Heat and Frost Insulators
and Allied Workers Local 16
Organized Labor
Dec 2008
Timothy Purcell, Journeyman Mechanic, 27 years My father was an insulator for 30 years. After high school, I put three years in the Navy and then got my chance to get in the trade. Back then it was kind of a family thing. I was living with my dad, and the business agent would call and ask him if I could work. My father was old school. They would cover the pipe in tarpaper and wrap wire around it a few times. They understood watershed theory and their work holds up pretty well. But working with that tarpaper can be pretty messy. What I really got from my dad was a work ethic. Today, even in my prime, I don’t think I could have outworked my father when he retired at 62. He was just a real hard-working man. On the weekends he would spend his time working on his house or go over to my sister’s and help her out. He was swinging a pick ax a few months before he died at 72. No one ever said a bad word about my father. A lot of times the work feels like déjà vu. The refineries and power plants inspect everything on a regular basis to see how the welds and 90-degree bends are holding up. So a lot of times you go back to the same job you did years before. Everything was removed so they could see what was going on underneath. We cover it back up and you think, “Didn’t I do this once before?”