Golden years bring kudos
Worcester native, 71, named Bay State’s outstanding older worker
Sitting in his Briden St. office at Columbia Tech in Worcester, William Joseph Heffernan shuffles neatly organized folders of work orders and personnel files between piles as he yells instructions to a project manager in the hallway. He would get up and do it himself, but with his ankle braces, it would take too much time for the frenetic 71-year-old. And Joe is a busy man, one who delights in the simple rewards of hard work, and the pride of a job well-done.
"I enjoy new challenges," he says. "I don’t golf, or watch TV, so I don’t know what I would do if I weren’t working."Experience Works, a non-profit organization that specializes in training low-income workers over 55 to take on new jobs, will recognize Heffernan in October as Massachusetts Outstanding Older Worker of the Year.
At a dinner in Washington D.C., he will have the chance to meet other individuals from all 50 states who, like himself, have found work to be the most rewarding activity of their golden years.
He’s been doing it a long time, longer than most. Heffernan says he cannot remember a single day in the last six decades that he has not been gainfully employed. In that time, he has owned and run two businesses. For 23 years, Joe ran Heffernan Press Inc., a printing company started by his father that Joe managed for 23 years before selling in 1990. He also owned a food distribution service called Snow Village, which he sold before joining Columbia Tech in 1995, where is now a resource manager.
At Columbia Tech, which does contract manufacturing for other companies, Heffernan gets the chance to use the skills he perfected in his more than 50 years in the working world. He oversees more than 100 workers on various assembly lines throughout the company. It’s something he’s always been good at it, and it’s a task that he has never found monotonous.
Heffernan says he especially enjoys managing a multi-ethnic workforce at Columbia Tech, one that requires multi-lingual project managers who can speak with workers whose native languages include Vietnamese, Spanish and Albanian. He also enjoys the frantic pace of helping to grow a company whose employment over the last several years has grown from 50 to 300 people.
But mostly, he just enjoys the chance to be challenged, he says, and that’s why he routinely works 11- to 12-hour days.
Michelle White, spokeswoman for Experience Works, says Heffernan exemplifies the spirit of the award, reserved for someone over 65 who works more than 20 hours a week and makes a significant contribution to his or her company.
"We want to bring attention to the older workers who can use their experience to contribute greatly to companies," White says. "Older workers like Joe can bring valuable experience to the workforce, and that’s something that we want to show."
While accolades are nice, the lifelong Worcester-native says he merely wants the chance to continue what he’s doing already. Retirement, he says, wouldn’t allow that. And Heffernan has no plans for it anytime soon, he says.
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