The Iron Man of 4th Avenue South

By Lisa Chiu, The Seattle Times

Apr. 4–When Al Aurilio conducts the weekly inventory he also helps with the lifting.

Sixty years ago today, Al Aurilio walked into the Pacific Iron & Metal Co. on Fourth Avenue South in Seattle looking for work. The World War II veteran had just returned from Japan and had newly wed his wife Louise. After struggling to find a job in California and Olympia, they traveled to Seattle.

The foreman at Pacific Iron & Metal was worried. Aurilio is 5-feet-3-inches tall and was at that time 10 pounds shy of his current 155 pounds. The foreman thought Aurilio was too small for the heavy, physical work of moving, sorting and packing scrap metal.

“I told him, give me a try. I’ll work for a week for nothing. If you don’t like me, I’ll be on my way,” the soft-spoken Aurilio recalls. “He laughed at me and put me on the job. And he was very happy with me. I got paid.”

Six decades and a several promotions later, the company is still paying him. Today, the 86-year-old is a salaried employee making about $13 an hour, a far cry from the $1.05 an hour he brought home when he first started.

Four times a week, Aurilio wakes up at 3 a.m. at his Kirkland home. Housemate and fellow widower Clayton Taub, 85, fixes him breakfast and Aurilio heads off to his 5-to-11 a.m. shift at the scrap warehouse. At work, Aurilio supervises a handful of workers who sort car radiators, air conditioners, aluminum wire and circuit boards into bins that are weighed before the metal is compacted and baled then loaded onto trucks and freighted across the country to be recycled.

The warehouse is noisy as men driving forklifts move around bins. Outside, metal is crushed into uniform bales and trucks await their cargo. The lifting and moving was once all done by hand using wheelbarrows. Today it’s much easier with forklifts, he said. Aurilio also conducts inventory every week and, whenever possible, helps with the lifting and sorting.

“I never considered retiring,” says Aurilio as he pauses for a kiss on the cheek from shipping manager Lori Magnusson. “I didn’t want to sit around.” Magnusson says she gives Aurilio a peck every morning.

“He says it gets his blood moving,” Magnusson jokes. “It’s not so often that you work with someone that’s been in one place so long. We just love him here.”

Aurilio is an expert in the metal composition of scraps that come in. And though they now have a computer that can determine the makeup of metal alloys, his expertise comes in handy. People ask him about different metals, and he enjoys passing on his knowledge to others.

“If we knew everything he’s already forgotten about metal, we would know more than we would ever need to know,” Magnusson says.

Aurilio was one of company CEO Doug Glant’s first supervisors, says Glant, 63. Glant’s grandfather founded Pacific Iron & Metal in 1917. His brother, Bruce, is the company president. They also run Pacific Fabrics & Crafts and Pacific Iron’s Building Materials.

“I was 12 years old and working in the warehouse sealing up barrels of metal with a sledgehammer,” Glant remembers.

The company has several longtime employees and as long as they want to and are able to work, they can, Glant said.

“The scrap yard can be a dangerous place. If he wasn’t physically and mentally able to do it, we wouldn’t let him work,” Glant says. “So when Al turned 65, we gave him a birthday cake and said get your butt back to work.”

But one person did pressure Aurilio to retire, his wife Louise. They met when he was stationed in Fort Lewis. He was eating at a restaurant in Olympia where she was the cook. He liked her so much, he waited until she got off work to talk to her. They dated and he wrote to her when he was stationed overseas. The two married in 1946 when he returned to the U.S.

The job was hard on his wife at times. Aurilio delayed vacations. They had no children. Louise always told him that when he reached retirement age, he had to stop working, he recalls.

“Two years before I turned 65, she passed away,” Aurilio says. That was in 1982, after 35 years of marriage. If she were still alive, he would definitely be retired now, he adds. “I’d have to keep her happy.”

Aurilio keeps moving even after he clocks out. He helps Taub deliver food to needy families for the community agency Hopelink and several churches and community centers in Kirkland, Juanita, Kingsgate and Maltby.

“When he comes home from work, he can get in the chair and go straight to sleep,” Taub says. “I can’t let him do that, I keep him busy working [on volunteer projects]. Working’s the best thing for him.”

Taub and his wife, Paula, had lived next to the Aurilios for 20 years. When Taub’s wife passed away, he moved to Wisconsin but wasn’t happy with the weather there. When Aurilio called him asking if he could keep his house clean while he was in the hospital with a broken hip 10 years ago, Taub was happy to help.

“I was kind of like the man that came to dinner and never left,” Taub jokes.

The two widowers have lived together ever since.

Money isn’t the reason he keeps working, Aurilio says. He receives Social Security and a pension.

“I need to keep myself busy,” Aurilio says. “I just keep going as long as I feel well, and have got something to get up to.”

AL AURILIO

–Age: 86

–Yankee dude: Born and raised in Port Henry, N.Y. Still travels there once a year to visit relatives.

–Service: Spent four years in the Army with tours in the Philippines and Japan during WWII.

–After hours: Enjoys meeting new people, traveling, fishing and dancing (although he doesn’t fish or dance these days).

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