Kolkin, Alfred
- Object Type
- Oral history
- Object ID
- 13362
- Date
- July 15 2008
- Description
- Alfred Kolkin (1918- ) grew up in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. After graduating from high school, Kolkin worked for the Sperry Gyroscope Company in Downtown Brooklyn, after which he applied to be a mechanic at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he began working in 1940. He married his wife, Lucille Gerwitz Kolkin (who was interviewed in 1989 and has since passed away), shortly before enlisting in the army and moving to Chicago to receive special electronic training, and then to California, where Lucille Kolkin joined him. During his interview, Kolkin discusses his life growing up in New York and trying to find a job after graduating from high school during the Depression. At the Navy Yard, Kolkin worked as a machinist in Building 128, where he made ship parts and used a horizontal boring mill to finish the surfaces on castings for ship artillery. Later, he was promoted into a managerial position. During his time at the Yard, Kolkin was also an editor of a local union newspaper. Kolkin joined the army in 1944, and relates his experience on a repair ship in the Pacific at the end of WWII, where he witnessed Japan surrendering aboard the USS Missouri. During the interview, he also speaks about his various jobs after the end of WWII, working in machine shops, a tool and dye factory and a printing factory. Kolkin discusses his union involvement, and the difficulties of getting by with a family during union strikes (something that his wife also discusses during her interview). Also present during the interview was Alfred and Lucille Kolkin's daughter, Judy Kaplan.
- Related Collection
- Brooklyn Navy Yard Oral History Project
- Subject
- Labor and Yard Workers
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