The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 242

CI Palm Beach Post, Thursday, May 24, 1979 Pratt Whitney Confirms $19 Million Expansion By JODY LONG PottStoHWrltor Palm Beach County's largest private employer, Pratt Whitney Aircraft, will begin a $19 million expansion program in July. Following months of speculation, the company's decision to enlarge its operations near Beeline Highway mean an estimated 600 to 800 workers will be added to the present Pratt Whitney payroll of 700 employees. It is the state's biggest industrial employer. Four new facilities are planned for the company, a division of United Technologies Corporation (UT), a Connecticut -based conglomerate. A Pratt Whitney spokesman, Larry Rogers, said the decision to expand in Palm Beach County did not mean the company would scale down its Connecticut-based division.

"There's no truth whatsoever Pratt Whitney is going to close its Connecticut operations. The Florida expansion has nothing to do with the Conneticut plant." When Pratt Whitney reorganized its local division in 1976, approximately 600 people were transferred to Palm Beach County from Connecticut. Groundbreaking on the first new building, a addition to the main plant, is scheduled for July 1. In mid-July work will start on the materials technologies and control laboratory, located east of the main building. The two-story, structure will house 300 employees.

The office portion of the facility should open in November and the laboratory will be operational by April 1980. If given the green light by UT's board of directors, work also will start on two other buildings east of the main facility. The larger proposed building, a office center will have a cafeteria and can accommodate 1,600 workers; the smaller, 100,000 square foot site will be used as an assembly plant. A new control tower, instrument landing system, and additional lighting will be provided for the recently extended Sikorsky development flight test center. Sikorsky also is a division of UT.

Pratt Whitney's flexing of its economic muscles cOmes at a time when many major American companies are holding back or slowing expansion plans. Last year, Pratt Whitney began a $3 million phased renovation of its offices and also is modernizing its shop facilities. Vagabond r1( Mr i Phil Badali Found A New Beginning As Fuller Brush Man 1 "Js fhLS J.J Bfti 'fir 'jo i Statl Photo by Stophon Crowlty Firefighter Mike Hendrick Makes a Point at Meeting spair and suicide in "Death of a Salesman." Badali says Arthur Miller's play is "right on target. That's the life of a car salesman." He switches from his past, reflecting on his new life. He believes in the company.

And he feels the company counts on him. It's a secure feeling, he says. It's a good feeling. Badali is the consummate salesman, a fast-talker with a shade of George Burns in his soul. His humor is dry.

He spits out one-liners with no smile and little joy in his eyes. "They joke about us Fuller Brush men hieing such great lovers, but I've never been attacked yet," he said. "Thank God." He said he visits very few residences because, unlike the good old days, seven out of 10 women who used to be home are out working. So now he goes to offices, greeting secretaries with his standard pitch, "Well girls, aren't you happy to see the Fuller Brush man?" He usually walks away with four or five orders. But Badali says his high-pressure sales days are over.

too short. If they don't want me, I don't go back." He says carpet sweepers and wet mops are his two most successful items. "You can't get fat on this job. But if I can make enough money to pay rent and bills and have enough gas to get over to the beach, as far as I'm concerned that's enough. "I like to live like I'm on a weekend pass.

I don't worry about next month's bills anymore. "Up there all you did was eat and sleep and work. Down here my front yard is the Atlantic Ocean. I'm a beach bum. I'm eating the same steak as that millionaire at the next table.

I'm content. I keep hoping to God I'm not kidding myself." The philosopher gets out of his seat to take a hairbrush order from a waitress. He takes no money. "I'll be back," he says. He leaves the restaurant, stops at two insurance agencies and hands gifts to the secretaries.

It's about 2 p.m. It's hot out. "I think I'll get my bathing trunks and go to the beach," he said. "You have to go back to work? You young people take everything for granted. You think you're going to live Fire Contract Postponed in Delray By CAROL CIOE South CMinty turtau Chiof DELRAY BEACH At a table in a dark comer of the staid Arcade Tap Room sits a white-haired man in green polyester.

Cigarette ash and brushes litter the white linen tablecloth. His nameplate says "Phil." He wears a gold scrub brush on his shirt collar. He is the Fuller Brush man and a philosopher according to one customer, "the only Fuller Brush man I've met who doesn't whistle." Phil Badali loves his job. But he says he's an exile, in self-imposed isolation from high-pressure sales, a marriage gone sour and faded dreams. Now he carts around his suitcase full of samples and catalogs, visiting secretaries and store clerks in businesses from Lake Worth to Boca Raton.

He travels alone, sets his own hours. He is one of a vanishing profession the door-to-door salesman. "The average man doesn't want to go around knocking on doors. But I had nothing to lose," Badali said. "When I came down here I was very depressed.

The world had let me down. So now I've just closed that book." Badali moved here from Pittsburgh two-and-a-half years ago to be with his sister and her ailing husband. He had left his 20-year job as a car salesman and his wife of 26 years. "I felt like I had come out of purgatory," he said. "I had to lie I was ordered to.

I'm not a religious man but I used to feel terrible all the time. You have to take advantage of your friends. It eats out your insides after a while." His 45 years up North were filled with bitter memories and hardships memories he does not want to share. "You have to be a hypocrite and all you get out of it is a free steak dinner and a silver dish," he said. "Then you have a heart attack and drink yourself to death." "I go back up there now and pass those places where I used to work and I get awfully negative," Badali said.

"I start thinking what happened to this guy or that guy or so-and-so. What happened to me?" But he managed to escape the crash that led to Willy Loman's de "It's not that we don't appreciate what the firefighters do," Weekes said. "We appreciate the Police Department, too. We appreciate all the city workers." "Yeah, they got what they wanted," an audience member shouted. "Yeah, they don't have a bargaining unit, either," Weekes said.

The mayor said later he did not mean to downgrade the union by that statement. "I just meant that when you start negotiating, all items of an employment package become negotiable." Union members cited statistics showing they are paid 14 percent below the average of firefighters in surrounding cities and 11.3 percent below the statewide average for comparably sized cities. According to Mariott's figures, the 5 percent raise will bring all ranks in the department in line with state and local salaries. He repeated his stand that the council cannot legally grant cost-of-living raises retroactive to Oct. 1 because the budget document, adopted by the council last September, states: "The 5 percent increase should not be paid to any member of a union's bargaining unit while that union is at impasse with the city." "The union was at impasse in December 1978 and continues to be at impasse," Mariott said.

union asking for a 5 percent cost-of-living raise retroactive to Oct. 1, and an across-the-board "reclassification" raise retroactive to Feb. 3. Mayor Leon Weekes said after the meeting he had "no comment" on the proposal. He said the council should be prepared to make a final decision within two weeks.

No meeting date has been scheduled. The council, in drafting the contract terms, is not bound by the special master's report, which recommended both cost-of-living and reclassification raises for firefighters be retroactive to Oct. 1, when the union's old contract expired. The council contract is a last resort for the 10-year-old union. If members decide not to accept it, they will have to take the fight to court.

Frustration over the long deliberations showed yesterday. "We make most of our runs at night when most of you are asleep," driver-engineer Rick Lee told the council. "But I'll tell you what. Next time we go out I invite any of you to go out with us. "Put on firefighters' gear.

Get into the heat and see what it's like," he added, shouting. Jessie Biero, wife of a firefighter, left the council chambers in tears. "I'm tired of this, damn it. I've had to work two jobs. I have to live with my husband." By CAROL CIOE South County Buroou Chltf DELRAY BEACH The City Council yesterday postponed a decision in the year -long contract dispute between the firefighters union and the city.

The move left about 200 people angry and confused. The City Hall hearing room was jammed with supporters of the city's only municipal union. City public works employees and police officers, who have talked recently about forming their own unions, also filled the seats. The crowd yelled "Stall," when councilmen decided to wait for more information from a special master mediator in dispute before they take their own vote. The crowd hissed when City Manager J.

El-don Mariott said he could not vouch for his comparative salary figures, figures that a union spokesman said were in error. And they jeered and applauded when union member Barry Searles noted Mariott this year received a 9 percent cost-of-living raise, an increase that's 4 percent more than the union's request. After union officials, the city administration and the public presented their views, the council refused to act on an llth-hour proposal from the New Burdines Store Will Open June 7 Area News Auditions For Play 'Beastly' "We want to tour the area to see for ourselves just how much work needs to be done," Lefkowitz said. "We'll have to make a survey to see how much it will cost to clean it up right." Authority members are hoping the cleanup will be financed by a Palm Beach County Community Development grant, similar to a $16,000 grant that funded the October cleanup. Lefkowitz said the area to be surveyed is not deteriorated, but the cleanup would be a precautionary measure.

"We don't want this area to get in the kind of shape the target area is in," he said. "The houses there are all right, they're basically sound. "But there's a lot of trash and garbage there, because there's been a lot of dumping. We've received all sorts of complaints about that area. The place is a real disaster area." The cleanup will include "landscaping and a lot of other things," he said.

Doctor Will Contest BOCA RATON Burdines in the Town Center Mall will open June 7, store officials announced yesterday. The two-story, facility will be the 16th in the company's chain and the first retail store to open in the mall which is projected to be the county's largest with 120 stores when completed in 1980. The store at 5700 Glades Road is part of a 105-acre parcel purchased from Arvida Corp. in 1973 for $1.8 million. Patrons of the Center for the Arts in Boca Raton will get a sneak preview of the new Burdines two days before it opens.

Three hundred tickets have been sold at 15 each for the June 5 event which will feature a fashion show and art exhibit. The private showing from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. will permit unlimited browsing and earn for the art center if all 500 tickets are sold. C.F. (Bud) Stewart, executive director of the Boca Raton Chamber of Commerce, predicted the store "will have a tremendous positive impact on the city." Stewart disputed claims by some downtown merchants the new mall will hurt their businesses.

"Anything that happens in town that might be negative in the next couple of years is going to be blamed on the plaza," Stewart said. "But the mall will keep people in this area rather than going to Pompano (Fashion Square) or West Palm to shop and this has to be a plus for local businesses. If they're good, competitive businesses, they're going to survive whether they're in town or out there." Stewart estimated the store will have about 200 employees. "It's not in the city, so it won't mean any more taxes," he said. "But it will mean a payroll that isn't here today and more taxes for the county." Neighborhood Cleanup Planned in Boynton BOYNTON BEACH For the second time in the past eight months, the city Housing Authority will organize a neighborhood cleanup.

Authority Chairman Rubin Lefkowitz said authority members today will tour the neighborhoods between N. Seacrest Boulevard and 1-95 frori NW 26th Avenue to Miner Road. Gehrig' Disease Ruling Duck and Goat Win Roles in PBJC Production BOCA RATON Dr. Murray Sanders said yesterday he'll fight the recent federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruling against the use of detoxified snake venom to treat Lou Gehrig's disease. He returned late Tuesday night from a trip to Washington, D.C., where he discussed his appeal with an attorney.

"It went all right, but it's going to take time," he said yesterday. "But you can't be a research man without being an optimist." Sanders said he will appeal the FDA ruling limiting the treatment of cobra and krait venom for victims of anyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The FDA ordered Sanders to stop accepting new patients who apply for venom treatment. He is allowed to continue treating current patients. The ruling was based on two independent studies which concluded the venom had no real healing power.

Sanders has 434 patients under treatment. More than 30 have been turned away since the order was issued last month. the play hinges on it. The goat has a smaller role." Judging from the lack of temperament and the composure of the two, everyone is predicting instant stardom for Hoover and April's Angel. "He's people-oriented," said Ellen Schiff, Hoover's owner.

"He walked into the auditorium by himself and quacked as he walked, shaking his tail and in general getting acquainted. He's very gregarious." Mrs. Schiff said Hoover rules the roost over a menagerie at home which includes dogs, rabbits, "a partridge in a pear tree and chickens. He's been that way since we By NANCY POWELL Pott Stoll Writtr LAKE WORTH Hoover, a white muscovy duck, sauntered into the Palm Beach Junior College auditorium, talking to everyone as he neared the stage. April's Angel, a baby goat, walked close to its mistress, quietly eying everyone with a detached air.

Moments later, the pair won auditions for roles in the college production of "Pippin" which opens May 31. "They're naturals," faculty director Frank Leahy said. "The, duck is very important and a lot of got him as a chick from Fred Holmstock, a young kid who raised him." Hoover isn't housebroken, but Mrs. Schiff isn't worried. "He'll do his own thing when the curtain goes up and I'm not worried at April's Angel is quieter.

"She cries if I'm not around," Linda Klassen said. "She's happy as long as there is anything around to climb or eat. Actually, she's really a ham, just a little kid." At home, April's Angel sleeps with her buddy, a piglet, Mrs. Klassen said. "She really is cool and composed and nothing disturbs her too much.".