By Rosemary Mueller, March 14, 2019 — I always knew I would be a secretary one day. My parents bought me a typewriter for my eighth-grade graduation and told me to be one someday. So at St. Michael’s High School, in my junior and senior years, I took secretarial classes. When I graduated, my brother was already at Seton Hall University, but I always dreamed about going to Berkeley Secretarial College after high school. However, my parents couldn’t afford to send us both to college, and those were the days when money was prioritized on the sons for education rather than spread out equally. I knew that there was no way we would be able to afford for me to get a four-year degree and become a teacher or a nurse like some of my classmates, but that with hard work, I could make it possible to fulfill my dream of becoming a secretary.
I remember vividly my mother making a phone call to Berkeley, sobbing through the call, saying that her daughter always wanted to attend the school, but that she couldn’t afford it. It was $65 dollars a month for tuition. So, my mother worked her magic and made a deal so that if I stayed after classes and helped correct papers for the teachers, they would deduct $500 off my tuition for the year.
So, off I went to this new school in East Orange, New Jersey. I took two buses each way in not-so-safe neighborhoods. I was so excited to be accepted to such a good school, even though I didn’t fit in with the snooty girls that all seemed to have the proper clothes that their parents paid for.
Berkeley had a policy that they would place you with a job after graduation, so I was given the names of five companies to start off with. The first on the list was the American Insurance Company in Downtown Newark, New Jersey. It was the school’s policy to wear white gloves and a pillbox hat to your interview. The look on the girls’ faces when I walked in was unbelievable — they all looked like they were about to ask “what are you wearing?” They really had a good laugh at my expense. But I was dressed like Jackie Kennedy, and everybody admired her.
I was happy to get a job in the American Insurance Company’s legal department but frightened to death that I wouldn’t know what I was doing or if I could handle all of the work. But, my boss turned out to be the kindest nicest, most compassionate person that anyone could ever hope to meet. I loved my job and was proud to be a secretary since I excelled in all of the skills necessary to be one, like typing quickly and writing in shorthand, both of which I can still do.
To add a sad note to all of this, though, after working there for a few months over the loudspeaker came the bulletin that our beloved president JFK, on a political trip to Texas on November 22nd, 1963, would pass away. Everyone in the company was sent home immediately, glued to their TVs for the next solemn three days. I vividly remember watching the funeral procession and will never forget that day at the office.