Dear Friend Lost His Retirement and House from Lack of Our Compassion in U.S.
I saw that an old friend of mine, Bob, had a birthday on FB the other day. I dropped him a line and was happy to see that he is still working full time, he was 73 yesterday.
When he was about 62 or so, Bob (and I) got laid off from Fluor. After his Cobra expired, his wife got very sick with fibromyalgia and later cancer. Not being able to buy insurance for her because she had a pre-existing condition, he went first through his retirement to keep her alive and then he mortgaged his house and lost that also. Around 65, he was broke, homeless, and still had a sick wife.
Let me tell you about Bob. He was a metallurgical engineer that worked in the copper smelting industry when it was booming. At the time of our graduation, the copper industry in Arizona alone produced more copper than the rest of the world put together. It was a good career and people with degrees in Metallurgical Engineering often got THE top salary offers their senior year. Life was good. Over the next few decades environmental regulations, high wages, falling ore grades, and outsourcing drove the industry out of America. For decades after that people with metallurgical degrees traveled the world and used their expertise to get a lot of projects going in South America, Australia, and all around the world. Bob was in Australia. Then the good times ended. Jobs were hard to find and American metallurgists were old. They were laid off right and left. I don’t know how many times Bob was laid off.
I met Bob in Denver for supper one night has his finances were going down the tube, unable to find work, unable to buy insurance, and with a sick wife. I asked him out for supper. He told me he had no money to go out with me. I asked him for sushi and told him I would get the tab. Bob, liked sushi, he loves ginger -- I assume from his days in Australia where a lot of ginger is grown. That night in Denver, I took a couple of pieces of my ginger and gave the rest to him to eat. I tear up thinking about how grateful he was for the ginger … and the sushi. I can’t eat ginger without thinking of Bob until this day.
Bob a year or two after that dinner got a job, he is now 73 and still working at a power plant in Tucson. What happened to Bob was not his fault. If he lived in a more compassionate society like exists in most of the civilized world, for example, Australia, England, Denmark. Switzerland, Germany, etc. he would not have lost life savings trying to keep his wife alive. Bob had done everything by the book, he simply lived in a country that still largely lacks compassion. Bob used to be a very conservative, Republican. I wonder what he thinks about Republicans now as they keep trying to repeal Obamacare - which came too late for him.
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