--most of them--took me out--about 3 of them--on trips,
you know? And they would orient me as to what they were doing in the
office. And I would sit and listen and you know, chime in. That was
great. I mean, I really enjoyed that. Because these guys were really
nice and had their own personalities. But it was a learning and seeing
a different modus operandi, a different style of management. Most
of them were laid back, very casual.
And after several of these kinds of things, he then decided I could
go out on my own. That's really a big step forward. I mean, I'm going
out in his region to visit his offices without anybody looking over
my shoulder? So I got a string of offices to go out and visit.
I remember one where I went. And sure enough, in the afternoon, who
comes walking in but John Campbell, you know? I mean, this wasn't
like I just happened to be in the neighborhood thing? It was like
you know, a fair distance from the Regional Office. But he still wasn't
totally sure of me, I guess. But anyway, I got along pretty well.
Q: Now during those visits, what kind of stuff were you
doing, you and the ARRs? What was this like?
Simermeyer:
We had staff meetings, and talked to the staff about what was
happening and what was going on. I'd get my 5 minutes at the end,
to explain why I was there and what I was doing, you know. And they'd
talk about current developments and what ARRs were supposed to do
in those days. Our modus operandi, all the time I was an ARR, was
to always be there when the office opened.
I'd always open with a staff meeting. I'd always give them an update
on anything that was happening in the region or centrally, or whatever,
then turn it around and ask them how things were going and what the
feedback or recommendations or what complaints, whatever, you know?
It was an interactive kind of thing. And when I went out of my own,
I pretty much did the same thing. I had an agenda. We all did. When
I went out on my own too--to cover these items, look at these things,
they were told.
John Campbell was the pioneer of what they called, in those days "self-help"
and that became "claimant participation." And when I was
in the Boston Region, he let me go to Hyannisport,which was the birthplace
of not only John F. Kennedy, but self-help, as they called it then.
The field rep, who had been out there regularly--I guess 20 years--had
gotten an increase in workload,and had finally worked out this technique.
They met in the basement of the City Hall which was this big, open
room; that was his contact station. But the conditions were good for
that kind of situation, okay? So he'd sit up there in the front where
they had the town meeting, and the people sat where the taxpayers
usually sit, you know. And they could see but they couldn't hear.
But he, as he saw the size of the crowd, started saying, "Well,
how many of you want a Social Security number," you know. And
they raised their hands. And he said, "Well, take this application
form and fill it out while I'm doing this interview," you know.
And they would. So he was kind of running a dialogue with the people
waiting for the contact station.
I don't know if you've ever worked in a contact station.
Q: Briefly.
Simermeyer: But for most of them,
and I did, it's like being in a post office where you sit in a room
and they sit outside on a bench. And you call, "Next," and
they come in. And there's no interaction, no dialogue, until you see
your next customer.
But here he had this environment where he could do this kind of thing,
you know? And it became, all of a sudden, a big thing, that this was
a new technique--this self-help--where people can help themselves,
and it's going to save manpower, and it speeds up the process, and
everybody participating and they're feeling better, you know? And
all this psychology started coming out, what was basically, for him,
a pretty simple thing, you know, when he started.
So I went to Hyannisport and looked at it, talked about it. And I
heard John Campbell later coming to Baltimore, bragging about this
self-help, you know, which later became out of vogue. I mean, self-help
was not a good term. So they coined "claimant participation."
I think if you walked up to somebody and said, "What's claimant
participation?" they wouldn't begin to know what you're talking
about. But self-help you could understand. But anyway, this was one
of the things that John liked. He didn't like bureaucracy. He didn't
like a lot of writing, he just liked to have it that kind of easygoing
way, you know? And his managers knew that. And the ones that went
along with it were his favorites.
But I remember one: we went to Portland, Maine, for example, to visit
the District Office. I was sitting there in the managers office, and
all of a sudden, he gets up and takes this school bell and rings the
school bell. You know, big bell.
"What's happening?"
Work sampling. It was work sampling. Do you remember work sampling?
Q: Sure, sure, of course.
Simermeyer:
When they heard the bell ring, they all wrote down what activity they
were doing, you know. I never heard of such a thing, you know. But
that's the way the Region ran.
And then, there was another one when, there was a guy who worked at
the account number desk, and I was watching him work. He was walking
up to the desk saying, "Now, what do you want, you know? And
I went back and I talked to the manager. And I said, "You know,
look at the way he's talking to these people, ‘you know'? Couldn't
he address them, ‘May I help you', could he use ‘may' or anything?"
I said, "You know, if he used those kinds of words here, they'd
be totally turned off." He said, "That's what they expect.
What do you want? That's the way they talk in Maine or New Hampshire
or whatever, you know?" And I was out of step because I was the
guy who didn't understand.
Q: Didn't understand the locals.
Simermeyer: Forcing this stuff in on him. "You
read this in a book someplace? That is the way we're going to go?"
And he even let me go out on a comprehensive review. You know what
a comprehensive review is?
Q: Yes. That's why I asked
the earlier question. Because I was wondering if you were doing comprehensive
reviews.
Simermeyer: That was the cap of my career,
to be able to do a comprehensive review in that region. Philip Bryan
was the guy who let me do it. He was one of the ARRs who later became
Regional Commissioner. He was a great guy, intellectual.
When I used to go on a trip with him, we'd drive through the countryside,
and he'd say, "Take a look" at a scene, you know, a barnyard
scene alongside the country. And we'd pass on, And then he'd say,
"Tell me what you saw." You know, these mental exercises
as you're driving along. "Did you see the tree? Did you see the
side of the barn? What did it say on the side of the barn?" And
he was doing these mental gymnastics with me all the time. Which was
good. He was sharp.
But at any rate, he sent me on a comprehensive review to an office
in Maine, I forget which one-- Bangor Maine, there was an Air Force
base up there. So I went in. And the manager was Snowshoe McManus.
Snowshoe McManus was a good old guy. And he got his reputation from
way back when. I mean, he was just a little old guy. He was no big
husky guy. But he had been a pioneer up there and grew up at the office
and went through his whole life there.
I remember we used to go to lunch. And we ate I think it was like
at a luncheonette at a supermarket, and that was it, when I was on
the comprehensive. We were coming out of there one day and a little
child --a little girl--is crying outside the store so we come out
and Snow Shoe takes her by the hand. He says, "I'll go this way
around the block and you go that way, and if you see a mother that
looks distraught tell her that I've got her child." And he took
the child went the one way and I went the other way. Sure enough we
found the mother and got the child back to her. But I thought later
we could have been picked up for kidnaping. That was the kind of guy
he was. He couldn't let something like that go by or, just take her
into the store and get the manager and say here this child's lost
you know. He'd take it upon himself. He was wonderful. |
However I went through at that
point, N.Y. style, on a comprehensive review. I had done many of them
in New York, and I was a pretty rough rider. If I didn't see something
I like, came 5 action items. So anyway I did a report on this office,
and I took it in to or I sent it in to Phil O'Brien, my report.
Well, he called me in. He looked at me he says "You wrote this
report on this office and Snow Shoe McManus."
I said "Yes."
"You don't realize, he said,
"that man stood out there on the highway in 1937 and thumbed
his way up and down the highway to get Social Security applications
into the hands of people so that they would get numbers and they would
start working this program. He started from nothing, zero, and built
himself up, and the organization up, and you have the nerve to come
along and give me all these action items that need to be done in order
to put this operation on an even basis. I don't understand it. I'm
not going to do turn this report in." That was the end of it,
the comprehensive review.
His whole philosophy was a shock for me and a lesson. Snow Shoe McManus
had earned his stripes. He wasn't going to see him be subjected to
any kind of, anything. He earned his place. And, respect him, and
the operation--it would survive. It was not what it could be, but
it wasn't like it was a derelict office. O'Brian had enough eyes on
it and kept touch with it that it was not the best performing office,
but it wasn't the worst.
What he was saying is that the values of these thing are not just
aiming for the best, just appreciate what has been done--which was
a lesson. That's what the old organization was: there was a lot of
feelings for the old timers, the pioneers. They really had done a
tremendous amount of work and under adverse conditions compared to
what happened later on, starting from nothing and building up an organization
like that.
Well anyway that was probably pretty much the most interesting part
of that to report to you. A short time later Pinkie Lupton, who was
Hugh McKenna's Deputy, arrived in Boston on a visit and said to me
"well you'd been here now 5 months and it's time, we think, for
you to come into Baltimore to get that kind of experience. So report
in like in two weeks or what ever." From there, from Boston,
I moved on down to Baltimore.
Q: Should we stop there?
Simermeyer: Yes.
Q: O.K. I think where we
left off is you were telling me the story of you comprehensive review,
and then we just left your assignment in Boston and Pinkie Lupton
came to get you to come into Central Office. And that's where we left
off.
Simermeyer: Pinkie didn't come to just see
me he was there on a visit and during the occasion of the visit he
told me that it was time for me to move on. So I went to Baltimore.
There I teamed up with Tom Hart. Tom Hart had come from the field,
he was in policy in Baltimore but that didn't qualify for central
office experience in Hugh McKenna's mind. So he had to come over and
work in Operations.
So he and I were there together and they put us together in a room
down adjoining the Post Office in the Operations Building, which is
very barren. He received a project which was sort of a base for us
to work on something. Mine was to restructure the Regional Office.
I don't think they had any idea of restructuring the Regional Office.
It was just kind of a exercise. I had to call for materials from Bob
Minick there, who was in charge of employee development and training,
as I recall.
I don't know what Tom Hart's project was. We were each on a separate
project. We worked a regular day, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Bob
Minick's section or branch--what ever they called it in those days--kind
of adopted us for meetings and things so we didn't feel isolated totally.
We went to their staff meetings, and we kind of engineered a few things.
Like the regional reps used to come in for meetings every quarter,
and we persuaded Mr. McKenna and the powers in the front office to
let us sit in on those meetings.
So we'd sit in, for example, three or four days while they met which
was a very interesting experience to see these, what were then the
most outstanding, (I mean outstanding like great, but like notable),
people in the whole field organization to watch them interact and
perform, because they were all old timers. They each had a role to
play. In fact they all sat in that ninth floor conference room. Each
had their own seat. If someone sat in the wrong seat that was a major
event. Then they would dialogue with Hugh McKenna and Pinkie Lupton
and those people on what was happening, what was going to happen.
So it was very interesting. It was a very good experience. Couldn't
duplicate it in any other kind of a situation. Well, anyway there...
Q: Tell me before you go on, do you remember anything about
those meetings? Can you give me a little bit of a sense of McKenna's
management style, or how those meetings went, or anything that stands
out any anecdotes, or any impressions that stand out besides what
you just said.
Simermeyer: Not specifically about.
First of all I didn't attend that many of them, because I went in
around October and I was moved out in January. So I only had a chance
to go to one of them.
Q: Okay.
Simermeyer:
So I was there about 4 months. Hugh McKenna is a very authoritative
person. He had an agenda, he had everything lined up the way he wanted
to present it. He did get feedback, he did let them talk, but he wasn't
about to have some kind of a democratic process where he took a vote
to decide to do this or that. It was pretty much getting clarification
on what his goals and objectives were. I think I could give more on
Hugh McKenna later since I interacted with him in a closer relationship
over the years.
We went through that and other kinds of activities that we could generate
for ourselves. If there was a meeting of some public affairs officers
or something we managed to finagle our way in so we could sit in the
back and listen and learn, ostensibly learn and get a feel for Baltimore
which is probably more meaningful than the projects we were working
on.
We had meetings then, regular meetings, my meeting was with Al Wells.
I don't know if you remember him. He was a old pioneer he was the
Assistant Director for Management I think, in the old DFO structure,(Note:
Bureau of District Office Operations, Division of Field Operations
and Management Assistant Bureau Director). He would ask me what I
was doing, and he would pontificate. He had a tremendous library of
old documents to date, he never saved them I don't think. You, as
historian, would have a field day. So he pulled some things out and
showed me what was happening. He gave me ideas and things.
While I was there,that's when I met Marie who was a secretary to Bob
Hughes who was the Executive Officer to Hugh McKenna. We just kind
of accidentally met each other when I was up in the suite up there.
And Rosina Cascio comically called it "Our Lady of Room 200."
Later "Our Lady of Room 500." Kind of presided over the
girls up there you know. Any way she was very cordial and friendly.
Incidentally I had met her when I was in New York on 51st Street,
in a job as Assistant Manager. Hugh McKenna sent her to the Region
to get some first hand look at the field offices and so forth. Charlie
Ferber and I--I remember--took her to lunch at this famous place,
Lindy's. The specialty was cheese cake. So we had a little rapport,
not a lot. She knew me, and she knew about me and so forth.
Anyway, when I came into the front office I saw Marie and you could
say our eyes met or something like that. But it wasn't that way exactly.
But we did strike up a conversation and than one or the other of us
suggested going out to dinner. So we did. From there the whole thing
kind of grew. I remember our first date was in this steak house, around
Mount Vernon. I don't know if it's still there or not. But afterwards
for want of something better to do we went to see the deceased Archbishop
who had died and was being laid out in the Cathedral.
Q:
Exciting date?
Simermeyer: It was unusual. It's
not something you would say you wanted to do to impress somebody.
But, we had nothing better to do. I lived in a boarding house, and
she lived with her mother and father. Later I switched off from the
boarding house and roomed with a guy called Harry Stoddard, who since
passed away but he was a very nice guy.
Q: When exactly
was this that you were there? What year was this. It was October to
February of ...?
Simermeyer: Well, my wife died
in 1960. I went into the intern program in 1961 and moved to Baltimore
in October 1961 and left Baltimore in January 1962. So we got along,
Marie and I got along very well--had to in fact because we became
engaged in a matter of two and one half months so that was amusing
to me.
I almost felt compelled to go and ask Hugh McKenna for permission
to get married. That's the kind of guy he was. I'm coming into his
office, here I am a intern and so forth. So I did. I didn't really
ask him permission. I just told him I thought we were getting along
very well and we would probably want to get married and so forth,
and he hurumphed a little bit, and said well ok. He didn't ask any
questions really. But it was only a matter of a week or two after
that I found out he was transferred to Cleveland, Ohio. That was my
next assignment. I don't know if there was any connection between
cause and effect. But, I didn't stay there long after that. So any
way those were the highlights of my Baltimore career.
I moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in January, totally naive. I went into
Cleveland and it was cold, but not too bad. I went into the Regional
Office; Byron Goetz was the Regional Representative. As soon as I
walked in he said to me, "Do you know how to conduct an FSEE
interview, Clams Rep interview? (A panel, chair a panel.) I said,
"Yes, I did that in New York when I was SAM in New York."
He said, "Okay, we need someone in Detroit right away."
Don Messmer who was the ARR for that area had taken ill, got the flu
or something, couldn't make it. They wanted an ARR up there to get
together with the managers and do the panel. So I just turned around
and got a travel order, turned around, went back to the airport, and
got a flight to Detroit where it was really bitter cold. I had a light
black rain coat, no boots or any thing like that. I didn't expect
snow. But it was snow and ice everything. They didn't do this out
of malice. They just wanted somebody there and they thought I was
smart enough to take of myself, I mean in terms of clothing myself.
But I got there and it was cold. I remember that so well.
I went downtown and met with Ben Wachter, who was the manager of Detroit
downtown. I walked in and explained who I was and why I was there
and so forth which was kind of a shock to these guys that here comes
this smart aleck from New York. You never get rid of that tattoo where
ever you go. So I walked in and I was about 35 years old, and he was
about 60 something. I told him I was going to chair the panel instead
of Don Messmer.
Don was a lovable old guy, but they used to buffalo him. In fact there
was a story that Chicago was region 5A in those days, Cleveland was
region 5B, and these guys from Detroit had set themselves up as region
5C. They thought of Messmer as their leader. So this kind of upset
their apple cart to have me walk in. They had no reason to other than
I wasn't the standard person. So any way we went through the panels.
They worked out alright. I didn't have any great problem and came
back to Cleveland and told Byron that I was going to get married in
April, and I would need some time off for that.
We decided before I left that we would do it in April because of Lent.
We had to wait until after Lent. So that meant 3 months of a commute.
He said okay. He set me up with what he called the bride's groom network.
He had had an ARR, Ray Jordan, who had passed away. He had another
intern there--George Dermott, and then he sent me out. Why they sent
two I don't know but they did. I came in after George.
So, Byron decided to divide up his territory. His territory was pretty
Northern and Eastern Ohio. They gave me a couple Cleveland offices
which were great, and Akron which was close by, and then I went East
to Youngstown and Ashtabulla and South to what later turned out to
be a new office, New Philadelphia, which they opened up while I was
there and Stubenville and Zanesville, and heading south came to Marretta,
Chilacopy, and Portsmith. So there was like a arc around eastern side
of Ohio.
The big offices that got most of the attention were in Cleveland.
The smaller ones I had to visit regularly but I knew Philadelphia
too. That's where I met I met Harry Overs. Smaller ones didn't take
as much time or attention. So it was a mix, and it was good. And I
remember the one office we were at, West 25th Street. The District
Office was upstairs in the Regional Office, and the manager was Maggie
Bolton, which means nothing to you. But Maggie was an old female dowager
manager, very set in her ways who again didn't see me coming in as
a smart New Yorker, you know, telling her what to do or how to do
it. And loved to pull my chain.
For example at that time Tony Celebrezze was the Secretary. He came
from Cleveland. Of course she knew Tony Celebrezze. So at Christmas
time I'd go up to see her and she'd pull out Christmas card greetings
from Tony and Ann celebrating whatever. She'd say "Did you get
your Christmas card yet?" Well she knew that no way I was going
to get a Christmas card. Little wrinkles like that made my life interesting.
So I had to deal with her but everybody in the Region knew her, and
what to expect and so forth. So I went through that routine working
up. We had to go visit every quarter, and so many comprehensive reports
you had to do and so forth. We had to have an agenda, have visit reports--a
whole lot of routine. Probably a lot of it's still in existence today.
But anyway to take care of my engagement I worked out a deal where
I would fly out from Cleveland to Baltimore on Friday evening and
meet Marie at the airport, and we'd drive to New York, where my children
were. My mother and father were looking after them. We'd spend the
weekend with the children and then Sunday night we'd drive back to
Baltimore. I'd stay overnight with my buddy and then the next morning
I'd fly from Baltimore to Cleveland and get there in time for the
staff meeting. And the next week instead of coming to Baltimore I
just went from Cleveland to New York and back.
It got a little bit harried as it went on from one week to another
to another, particularly with bad weather and other kinds of things.
But we got through that anyway to April and got married. Took Marie
out there and we got a little apartment in Palma, Ohio and we planned
to stay there through the summertime. And get a place and bring the
kids out and reestablish the family.
Q: Now was this a
permanent assignment in Cleveland or was it part of your interning?
Simermeyer: No not a permanent assignment. Yes, it was
a intern experience. It had no permanence to it.
Q: But
you were planning to stay there permanently at that time?
Simermeyer: No. I was just planning to stay there as long
as, I figured it was going to be a longer term than the ones I'd had
before in Boston or Baltimore. But I mean they didn't give me any
indication that I was going to stay a year or what. I got this place
in Parma and then in the summertime Byron gets that transfer to Chicago
and Paul Webb took his place.
When Byron moved out, he had a house in Bay Village that he vacated
on rather short notice. We had been there because he was very socialable
and friendly. We liked the house and it suited our needs so we made
a deal with the landlord to take over the house on a rent basis and
with no renovations. I repainted some of the rooms and things but
again no lease, no permanence, no nothing. So, in the fall the kids
came out, they got established in the school out there and so forth.
In the mean time, of course, Marie had gotten pregnant. She was due
to have a baby in January and she did, who was Maureen. She was born
January 26th or 27th. I get confused with the dates because it was
28 below zero, and snow and ice on the ground, and my car was frozen.
I had two cars one in the garage and one behind outside, and the gas
line froze, it was so cold. Couldn't get the car started.
She got a ride to the hospital from a nurse who lives down the street
who had seen her that day in the doctor's office. So, she went off
to have her baby. I came home and stayed with the family. Found out
about the new arrival by telephone call from the nurse who then came
out and got me and took me out to the hospital to see Marie and the
baby and so forth. Of course, I've heard about that ever since about
how I couldn't even be there when the baby was born. The fact that
was one of the coldest days I've ever seen.
Q: Well now
your on record with your version of the story.
Simermeyer:
She knows my version of the story. Doesn't matter. Anyway, it's all
in fun. So, we went on like that. She had the baby now we had three
other children so that was 4. She was doing well. Adjusting to life
in Cleveland because when she was home she was a only child and her
mother doted on her. I thought maybe that was the best thing that
could happen was to get her out of town so she would be on her own.
It was a little hard in terms of being thrown into the water and having
to learn how to swim. But she did very well.
So, we went on like that through 1961. I was working my network--1962,
I'm talking about. So we got on up through 1962. They made a cut around
the middle of 1962 on the ARR intern bit. They decided that they didn't
want to keep two there, and so they were going to transfer one. It
turned out to be George Demott who got transferred so he was gone
and then I took over his network. In fact George had part of that
network I described before; what I told you about was a full fledged
network after I had taken George's part over.
My part had been more, what I said was the bridegroom network. It
was more confined to the northern part of Ohio. They added the southern
part on after I got married and I was no longer a bridegroom. But
George wasn't too happy about that. There was no pass or fail, it
was just a matter of making a cut. So I stayed and he left. He went
down to Charlottesville. He transferred to Charlottesville with Maury
Duberry at that time.
So continued on in Cleveland on a permanent basis now into 1963 doing
what an ARR was supposed to do.
Simermeyer: There
are no particular highlights but in early 1963 Hugh McKenna asked
me if I wanted to participate in this NIPA (National Institute of
Public Affairs) program which was a year of graduate study. The Ford
Foundation was funding this program to give a year of graduate work
to people who had gotten into government but hadn't had a college
background, a training for government. Mine had been economics and
statistics and so forth it was not really government per se. So I
said yes, I'd be interested.
It was kind of a long drawn out process. You had to submit papers
and get recommendations and go through interviews by somebody who
happened to be in Cleveland who was on a board and got through that.
And then they decided that I would be eligible or selected, however
you want to say it. It was supposed to be quite an honor to participate.
There were 5 schools: Princeton, University of Virginia, and one or
two out West, I...USC. I remembered Princeton and University of Virginia
because I put my bid in for one of those two schools because I felt
they were more in the neighborhood, on the East coast anyway. I'd
never get back to see the family or anything else if we all transferred
out, moved out. So as it turned out it was not a great reason for
making a selection. But I had no other criteria to go on anyway. They're
all good schools. So they selected me for University of Virginia.
So I went down there in June and sent the kids back to my mother and
father for the summer. And they took them to Fairfield to a place
where they had a little beach place on the water. Marie and I packed
our belongings and went down to Virginia to find a place to live.
And it was very hard with the baby and three children in a college
town and only on a one year basis. We knew we were only going to stay
there one year. We could have left everything in Cleveland but we
had no real permanence in coming back to Cleveland.
I thought maybe this program would generate another new one some place
else. So we went down and found a place by luck and happenstance.
A nice rancher, close to the University. We joined up, I mean we took
a lease of 1 year. Put our things down there. I guess it was later
than June but it was more like early, late August. So in the meantime
the kids had to come back and get set up and go to school. And they
started school earlier down there then they did in Cleveland.
So I got a detail which was very thoughtful of them. They detailed
me to the Charlottesville Regional Office for about 4 or 5 weeks while
the kids were in school and before the program started. So, I got
to know Maury Duberry and the ARRs down there and staff people, and
I went out on some visits and did a comprehensive I remember in Richmond,
Virginia, having learned my lessons from Boston about how to handle
those things when you have a strange territory.
But I enjoyed the regional office there although Maury Duberry was
something else again. Maury wanted his ARRs to be traveling all time.
So he had his staff meetings on Saturday. He started 8:00 a.m. in
the morning and it was still going on at 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
These guys were, they didn't appreciate that at all. That didn't seem
right but he didn't want them to interrupt their office schedules
and business and things. He was a stickler for all that. A very nice
guy really, a little stodgy. But his ARRs were something else again.
I don't think some of them are alive today.
But, Jessie Lynn was from Beltbuckle, Tennessee. He used to put on
a accent about being a country boy. Irv Allen, I remember particularly.
He was a nice guy. He later retired or got out rather than move when
they later moved the Regional office to Philadelphia. But anyway,
I did my time there and then I went into the program in September.
There were 4 other interns or NIPA fellows; they were from Bureau
of Mines, Defense, Bureau of Prisons, some Defense outfit in Hawaii,
and one other--6 of us all together. And we got into this program
at the University of Virginia, and he gave us some flexibility.
This fellow named Herb Emerich was the facilitator. He was very well
known. I didn't appreciate him at that time, I mean his tremendous
background. But he was one of the principal staff people of Franklin
Roosevelt and had a history going way back to that time. And he was
doing this as sort of a semi-retirement thing. So he helped us along,
guided us, and counseled us, suggested programs for us. We had some
flexibility in some of the courses we took.
One was pretty much mandatory. It was called "The Processes of
Change." The professor was Paul David, who had an excellent reputation
in terms of elections--that is studying elections, nominations, all
the way through the election. He had written books and delivered lectures
and was an authority on the subject. But that's not what his program
was about. It was kind of a dynamic thing. We had about 6 of us and
then we had about 5 or 6 graduate students who were going through,
taking that course. And we had Professor David, and he had another
professor who was there on some kind of a not full time basis but
he was attending classes giving counsel and so forth. And anyway we
went through a whole tremendous range of subjects from Twinbe's books
to everything from the beginning of time all the way up to the present
and then try to predict the future.
Tremendous amount of reading, and tests weren't tests, they were essays
or how do you relate this, or how do you relate that? What do you
think of this and that? But we did very well. The other guys and we
all did very well. Maybe because we were all more mature then the
graduate students or maybe we were not as enmeshed in a lot of other
background and information and history. We just hit it cold. But of
course everybody came up to a tremendous problem after they tried
to predict the future. Everything is fine when you talking history
until you get up to the current and then you realize all the factors
that play into what makes the world go around in terms of everything--politics
and environment, etc.
Anyway that was a wonderful year because I was home everyday. We had
a corral at the University, where we had books where we would go,
and we would try to work an eight hour day, 8 a.m. to 4 or 8 a.m.
4:30 p.m. with time out for lunch. And we'd do research in the library
work in the corral, and try to not fudge it. We figured we were being
tested as a forerunner of a continuing program. So we did work along
and we would talk to each other and share things with each other.
But, that was the year too, that John Kennedy got shot. Everyone remembers
where and when. I was at the University; in fact got a call from Marie,
that she had heard it on television. We went out, of course now everybody
was tuning in on it, everything ground to a halt. But that was a traumatic
time. School shut down of course. We went through the whole experience.
We came up to New York for Thanksgiving, a week or two later, and
we drove through Washington. So we stopped at Arlington, went up to
the grave. There was snow on the ground at that point, really an early
snow fall. And at that point they had the servicemen's hats on the
grave. They had each had--Navy, Marine Corps, Army--each put their,
the guys in the honor guard put their, hats on the grave. I don't
think they had the eternal flame developed at that point. Anyway,
that was another moving experience.
We came back, finished the year at Charlottsville, really enjoyable
for a whole lot of reasons. And then in June came the "What's
next?" routine. They said "we don't have any plans for you,
other than go back to Cleveland and continue doing what you were doing".
So we packed up all the furniture again and sent the kids up to New
York for the summer, and then went out and bought a house in Bay Village,
a bigger house, 4 bedroom. We moved in and got established, and this
time they switched my network to Michigan from Ohio.
I got downtown Michigan: that was Detroit, Highland Park, Dearborne,
and going west to Kalamazoo and some other town out there. North to
Muskegon, Travis City, Grand Rapids, Lansing, on up to the Upper Peninsula
which was Eskanolva, and Markette, those were the district offices,
which was a good network but it wasn't a bridegroom's network anymore.
I had to travel from Cleveland to, if I wanted to take my car I'd
visit Detroit office in the southern tier of Michigan using my car.
But then after that came really elongated to get up to the other parts
so I'd usually fly up there which meant flying from Cleveland to Detroit,
and then maybe Detroit to Grand Rapids, and then Grand Rapids to Eskanolva,
and what they called at that time the Blue Goose, which was a Northwestern
Airline, or something. That was not like the Northwestern we have
now. It was Northern Michigan Airline--little twin engine planes,
you know bumpy rides. So I took that on and we went up through that
area. I had a lot good times there. I mean friendly people, and we
did our job and I don't remember any outstanding events there either.
Paul Webb in the meantime was the regional rep.
I was pretty well getting along and came up--that would have been
1964. Let's see. John Kennedy died in 1963 and I was in that job through
early 1965. Medicare was about to, I'll say, erupt. Bob Ball had decided
that he wanted to restructure the whole field. And he set up Regional
Commissioners for the first time in 1965. But he didn't set it up
in Cleveland, he set it up in Chicago because that was the home region
really. And we had 11 Regions and 10 Regional Commissioners. Cleveland
had no Regional Commissioner.
Paul Webb was really unhappy about that because he thought everybody
else got it, and he didn't. Got it meant the grade, prestige, and
the whole thing, and now he was subservient to the guy in Chicago
that he had been a peer with. Anyway, Paul negotiated with Baltimore.
He came in and made some visits and did some negotiating. He got himself
a job within BDI in charge of the Field Liaison Staff, I think they
called it, with a promise of a super grade. He said it was a promise
of a super grade. We never knew whether that really was, you know,
when or how that would happen.
The bottom line is that Paul left Cleveland. And now there was no
regional rep there. The turned around and offered it to me, in early
1965. First they had offered me a job in Kansas City about 6 months
before. I had gotten a phone call, I was out in the field. Hugh McKenna
doesn't call and say I would like you to do this. He says somebody
call and say Hugh McKenna would like you to do this you know. And,
so I said let me think about it, and I thought about it.
Meantime Marie was pregnant again. Now we had a baby, three children,
one on the way, and move to Kansas City which is another 500 miles
west of Cleveland. This was really tough. At that point, I would have
really liked to have the job, but I realized it was going to be a
family stress thing. So I called back and said "I'm sorry my
wife is pregnant and going to have a baby, and I can't see moving
her in the middle of all that going through a whole relocation project
because I had been relocating every year for the last couple years--to
Charlottesville and back to Cleveland. So he
said okay. But I figured in those days if you didn't go when they
said go, you didn't go period, and that was it. So I figured well
that's the way it is. But then sure enough three or four months later
this other thing opened up and they offered it. I took it. And then,
Medicare was about to explode. It was. It started in 1965 and I forget
when the legistration went through but...
Q: July 1965.
Simermeyer: Okay. So we started with a tremendous campaign
to enroll everybody in Medicare. I mean all senior citizens who were
eligible. That was a major effort, public relations wise, and workload
wise, and getting our staff up to handle it, and the consequent problems
of having enough space for the offices, and having enough offices,
anticipating the workload coming in. When did it? You said the legistration
started.
Q: Yes and implementation was a year later.
Simermeyer: 1966?
Q: We had a one year period
for it to take effect.
Simermeyer: So we had
one year to kind of tool up. But also to enroll people and that got
to be a real challenge. You know having meetings with managers and
meetings with groups in areas. The managers basically did most of
it but I was involved in some of that. Then...
Q: Did
we open a lot of new offices? Or some new offices?
Simermeyer:
Not a lot of new offices, but we had some expansion. It really
didn't come until some time later. And it came more as an evolution
from large district offices to branch offices. That's when they really
proliferated. This is kind of before that. But we had negotiations
with Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Michigan who appeared to be the
primary carriers and then Nationwide Insurance got Ohio. So we had
to meet with them and tried to have joint meetings and talk about
how we were going to handle things and so forth.
In the meantime we were facing a lot of opposition from the AMA and
other organizations. So we were trying to put that down. And trying
to persuade people to sign up for Medicare because there was a deadline,
I think it was the implication date to do it without a penalty. Also
to get enough people in to make it viable. If people hung back and
didn't sign up then you have all other kinds of consequences. So that
was probably the major challenge for us to do that.
I remember one time I wrote this letter, regional letter, to all the
managers and I titled it "Selling Medicare". I went through
a whole discussion of why we should get people signed up for Medicare--what
it meant, what the consequences would mean be if we didn't, etc.,
etc. And I sent it, of course a copy went to Central Office and they
thought it was great. They sent it over to Wilbur Cohen who was then
the honcho of Medicare as an example of what the field was trying
to do to put this program across. Back it came with a stinging rebuke
about "We are not selling Medicare. Medicare is not a program
that we sell like Sears and Roebuck sells bicycles or what ever."
He was totally throwing it back in our face.
Q: From Wilbur
Cohen?
Simermeyer: Yes. Wilbur or somebody on
Wilbur's staff, had Wilbur's name.
Q: Probably him.
Simermeyer: Probably. I'd say you know you can't win.
Some people think it's great, and some people don't.
Q:
He wanted you to just...? He wanted you to have to not sell it because
it's already the law? or what? What was his attitude?
Simermeyer: It was along that line, and you don't sell the
law. It's a matter of law. I don't know why he did it, maybe a bad
day the day before or something. Anyway it kind of deflated me. But
the message was out and it did, along with other things, take its
effect.
We came up to 1966 with this crash program. We were doing all kinds
of things like staying open the last week or two till midnight so
people could come in if they were working and sign up for Medicare,
and open on weekends and Sunday--things we had never done before.
We had been open on weekends but never on Sundays.
And so anyway we pulled it off, and Medicare got off the ground in
1966. Of course it was a very rocky ground. I mean, the carriers were
not up to taking on that workload. We had then tremendous problems--people
complaining we sent their bills in and they weren't paid, what happened?
Then communication with the carriers was not the best because they
had their own problems. They didn't want to spend all their time explaining
these things because that diverted resources from what they were trying
to do--set up a system.
Well it was just a typical hairy start-up problem that I think you
had to expect but we didn't. And we certainly didn't advertise it
that way. You know tell people that it was going to take 180 days
to pay a claim and so forth. We got a lot of flack for it because
all the adversaries, the AMA, and everybody else was saying see we
told you, it wasn't going to fly. Anyway we got that program up and
it was the major singular thing.
Another problem happened in SSA which was what was then called the
area offices got into a lot of trouble. They were, they didn't get
into it; it finally exploded on them. I forget exactly how the Medicare
impact hit them ,but I do remember one thing. For example, during
that time when Medicare was going in, they decided in Baltimore to
transfer the workload--the Ohio claims workload from Philadelphia
to Chicago, from Philadelphia area office to the Chicago area office.
You wouldn't relate to those days, but it was hard to get responses
from the area office. When you sent them a form you had to do it by
mail. You had no telephone line | |
www.socialsecurity.gov