The Man Sitting Beside Me

Spring of this year will mark the 41^st year I have been involved in the electrical industry here in Montana.  I must say, I have enjoyed my entire career.  I sincerely mean that.  I have worked with some of the most generous and intelligent people inhabiting this blue planet.   My union membership provided me with a safe work environment, decent pay, health insurance, excellent training, opportunity, and now—best of all—retirement benefits I will reap within a few months.

I have a story about those benefits.

In May of the long ago year in which I started my electrician’s apprenticeship, I attended my first union meeting.  As luck would have it (bad luck, I assumed at the time), contract negotiations were underway.

The meeting turned somewhat heated.

Well, it all sounded like nonsense to me.   A bunch of young guys stood up and bellowed about putting an upcoming raise “on the check.”  Most insisted they would take care of their own retirement and do better.   A bunch of old guys stood up and urged applying some of the raise to retirement programs—the only certain way to guarantee money will be waiting for you in the end.

I must have looked bored, maybe a bit shell-shocked.  The man sitting beside me (a man somewhere near the age I am now) nudged me.  “You should pay attention to this,” he suggested.  “When you get to be my age, you’ll wish more of every raise went to retirement benefits.”

I didn’t respond to the man, but I never forgot what he said.  Actually, today, what he said very near haunts me.  The closer I near reaping my benefits, the more I think of him and what he told me—the absolute truth of it.  Not more than two days ago, I told this story to a young man before urging him to consider his own retirement plans.  I often urge younger people to think about their retirements.  I am so thankful for all the old timers who caused me to consider mine and who insisted on applying money to retirement programs.  I didn’t even know the man sitting next to me at that meeting, but he was my brother.

-- Mitchell Hegman