May 3-9 marks the 20th annual celebration of Public Service Recognition Week. The nationwide event honoring the hard work of federal, state and local government employees is sponsored by the Public Employees Roundtable (www.theroundtable.org), a coalition of more than 30 organizations, including the AFT.

In celebration, Public Employee Reporter is featuring a special “Our Union” highlighting some of the Real Pros who make up the AFT.

MILITARY RECOGNIZES AFT RETIREE AS A PIONEER

Everybody has a life story, living one chapter to the next. That’s exactly what Charles Koulias has been doing.

After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, Koulias got married; went to college; earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education, recreation and health; and started teaching physical education in the Rockland County (N.Y.) school district until his retirement in 1978.

Over the years, though, one chapter in Koulias’ life has been revised—not by the author, but by the U.S. military.

Koulias, a New York State United Teachers/AFT retiree, was one of five servicemen recruited during World War II to develop swimming and survival techniques, combat strategies and equipment for the newly formed special operations diving unit. In those days, members of the unit were called frogmen. Today they are known as Navy SEALs.

In 1999, the Marine Corps gave Koulias an honorary diploma from the combatant diver program, which evolved from the World War II program. He’s also received the U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret and a Special Forces Tab in recognition of his contributions to the military’s tactical swimming program.

“He had told me about his World War II experiences, but nobody knew he was one of the original five guys who started the [diving] program,” says Koulias’ son Shaun. “He’s a historical guy.”

Indeed he is. In March, Koulias started chapter 88 of his life story.

READING, RIDING KEEP KIDS QUIET AND HAPPY

For Florida school bus driver Ellie Frechette, there is more to her job than getting kids from point A to point B safely. It’s about being a role model—being attentive to the kids.

A few years ago, for instance, some of Frechette’s fifth-grade riders told her they were worried about moving up to middle school. To ease that transition, Frechette started a pen pal club so the fifth-graders could correspond with some middle school students. Mail call came as they climbed aboard. “It worked quite well,” she says. “The kids said they weren’t nervous about becoming sixth-graders anymore.”

More recently, the United School Employees of Pasco/AFT member started a reading club on the bus. Students would see a variety of books lining the dashboard as they boarded; they could select one or read a book of their own. She would encourage any reluctant readers—especially boys—to look at well-illustrated books about bugs, sharks and dinosaurs. Her enthusiastic reaction to the boys’ desire to show off a book’s ugliest bug, for example, often sparked an interest that led to more difficult reading.

“Some parents would ask me, ‘How did you get my kid to read?’” she says. For Frechette, it’s all in a day’s work.

WIS. MEMBER SERVES DOUBLE PUBLIC DUTY

The results make it look like an easy campaign: 81 percent of the vote for Democrat Barbara Toles vs. just 19 percent for independent Wendell Harris in a January special election for the 17th district seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly. But for Toles—a former executive board member of the AFT local at the Milwaukee Area Technical College—that impressive victory was the result of lots of hard work knocking on doors in the middle of a brutal Wisconsin winter.

“I never took it for granted,” says Toles, a community outreach coordinator and adjunct faculty member making her first run for office. Her many house visits “let the voters know what I stood for and why I wanted to be their representative.”

Toles’ campaign focused on three issues: high-quality education, affordable healthcare and jobs to support families. “These are major issues not just in Milwaukee but in the whole country,” she says.

COLO. MEMBER PROTECTS THE VULNERABLE, ELDERLY

Kevin Nelson is used to complaints. In a way, the more complaints that are lodged against this Colorado Federation of Public Employees (CFPE) member, the more he knows he is doing his job—protecting the vulnerable, including the developmentally disabled and elderly, who depend on others to survive.

Nelson, a health facilities surveyor and complaint investigator, says “one way providers try to get us to back off” is by filing complaints against the investigators with their employer, the Colorado department of health.

Unfortunately, the healthcare providers’ tactic works all too often. So Nelson and his colleagues, working through their union, an affiliate of AFT Public Employees, are trying to change that by developing a complaint investigation process that’s fair to all the parties involved—the patients, the surveyors and complaint investigators, and the providers.

Their goal is to protect the integrity of the inspection process—to make it more open and accessible to the public. That would safeguard against problems uncovered by inspectors ultimately being “solved” by providers (who have a powerful lobby in the state) making informal phone calls to public officials. It also would be a major step toward protecting health facilities inspectors from unfair attacks, thus preserving the integrity of the valuable work these members do.

The work of health facilities inspectors is crucial, Nelson says, because the problems can be grave, even life-threatening, and affect the most vulnerable segments of society. Nelson has seen it all, from nursing home residents suffering from acute dehydration to patients trapped in bedrails.

“There are lots of 60-hour weeks, a lot of overtime and weekends, and family lives are affected, [but] professionalism keeps regulators going,” Nelson says. It’s a great example of “working through government to improve conditions for the vulnerable.”