Working in York County — for 30 years or more
This morning I grabbed a cup of hot tea at Round the Clock Diner, 222 Arsenal Road, and chatted with Cy Zimmer, a retired Yorktowne Paper employee from the Pleasureville area, who gets coffee and breakfast every morning at the diner.
Zimmer worked for Yorktowne for 44 years. He has seven children — one lives in Texas, one lives in Ohio and five live in York County. He also has nine grand children and one great-grandchild.
Zimmer has lived and worked in York County all his life. He said between 1956 and 1957 — when he was “just a kid” — he worked part-time in the mail room at the York Dispatch.
In addition to his time at Yorktowne, Zimmer volunteered for 35 years at Commonwealth Fire Co. in Pleasureville. He said he doesn’t know why his children didn’t follow in his footsteps as volunteer firefighters, because it was something he enjoyed.
I also met up with Joe Lehr, Mel Breeswine, John Mosser, Charles Dowell, Don Herman, Dick Fornoff and Tom Lickty, a group York Water Co. retirees shown in the picture above. (They told me not to break my camera while taking their picture — I could tell they like to joke around with each other a lot, and I’m glad they even included me in on the fun.)
They meet the second Monday of each month at Round the Clock, so I luckily picked the right Monday to visit the diner.
The men said they were employed by York Water for between 29 and 40 years, but most were there for more than 35. They joked that Don Herman is the “baby” of the group — after 29 years with the same company! He said he was just a hair shy of 30 years.
I was impressed by the amount of time the York Water guys and Zimmer put into their work. I think the small sample of retirees I met today says a lot about the work ethic of many people in York County.
I’m glad I got to meet with these men and I look forward to meeting more people and learning even more about York County in the future.
Also of interest
See what people on Facebook had to say about working in the county for decades