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John Grosbard at Work

26 Sep 11
Peter Bull
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In 1964 when these pictures were taken John Grosbard worked in the ISTC at Paddington. They may remind you of him.

I remember John Grosbard very well. I worked with him in 1975 when I first joined the ITMC at Paddington until I was seconded to L M Ericsson for the development of the new AXE132 telephone exchange from August 1978 until mid 1981. It must have been during this time that John and Alf Culloden retired but I am not sure. May be some of the other guys who worked at Paddington during that time can update me. We shall see.

The pictures and a few words (below) were provided by his daughter, Susan Mirande-Grosbard, who now lives in Amsterdam.

These pictures were taken in Feb. 1964 – I was only 9 years old.

My Dad worked his entire life shift work… Something that had always made me still to this day walk around on tippy toes….

He sent these photos to his sister who lives in LA and I received them back a few years ago when she decided to clean up the family photos….

1 Comment

  1. Peter Bull September 26, 2011 at 12:18 pm

    The following was provided by John’s daughter, Susan:
    It was not easy being John’s daughter or their first child. He was so strict and had crazy rules. I am very very proud of my father – I thought he was “God”. He fixed anything and everything and was always making or building something…he built his first house in Australia almost singlehandedly (Como, NSW) – and built things from a boat to all our furniture, all our clothes, his suits…it was endless- we had a computer in the living room – it didn’t work, but it stood there for 10 years collecting dust. (1 metre x 1 metre – gigantic thing) He taught me to type, how to put a zipper in a pair of pants blindfolded! How to make cement & as I was the eldest I was his first mate. Under the car handing him tools, carrying bricks, you name it, we did it.
    Fred Nicholls & his wife Norma were/are great friends of my parents, also her sister, she married a Dutchman when I was about 10 and my dad took her down the isle. (I caught the bouquet). She lives in The Hague. Looking at some of the names there are stories I remember, Alf Culloden – I also really remember that they had prawn parties in the canteen once every so often – it was a sort of game – how many prawns and how fast you could peel and eat them….the canteen window, with fluorescent lights and no blind – those lights were so bright and always on & the cook-ups that they had…depending on who was working.
    Occasionally we were allowed in – usually at night when dad came off the 3 to 11 shift – it was always spectacular to see all the goings on. All the blinking lights. I remember when the coaxial cable came through and Dad made the first call to London. I think that that is what he is doing on the photo? Not sure of the date. Our lives revolved around his shift work,
    7 – 3, 11 – 7, 3 – 11…as a kid I knew exactly what that meant – I think my father always didn’t get enough sleep. 2 years ago he had a massive heart attack & had a 5 double by-pass operation.
    We used to love buying fruit and vegetables from the Italian greengrocer opposite the Paddington building and I walked past the building 2 years ago – it is still there but not OTC anymore – it has all changed as have many things.
    My parents used to say the word ‘superannuation” all the time – I had no idea what they were talking about – this word and OTC go hand in hand as far as I am concerned.
    My Dad is one of the most active men I have ever come across – he tried his hand at everything, he had 2 farms,the first one was sheep (hundreds of sheep) and then later on a cattle farm… and he started an anchor business off, then a computer business which is still a going business now run by my brother.

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