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CARES Elfers Center retired Volunteer Coordinator
Jan Fix
Jan recently retired as Elfers Volunteer Coordinator after taking on that responsibility for 10 years.
Jan grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and was a young bride at 20. Her husband was in the National Guard and was shipped overseas in 1940, soon after their marriage. Jan also joined the service in 1942 and served for 3 years. She trained in Des Moines, Iowa in the WAC and then spent 5 months in Daytona, Florida training recruits, drilling them in marching. From there she went to Lawrenceville, Illinois and served in the Air Force for 2 ½ years as a drill sergeant for 150 WAC's. Now we know where she got that air of authority!
There were some lighter moments, notably the concerts given for the troops. Jan remembers seeing many stars of those days, including Doris Day and Les Brown. Sadly, her husband was killed in 1944, far away in New Guinea.
Three years later Jan remarried and has four daughters, one of whom is well-known to Elfers, her daughter Chris. When the youngest was 8 years old, she went to work for the U.S. Post Office where she worked the night shift as a clerk in the office. Jan remembers writing letters for her supervisors, correcting their spelling etc. That was a very busy time of her life when she worked at night and cared for a family between naps during the day.
Jan retired from the Post Office after 25 years and straightaway moved to Florida with her sister Kay. After living in Pine Ridge for a year, both sisters bought condos in Sunnybrook where Jan met Eve Wichmanowski of the CARES Claude Pepper Center on Van Buren Street. Eve was looking for volunteers for the center and Jan stepped up. She was at the Claude Pepper Center for 5 years. She left for a while and spent a year at Deaf Services. Then she returned to CARES and spent two years at the main office. After taking a vacation, Jan joined the Elfers Senior Center in 2000.
Jan is still with us, tirelessly working the front desk on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. Thank you Jan for all your years of service and, since we need you, we wish you many more!
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Denton Croft
I was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I spent my first two years in the flourishing metropolis of Kirkman, Iowa. That flourishing came to an end when ten percent of the population (my dad, mother and myself) moved to Alamogordo, New Mexico. We moved on average once a year during the war years, ultimately ending up in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio.
After High School I went to work for Western Electric (part of AT&T) installing telephone switching centers. After a year of running cable the size of an automobile drive shaft the novelty of working for a living wore off and I joined the Air Force. After basic training I spent a year at the U.S. Army Language School in Monterey California. Then three years in Germany. Finally back to the USA and building telephone offices. Periodically we would run out of telephone offices in Dayton and would have to travel to other cities, like itinerate fruit pickers in search of crop.
These nomadic episodes took me throughout the eastern part of the US including one memorable stint in beautiful midtown New York City, 48th and Lexington to be precise. It was about this time that Popular Electronics came out with a series of articles on building computers at home. Coincidentally AT&T started building computers in Telephone offices. After installing a few of the computerized switching systems, the management felt the company would be better off if I taught it instead of doing it. The training center I taught at was in Dublin, Ohio (a suburb of Columbus, Ohio), but I had a lot of assignments to customer premises. I got sent to Calgary, Canada in the winter and Mexico City in the summer.
One spring I spent a month in China. After 40 years with Western Electric/AT&T I retired to New Port Richey, Florida and volunteered to teach computer classes a few hours a month at Elfers Senior Center. Somehow that has expanded to a nearly full time, but the people I have met have made every minute a delight.
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