CHICAGO (CBS) — The last CTA employee with a link to Chicago’s streetcar era has retired.
As WBBM Newsradio’s Bob Roberts reports, on Wednesday, the agency’s board will honor her decades nearly six decades of service.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s Bob Roberts reports
If you don’t remember streetcars on State Street, Madison Street, Halsted Street, Ashland Avenue and other Chicago thoroughfares, you’re forgiven. The last streetcars ran June 22, 1958.
But by that time, Mary Lyall had been a Chicago Transit Authority employee for nearly six years.
When CTA hired Lyall, the fare was 20 cents and ‘L’ trains on many lines were built primarily of wood.
While she worked in CTA’s payroll department, the agency retired three generations of ‘L’ cars, and is in the process of retiring much of the fourth generation.
CTA spokesman Steve Mayberry said that when she left her job Jan. 1, Lyall had 11 years of seniority on the next most senior CTA employee.
The technology Lyall used also changed. She was hired to operate a comptometer, a mechanical forerunner of the calculator.
As technology changed, so did Lyall’s job. She became a keypunch operator, and retired as a payroll clerk who used a desktop computer.
While Lyall’s career is certainly among the longest in CTA history, Mayberry said the distinction of being the all-time longest-serving employee belongs to another former payroll department employee, now deceased. The late Carmella Petrella worked for CTA for 63 years.
