Ex City Careerist Is Handy With Figures: George T. Boyle Displays a Few Examples of His Skill (newspaper printed image enhanced by AI)
After 36 Years as City Employee, Frank Boyle Will Concentrate on Hobby of Wood Carving
From now on, George T. Boyle of 376 Sanders Rd. will concentrate on “just whittlin’.”
Administrative director of the Municipal Civil Service Commission since July 1952, he completed a 36-year career as a city employee Friday.
The “whittlin’” refers to the 67-year-old Mr. Boyle’s long-time hobby of carving intricate figures from wood. He doesn’t use models. Just takes a block of wood, and “after a while out comes a sea captain, a monk or maybe a Mennonite woman.”
“I took a $15-a-week pay cut when I left the New York Central Railroad in 1924, and my wife didn’t think much of that.
“But it proved to be a good move,” Mr. Boyle reminisced.
A City Hall “Pioneer”
“The depression soon came. Regardless of salary, nothing could compensate for the security of those years between 1930 and 1940. City employees were considered plutocrats, then.”
Besides, he was “enjoying every minute” of his work.
Mr. Boyle was a clerk in the Engineering Department three months, spent five years as a Board of Education accountant, then 20 years as Budget Department staff auditor before becoming an administrative assistant in the Civil Service Commission in 1949.
Mayor Used His Pen
He was one of the first persons to set up his desk in City Hall when it opened in 1932, the Budget Department being the first office moved into the new building.
He remembers that his fountain pen was used to sign some of the documents sealed into the City Hall cornerstone.
“I was the first to respond one day when Charlie Roesch (then Mayor Charles E. Roesch) was handed the papers in the Budget Department, and asked, ‘Who’s got a pen?’”
Mr. Boyle has had “lots of satisfaction” in urging city employees to work for promotion.
“The big problem in Civil Service is that too many qualified people have a fear of examinations — and never take ones that could lead to promotion.”
