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12 North Shore Towers Courier n June 2015 After nearly four decades , Building #1 Superintendent John Kenny prepares to bid North Shore Towers adieu BY STEPHEN VRATTOS “I don’t know how to describe how it will be without him,” says General Superintendent Steve Cairo of Building #1 Superintendent John Kenny, who will be retiring soon after 36 years working at North Shore Towers. If you don’t know Kenny or have never heard of him that’s fine by the stalwart Super, who sees his dedication and work ethic as unworthy of special recognition, rather just the way one should do their job. But despite his quiet, unassuming demeanor, Kenny carries with him a strength and presence, which is palpable and anyone who ever met the man even but for a moment, feel they’ve met someone special. Kenny was born in Manhattan and grew up in Ozone Park and Richmond Hill. He is one of four siblings, a brother, since passed away, and two sisters, one of which is a twin, who lives in New Hyde Park. After graduating from Richmond Hill High School, he spent a short time working for the city of New York before entering the military. He served his time and returned to working for the city before landing a job on Wall Street with the DuPont Company, a brokerage firm founded in 1931 by the great grandson of chemical giant Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. Once one of the largest firms on Wall Street, the company fell on hard times in the sixties, and Kenny was out of a job. “A lot of houses went out of business back then,” he recalls. “There was a lot of merging going on.” He began working for the Pergament Company in Lake Success, where he managed the flooring department. He referred to the home supply business, which sold interior building supplies—paneling, wallpaper, etc.—as a precursor to Home Depot. In one of those fortuitous I-metsomeone who-knew-someone circumstances, Kenny connected with North Shore Towers General Manager Frank Keller, who was friends with a guy who was dating a girl who was good friends with Kenny’s wife. The timing could not have been better. Kenny was again out of work and out of options. He wondered if he’d ever find full-time employment again. The first two weeks were only part-time, after which Kenny continued to be called in for extra hours, filling in for members of the NST maintenance staff as they went on vacation over the summer. Though, not a full-time position, the ever-changing sporadic work schedule of the job gave Kenny the opportunity to show what an experienced, hard-working and versatile person he was. During this short span, Kenny wore many hats: doorman, porter, courtesy bus driver among others, and Keller found in Kenny someone he could call for assistance in any circumstance at any time of the day or night. Kenny would respond and perform brilliantly. “I was glad to get the call to come to work,” Kenny says. “I had no beef with that.” Kenny’s work ethic paid off and he was hired in 1979 as a Porter. 11 months later, Keller offered him the vacated Superintendent position for Building #1, jokingly telling Kenny at the time, “If I give you this job, I’ll have no one to call.” Unbeknownst to many residents, the Superintendents of each building live on the premises, so they can respond instantly to any emergency. Kenny spent the first few nights on the job wondering the labyrinthine passages under the arcade that interconnect the Towers to acclimate himself to where everything was, so he wouldn’t get lost. He remembered an epic flooding incident during the six years he served before the complex changed to co-ops. A pipe burst in the walls of an apartment in Building #2 over the Towers restaurant. Water poured into the eatery from the ceiling, but because it happened in the middle of the night and the restaurant was closed and unlit, the deluge went unnoticed to the few late-night workers and security personnel who walked passed until the water poured into and flooded the arcade. “We had to open the elevator doors and push the cars up, so we could squeegee the water into the pits underneath,” Kenny says. “There was nowhere else to put it. “That would never happen today,” Kenny adds about the flood. “There are check valves in place to automatically shut off water if it starts back-feeding.” Kenny credits his father for his knowledge in plumbing and electrical work. A civilian aircraft mechanic, his dad had a house Upstate, the interior of which needed to be redone when Kenny was younger. He helped his father completely rewire and plumb the house. This electrical experience came in handy when North Shore Towers went Co-op in 1985. Kenny was responsible for interviewing electricians to rewire the apartments for the changeover. True to his unflappable nature, Kenny doesn’t recall the conversion as being that momentous an occasion, though he does admit to the excitement of the complex during the weeks preceding as everywhere you looked upgrades John Kenny were occurring. “Everyone was busy redoing the halls; new wallpaper, carpets…” he recalls. “I remember the guys redoing the molding in the arcade at 11pm at night to get the job done in time. Everything was new.” Soon after North Shore Towers switched to co-op, Kenny was roused by security in the wee hours of the morning one night. “Security reported a tree on fire in front of Building #1,” he explains. When Kenny went outside to check more closely, he saw that the tree in question only appeared to be ablaze, when in actuality, it was a fire in an apartment on the third floor behind the tree. The fire was so intense, the brilliance of the flames so powerful, they created an optical illusion, casting a fiery corona about the branches outside the apartment’s windows. When Kenny went inside Building #1 to check, the black smoke was so thick on the floor, the hallway lights could not be seen. Still, the conflagration got no further than the dwelling in which it started, and other than a few residents on the same floor suffering from minor smoke inhalation, no one was hurt, including the women who accidentally started the blaze, smoking while in bed. She was carried out from the building by the firefighters who oddly discovered her just inside the door on the floor. Later, scorch marks discovered on the outside of the woman’s door indicate it was propped open during the blaze, explaining its severity, despite the construction of the apartments, which are designed to contain fires. “The Apartments are designed incredibly well,” Kenny points out. “The walls are constructed of high-quality, fire-rated sheet rock. Six to eight hours later, the concrete


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