Promote Yourself With Better Grammar

Promote Yourself

with better Grammar

I N T H E N E W S

Yonkers Progress
February 2002

Yonkers Chamber of Commerce - Women of Excellence recognizes Elizabeth McFadden with the Business Professional of the Year award

     Eleven years ago Elizabeth McFadden gave up a successful career as a telecommunications specialist to help take care of her seriously ill Mother and, at the same time, also help in managing the Manpower Education Institute.

      As part of the new work, she assisted in publishing READY OR NOT, a retirement planning guide and the nation's most popular publication on retirement. Now she is the editor of the book. Under Elizabeth's direction, the 29th yearly edition of READY OR NOT rolled off the presses this January 2002 completely updated with information, ideas and suggestions on retirement issues of concern to everyone. Its customers have subscribed repeatedly over many years, and are some of America's leading educational institutions, hospitals and pension funds.

      Two years ago, with the sponsorship of Verizon and WNBC, Elizabeth assembled a team of grammar specialists to produce a new publication entitled PROMOTE YOURSELF with Better Grammar. PROMOTE YOURSELF is designed to assist everyone improve their grammar usage. It benefits students for the preparation of essays and reports, parents who want to help their children with homework and those in the business world.

      A woman of many interests and abilities, Elizabeth now has some new accomplishments to add to her record of achievement, this time in the field of housing. After years of litigation, the Federal Court has finally authorized the construction of Yonkers Green, an affordable home-ownership housing development which has been sponsored by St. Joseph's Church. Elizabeth is the co-developer for these very much-needed additional homes.

      Elizabeth was graduated from Regis College with a major in History. She has continued her study in this discipline through reading and research and is now Chairperson of the Crestwood Historical Society and a Trustee of the Yonkers Historical Society. She extends a warm welcome to anyone who loves local history, who wants to learn about our great city in which they live, and who would like to meet interesting people.

      An avid skier and swimmer, Elizabeth has also been a volunteer lifeguard. Certified by the Yonkers Y, she has given her services as a lifeguard for the past ten summers. She shares her passion for swimming with children and, for more than two decades, has taught countless youngsters the joy of swimming.

     Each year, the Business Professional Award is presented to a woman who has not only achieved her business goals, but has served as a mentor encouraging others to reach for their goals as well. As evidence of this, Elizabeth volunteers on the Advisory Committee at the Elm Street After School Program, helping young people reach success in the future by making good choices in the present. In addition, she has mentored a number of professionals, both men and women, empowering them to reach beyond their current status and achieve higher levels of success in their respective professions. All this is done, not as part of her professional responsibilities, but rather through the friendships she develops as she quietly goes about her everyday life.

      Elizabeth and her husband, Carl Koch, have been Yonkers residents for the past 18 years and love living here.

A Life of Work

Former New York labor commissioner still going strong at 80

by JOHN BURGER

James J. McFadden's nearly 60 years of work on labor issues began with a simple act of volunteering. One thing led to another, and soon he had a job. And a string of opportunities led to a position as New York City commissioner of labor.

He never forgot the lesson, and he likes to share it with others. "The first person that a volunteer helps is himself or herself," he said in an interview. "The volunteer meets people, expands his horizons, learns new things and is given recognition."

McFadden's résumé of initiatives is impressive. But, he said, "I feel like I've never worked a day in my life. Everything I ever did, I enjoyed doing."

And at 80 he keeps doing.

One theme has run through nearly every project he's undertaken: helping others improve themselves. His latest project is based on a simple yet unavoidable fact: People who communicate well do better in every facet of life. This is especially true in an age when communication is a major part of the economy.

Concerned that education standards were falling and that students were not graduating with essential grammar skills, McFadden secured backing from NBC and Verizon and produced "Promote Yourself," a basic grammar review guide.

The Wall Street Journal, recognizing the importance of communication in business, praised the effort in an editorial. The guide contains endorsements from WNBC president and general manager Dennis Swanson and Verizon's New York and Connecticut group president Paul A. Crotty.

"To communicate ideas effectively, indeed to support the fabric of a harmonious society, we must first master the language of our American culture," Swanson said. "This all begins with the power of the printed word, the essence of the ‘Promote Yourself’ project."

"If you express yourself well in speaking and writing, chances are you are the one who's going to be hired and get the better job and promotion," McFadden said.

More than 2,000 individuals have ordered the book since it debuted a month ago; half are parents who want to help their children in their school work. St. John's University plans to feature it in it's freshman retention program, and the City University of New York will use it in tutorial centers.

Asked for his reflections on Labor Day, McFadden, a member of St. Margaret of Cortona parish in the Bronx, first focused on individuals. He believes one's best insurance against unemployment in an age of mergers and downsizing is to continue gaining skills. "Take advantage of any educational training programs now while you have a job," he advises. "Be a lifelong learner. Develop transferrable skills."

That was his focus when he was commissioner of labor in the early 1960's. He created Volunteers for Learning as a person-to-person approach to solving joblessness and appear on television to encourage people to help just one other person acquire job skills.

He would like to see more family- and children-friendly policies, and he advocates tax credits for all parents - even larger than the $1,000 being considered in Congress. He also thinks day care allowances should be for all mothers, not only those who work outside the home.

Son of an Irish immigrant father, McFadden believes immigration is good for both the economy and the country. "We're lucky to have attracted people who want to take a chance," he said. "They've remade the United States. There would be no Silicon Valley without it."

But he opposes bilingual education, believing an immigrant who learns English from the start is better off in the long run.

Born in Altoona, Pa., McFadden studied political science at the University of Notre Dame during the Depression, thanks to his parents and aunts pooling their resources. He became interested in the labor movement and volunteered to help the Committee for Industrial Organization (the CIO, which later merged with the American Federation of Labor to form the AFL-CIO) organize railroad workers in Altoona. When the chief organizer found he was a Notre Dame grad, he referred him to Phil Murray, CIO president. Murray, a big Notre Dame football fan, offered McFadden a job on his staff in Pittsburgh.

Meanwhile, on a visit to Washington, D.C., he met Helen Nieters at a dance at The Catholic University of America. The couple married in 1944 and had seven children. Mrs. McFadden died in 1993.

In 1948, after jobs investigating unfair labor practices for the National Labor Relations Board, and as national representative of the Textile Workers Union of America, he volunteered as chairman of the labor committee on Harry S. Truman's presidential campaign. He shared a large office in Manhattan with the chairman of the campaign's veterans committee, Robert F. Wagner Jr.

When Wagner ran for Mayor of New York in 1954, he asked McFadden to run his labor committee, and when he was elected he appointed him chief mediator for labor disputes. He worked his way up to become director of the mayor's committee on job advancement and, in 1962, labor commissioner. He also was chairman of the mayor's committee on the exploitation of workers, and a complaint that came before the committee, from a woman who was denied a pension, led to a state law which required vesting after 10 years. It has since been reduced to five.

As commissioner, he established programs to help the unemployed, including the Job Talent Center to open professional and technical job opportunities for minorities in private industry. Many businesses at the time complained that they could not find qualified African-Americans and Puerto Ricans to fill positions. But members of black fraternities in the city approached McFadden, saying they had a lot of qualified people, so McFadden had them put their résumés on file.

The office eventually had 3,000 résumés on file, and the labor office notified companies that they had qualified people. A front-page story in The New York Times story caught the attention of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent representatives to the office to find minority federal employees.

McFadden, who had been a member of the Catholic Interracial Council since 1947, also pushed for advertising to show more African-Americans, something almost unseen in the early 1960s. He reasoned, "If you don't feel you're part of it, you're less apt to desire to belong, study to belong, train and make the effort to belong."

After leaving city government in 1966, McFadden founded the Manpower Education Institute to develop job-related educational training programs. In addition to the grammar guide, efforts have included a high school equivalency course, a reading skills improvement series, a video helping young people adjust to their first job and a documentary on the American labor movement.

McFadden was a member of the National Panel of Arbitrators of the American Arbitration Association from 1965 to 1990 and in the 1980s founded the American Catholic Committee with theologian Michael Novak, former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr., and former Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce. The group conducted forums on family issues and issued position papers in support of nuclear deterrence over a nuclear freeze, and private sector initiatives to tackle economic problems.

Manpower also is helping St. Joseph's Housing Corp. develop Yonkers Green in Westchester, which plans to break ground this fall. Father Patrick M. Carroll, former pastor of St. Joseph's parish in Yonkers and chairman of the housing corporation, said he appreciates McFadden's personality, insights and efforts. "The meetings he goes to, the push and shove...without him we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are at the moment," he said.

McFadden advises people to prepare for a longer work life because the Social Security retirement age is gradually being raised and people are living longer. He likes a new trend he sees, phased-in retirement, moving to part-time work before retiring. "It helps your finances and keeps you active," he said.

Manpower publishes a retirement planning guide, "Ready or Not," edited by McFadden's daughter, Elizabeth McFadden, 45, director of the institute.

"If you maintain social relationships with friends, have something constructive to do that you are interested i doing, maintain an optimistic outlook on life and walk every day, you've got it made" in retirement, McFadden explained. "But people should do that now, develop interests now."

Catholic New York August 31, 2000 Page 21