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Valley man struggles but remains thankful
YOUNGSTOWN
Richard Blose thinks he’s had it better than a lot of baby boomers trying to pick up the pieces of their lives after they lost long-term jobs.
Blose, 60, was 58 when the Denman Tire & Rubber Co. in Leavittsburg closed in 2010 after bankruptcy.
His last day on the job was Feb. 5, 2010. He had worked there 35 years.
Blose, of Warren, was out of work for two months before he took a maintenance job at a Warren McDonald’s restaurant making minimum wage. He said the job was, at his age, sometimes physically difficult because two days a week he unloaded supply trucks and rotated supplies inside the restaurant.
Today, he continues to work for close to minimum wage cleaning at Avalon Lakes properties in Howland, Vienna and Sharon, Pa.
When he left Denman, he was earning $17 per hour and had health benefits, which he’s not had since.
Still, Blose considers himself “one of the lucky ones” because he was able to start collecting his Denman pension in June 2010, which along with unemployment, enabled him to nearly equal his income while working. Also, his wife, Stephanie, works as a receptionist/office worker in a doctor’s office.
“Things have been financially tight. There have been no major sacrifices, but we’ve had to scale back. We don’t go out to eat as often, and we can’t do as much for our grandchildren,” he said.
“At this point in my life, this is not what I expected. I expected to be self-sufficient and enjoying myself. But it could have been a lot worse,” said Blose, who is hanging on until he is eligible for Social Security and Medicare.
Lee DeVita, 40, is a few years shy of being a baby boomer, but when the housing market hit the wall he went from flying high to wondering if he would ever get a steady job again.
DeVita, of Masury, owned a number of rental properties and was also in real-estate sales when the bottom fell out of the economy.
“I was doing pretty well, but in 2006 I started to see some changes,” he said.
DeVita sold some of his rentals in 2006-2007 because his tenants were having problems paying their rent. He stayed in sales, but wasn’t going anywhere there either.
He went from one job to another. Ironically, he worked on construction projects for some of the guys that used to work on his rental properties.
“They helped me out,” he said.
He went through his savings, his home was foreclosed on, he has spoken to an attorney about filing for bankruptcy, and he and his young daughter are living with his mother. He sold everything of value he had and was considering selling his blood.
But things took a turn for the better last October when he was hired as a part-time housing development coordinator for Help Hotline Crisis Center and a few months later promoted to full-time status.
He is making less money than when things were going well but said he is thankful to be with Help Hotline.
“I couldn’t be happier. I enjoy who I work with, my co-workers and the mental-health consumers. I get a lot out of working with them. It has taken me in a different direction,” he said.
His experience has changed his outlook on a lot of things.
“I am now very cautious. I’ve been at Help Hotline since October, but I’m still looking over my shoulder. I’m very fearful of losing my job. I don’t ever want that to happen again,” said the single father.
DeVita said when his daughter was born in 2001, he didn’t think he would have too many concerns about taking care of her.
“You feel like a letdown to your family and yourself. Now my daughter watches how I react. She could see the stress in my eyes; and now that I’m working, she can see that I am not so stressed,” said DeVita, a 1990 graduate of Brookfield High School.
“It’s back to square one. What I thought was going to be just isn’t,” he said.
“ It was as bad as it could possibly be. There were thoughts in my head that I never thought I would have. It it wasn’t for Help Hotline, I don’t really know what I would be doing,” he said.