Mark Edward Westerfield, 70, 11-6-22 Postcard
Mark Edward Westerfield, 70, 11-6-22 ... When I lost my job of 30 years due to plant closing, I chose to accept a government grant for retraining due to parts of our work being taken out of the country. We printed many of the most famous whiskey / whisky / liquor labels in the world. I began there at age 21 and the plant closed at my age 51. We operated very large offset lithographic printing presses. I was able to work in my position on every press in the plant main pressroom. We were union and so generally we were placed weekly by seniority however that happened to work out. I never knew week to week which press I might end up scheduled to work on nor with which co-workers nor which shift, nor how many hours. We had three shifts but fewer were assigned to 3rd shift so often I ended up staying over on 2nd shift to finish press runs and or to wash up the press. Over the 28 of the 30 years, according to the plant manager, I worked more hours each year than anyone else there. The number of hours I put in each week varied from 40 to 90 hours. Only two times I worked 90 hours. A few times I worked between 80 and 90 hours. Several times I worked between 70 and 80 hours. Many times I worked between 50 and 70 hours. Mostly I worked between 40 and 50 hours each week. Needless to say it was difficult to maintain a relationship under the circumstances. I had to be careful as we had many awful accidents there where employees were badly hurt. At plant closing my friend told me I was lucky to get out of there in decent condition. The entire 30 years there I was very openly gay. At first it seemed unlikely that I was going to be working there very long. I intended to save my money then get out of this town. But, I tried to get along and shockingly was still there 30 years later. Since the new buyer was taking some of our work to Mexico and to Canada we were given the opportunity to move to Kentucky or to accept up to $7000 grant for retraining. I took the latter and took art classes at our local community college where I graduated top of my class in 2005 at my age 53 1/2. Surprising my co-workers, I also had the highest math placement allowed there as well as a rare high geometry score. Sometimes my classmates compared my drawings, paintings, or computer art to that of our teachers. One teacher who was the chair of fine art told me I would make a fine art teacher in his department. I received one academic scholarship from another of my teachers who was chair of her department who told me that no one had ever worked as hard in her classes. I was also openly gay in those classes so it was a challenge. One rich couple in one of my classes offered to help me go to the art school in Chicago where they were friends of a teacher there. But, I took the first job I could and that was for a warehouse job where we received tractor replacement parts from suppliers all over the world and divided up the bulk parts into counts for orders from world wide dealers. There I was made a trainer and lead and was there 3 1/2 years when that company closed as the work went to another company here. The first company wanted me to transfer to another town to stay in the company but I did not wish to move nor to leave my mom here so I hired in to the new company where I moved up at one point to be the lead auditor over all buildings at the facility and all shifts there. Then that facility changed work so I transferred to the facility getting most of the work which happened to be back in the building where I began doing this work at the previous company. The managers asked me to continue auditing work there and I chose to stay on one of the lines to allocate the one line and audit it too. I was still at that company to almost my age 70 when I suffered a severe emergency brain hemorrhage on June 17, 2022, at home. I passed out but came to enough to call 911 and get an ambulance. I was in neurology at the hospital 3 weeks and was sent to physical therapy for 2 weeks. Miraculously my mind was unharmed, my facial appearance was unharmed, but, I (temporarily) lost my ability to walk, lost my balance, and lost strength in both my legs. I lost 23 pounds. By the 3rd week I was trying to relearn to walk and began physical therapy to regain strength in both my legs enough to be able to use a walker, so I could get home to help my 90 year old mom who was crippled by Polio in high school and now is 90 needing me to help her get food for her. I was unable to help her for the 5 weeks I was in medical care. Fortunately, I was still able to drive OK so I could go get us groceries. I am off all my prescriptions and have been for the past 3 1/2 months since my discharge. For the past 3 months I have been able to walk without the walker. For the past 2 1/2 months I have been able to walk around the block without the walker between 1 and 8 times a day most days. 3 weeks I mostly walked 8 times around the block most days. One difficulty was having to endure being on a catheter a week in hospital and a far worse week in nursing home where it became infected causing excruciating pain and lack of sleep. It took 4 days to 'culture' the infection and wait a day for the doctor to approve the antibiotic then 4 days for the antibiotic to work. Meanwhile I hardly got any relief to sleep as the infection kept blocking the catheter preventing relief and had to be flushed out in middle of each night before I could sleep. It was unbearable, until the catheter was finally pulled out a week early and the antibiotic could take effect to clear up the painful infection. My total medical bills passed over $406,000 of which I paid over $4,000. They have all been paid off. Some $402,000 was paid by my employer work medical insurance. The government insurance did not have to pay anything. I am OK. I still have the full social security and the remains of two greatly reduced pensions (from where I worked 30 years). This online store helps me a lot to get by now. I had three decent checks since my medical discharge. I began as a zazzle designer first months of 2016 ... some 6 5/6 years ago as I write this. Some of my early images are from 6 5/6 years ago on zazzle and am not sure where those files are at home. Most of those came from when I went to my community college art classes in 2004 2005 ... so 17 or 18 years ago. My Cat Face drawing was done at my age 15 ... over 55 years ago! I have over 10,300 items on zazzle now. Unfortunately, sales have not been the best. I did start to have surprising sales in all of 2018 but apparently there were issues beyond my comprehension for that buyer who sadly decided to go elsewhere. I began having better sales in 2020 during the pandemic but that seems to have passed. I am hoping to have good sales this Christmas season yet.
Powered by Zazzle