Full-Time Employees Give 14 Plympton a Sense of Continuity, History

Most Crimson employees stay with the million-dollar corporation for less than four years, but three employees have devoted a collective 62 years of their lives to the building located at 14 Plympton St.

Elizabeth B. Woodley, Brian M. Byrne and Patrick R. Sorrento have seen multiple generations of students pass through the building.

Woodley has kept The Crimson's accounting books for the past 15 years; Byrne has endured an early morning work schedule six days a week for the past 17 years to operate The Crimson's presses; and Sorrento has acted as The Crimson's production supervisor and late night advisor for over 30 years.

What's the Bottom Line?

One of Woodley's earliest Crimson memories is of Commencement 1984, which took place just two months after she began working there in April.

"I remember coming in and stepping over bodies," Woodley says. One student, a sleeping photographer, was blocking the way to her desk. "I stepped over him and didn't wake him up," she says.

Woodley says she enjoys working in a student-run environment.

"I think it would be hard to get back into the corporate world again," she says. "I don't need the supervision [because] I work very well by myself."

However, Woodley says life in the building isn't perfect. She contrasts the atmosphere of The Crimson today with the "fun and lively" place she believes it used to be.

For example, Woodley says the tension between the news and business sides of the building--which she believes to be prominent today--was less obvious in earlier years.

She says she used to visit the newsroom, and reporters would reciprocate by visiting the business department.

In the summer of 1985, Woodley says she had the summer Crimson staff over to her Dorchester, Mass., home for a barbecue. She also attends every inaugural dinner, which is the banquet held each February to welcome the incoming executive board.

"I think I've been a great friend [to Crimson editors]," Woodley says. "I still get postcards and pictures of their children."

"I guess I can say I've been The Crimson psychologist," she says, mentioning that she often has to "make [students] go to class."

Woodley says she can "cope with kids of this age" because of her experience with her own two children, Pamela and Lance, who were teenagers when Woodley began working at The Crimson. She says her children, and now her grandchildren, continue to keep her young.

In addition to "enjoying her grandchildren" and playing tennis, Liz spends her free time working as the financial secretary of the Boston Coalition of 100 Black Women and participating in the Black Women's Literary Guild.

Woodley says she has had to carve out her own niche in the business office because of the changing string of Crimson business executives, who are newly elected to their positions each year.

"Each year I have to get used to new people and their new way of doing things," she says.

But Woodley says what she minds the most is how much she misses the students when they leave.

"I had to pull myself together each time Commencement came along because I made such friends here," she says. "The saddest moment of being with The Crimson is seeing the kids leave."

The Early Bird

Byrne has had to endure many changes to The Crimson's printing process since he began operating its presses 17 years ago.

Through it all, Byrne says his role has always been to "make sure the paper looks good."

Byrne arrives at 5 a.m. each morning to help The Crimson's production managers put the paper on film before it can be printed each day.

Often the first person in the building, Brian has frequently bore the brunt of Lampoon pranks.

"When I was first at The Crimson, [Crimson editors] tried to steal the Ibis," he says, referring to the brass mascot that formerly adorned the weather vane of the Lampoon castle on Mt. Auburn Street. Shortly after this prank, the 'Poon retaliated.

"I came in and almost every door was covered up to the top with cow manure," Byrne recalls.

On another occasion, he found "three huge pigs" in the building's front entrance. Crimson editors retaliated by dropping off a load of chickens at the Lampoon castle.

"[Lampoon members] came back as butchers with aprons and knives and pretended to be about to cut the chickens' heads off," Byrne says.

The Crimson-Lampoon rivalry has lessened in intensity, and Byrne he no longer encounters such pranks.

However, his daily job is still intense, although he no longer has to work on Saturdays since The Crimson ceased its weekend publication this year.

"I like the fact that I get weekends off now," Byrne says. "But it's a lot harder than it used to be."

Byrne has to run the presses twice on most mornings to accommodate the double sections printed on Mondays and Fridays, and to publish Fifteen Minutes, the Crimson's weekly magazine, on Thursdays.

Byrne says it is a hectic rush to begin printing at 5 a.m. and then to run the presses a second time 40 minutes later. The crunch is compounded by the fact that the quantity of printing has increased since The Crimson went free this year.

"We've almost doubled in circulation," Byrne says.

However, Byrne says the group of students who stuff the papers with advertisements each morning before they can be delivered have helped to make such transitions easier.

'Stop Talking, and Start Writing!'

Crimson editors officially know Sorrento as the newspaper's production supervisor. But he is much more than that.

"When you think of The Crimson, definitely [Pat's] face comes to mind immediately," says former Crimson president David J. Barron '89. "Pat's a huge presence there."

He is the figure who wanders throughout the newsroom around midnight, urging writers to "stop blabbing and [to] write your story" so the paper can close out early and go to print.

Former Crimson editors have nothing but praise for Sorrento.

Marie B. Morris '85, a former associate managing editor, says, "He's the best printer I've ever seen, and I've seen hundreds of printers."

Sorrento says he still receives phone calls late at night from Crimson editors who graduated long ago and who still keep in touch with the Everett, Mass., native.

Sorrento says he enjoys a close relationship with Crimson "kids" past and present.

"Most of the kids treat me the same way. I think we're just as close," he says. "Kids confide in me, ask me questions like they would an older brother or [their] parents."

Hired by The Crimson in 1967 at a time when 15 employees worked in the building each night, Sorrento originally served as a typesetter.

But as the "cold type" replaced the labor-intensive "hot type" process, Sorrento became the only night-time employee retained by The Crimson. Sorrento "pasted up" the pages until 1986, when the building introduced a computer system which sent articles directly from thenewsroom computers onto film. (See technology story, page 3.)

Some of Sorrento's best memories are from the old days, when executives took advantage of the stringent deadlines mandated by old technology to pull pranks on novice writers.

"I think the best hoax of all was the one we played on Mike Barrett ['70] that [University President Nathan M.] Pusey ['28] was going to be secretary of defense," Sorrento says.

One night, Barrett was assigned to watch the Associated Press (AP) wire ticker for important stories. Bells started ringing shortly after 11 p.m., when a story about Pusey being appointed to the Cabinet came over the wire.

According to Sorrento, news executives, including "[former Crimson President] Bo Jones '68 and his crowd," had sent the story to the AP as a joke and then asked the news organization to send it directly back to them.

At the time, stories had to be finished by 12:30 a.m. to be laid out on the page. When Barrett ran downstairs with the story just a few minutes too late, Sorrento told him the story could not go in the paper.

"I thought he was going to have a heart attack," Sorrento says. "We used to play hoaxes like that all the time."

Sorrento's role has changed throughout the decades as The Crimson's technological system has evolved.

Now that he no longer has to lay out the pages by hand, Sorrento says he serves as an "advisor" instead.

"What I do right now is mostly backup...a little quality control, mostly teaching," he says.

However, Sorrento says one thing that has never changed is the ambiance at The Crimson, where the students seem more "like family" than classmates.

Nevertheless, Sorrento has had to adjust to some changes, including the omission of the Saturday paper which began this year.

"The time off is nice, but I like the traditions," he says. "The summer paper twice a week used to be a training session for executives, for the juniors, and the Saturday paper was nice for the sports."

Students know Sorrento to be an avid sports fan. He regularly accompanies Crimson editors to Red Sox games each spring.

"I'm a great fan of all Boston sports teams," Sorrento says. "[But] the Red Sox are the ones I can go to the games more. Working at night you can't go to a regular Celtics game or hockey game."

Sorrento says that his 30 years at The Crimson have been "a great time." He describes it as being "better than money."

"If I didn't like the kids here, and I didn't like to work with them," he says, "I would have been gone long ago.