RIP Viola Wilson

Vi, MB, Patty & Barbara

Before #metoo, before #timesup, before the past few generations of women were born into a world where at least lip-service was paid to equal rights between the sexes, there was the Prudential crew. (I doubt they called themselves that, but it's how I thought of them.)

In 1985, my sophomore year at Seton Hall University, I started working 4pm-8pm weekday shifts as a claims processor at Prudential Insurance. The sprawling offices in suburban NJ were mostly empty when my colleagues and I arrived but we'd catch full-timers at the end of their workdays. It was then I met Vi Wilson, Di Alviggi and Carolyn Jennings, among many others, many of whom remain close after these many decades. Vi, Di and Carolyn were claims supervisors. Not necessarily mine, though over time I probably reported to one or more of them. All three were hilarious. Not joke-telling hilarious ... every-word-out-of-their-mouths hilarious. How many office jobs can you think back to and the first thing you remember is laughter? That's Prudential in the mid-80s for me. (Along with data input computers yellowed by cigarette smoke ...)

If my memory recalls laughter, my consciousness understands how lucky I was to have been managed by women like those three very North Jersey mothers. Yes, their personalities guided their interactions with those they managed, but so did an ironbound dedication to hard work and responsiblity. These women could have led armies, built cities, governed countries. Something tells me weren't expected to pursue 'careers', yet they shined in an environment perhaps viewed as too 'in the trenches' for men with university business degrees and entitled expectations.

The Pru Crew wore competency like a discounted Macys blouse, showed buckets of compassion to those who struggled to keep up, but busted balls when circumstances demanded that balls be busted. Three decades have passed since I was introduced to this crew and I've since worked in offices around the world. The more insecure male managers I've encountered, the more testosterone-laden horseshit I've had to stomach, the more privileged I've felt to have entered the professional workforce under the tutelage of outstanding teachers like Vi, Di and Carolyn, who would have laughed themselves hoarse if you referred to them as 'pioneers' even though, in hindsight, that's exactly what they were, even in the '80s.

I'm undoubtedly being presumptuous but I think their collective ethos could be summed up thusly:

Be good at your job. Just don't take it so f*cking seriously.

In 1987 I got to know Mary Beth, Vi's youngest daughter, who also worked at Prudential. Springsteen made us friends but shared experiences as co-supervisors in a South Jersey office in 1989 made us blood brother and sister. At a house she bought and stamped with her good taste in South Jersey I met her sisters Patty and Barbara and of course got to witness Vi outside of the office, always at the center of a gathering, always the furiously loyal matriarch. I left Prudential for good in 1989 but was blessedly adopted by the Wilson clan, seeing them on holidays and birthdays. MB moved to Freehold in 1998, making it easier for the 'Normas', as they called each other, to congregate, and I was lucky to break bread and drink wine and laugh like hell with them over the years.

Sometimes, I even got referred to as 'Norman'. An honorific I surely did not deserve.

The last time I saw any of the Normas was at MB and Charlie's wedding in 2006. Viola passed away last week at the age of 94. Though it's been almost 12 years since I've shared her company I feel her loss tremendously. She was one person with the force of ten who claimed a spot in my heart many years ago. Like Vi sitting lakeside in her beloved Maine, I'll always have memories of her to reflect upon, and rescue me from my overly serious self.

RIP, Big Norma.


(photo courtesy of MB's Facebook)