By Alex Gelfand (’04)
Elevator operators became well-known and -loved personalities at the College. The first celebrity-operator was Harry Hager, who started working at 17 Lex when the building first opened. The Nov. 10, 1941, issue of The Ticker ran a long and humorously loving tribute to Harry, “neither harried nor hurried,” a kind of father-friend to the student body:
Harry’s always happy for a man who annually travels 12,000 miles up and down a sixteen-story elevator shaft and goes nowhere. He has no women’s sportswear on the third floor and no bargains in the basement. “What’s more,” he adds, “I’ve got no skeletons in the closet. I enjoy my work and I like being friendly with people. But when I have to be mean I do it in a nice way.”
Philosophy flows freely as his moving classroom goes up while he talks on. Between floors the noisy door punctuates his phrases and slices his sentences. Yet Harry is neither harried nor hurried. He is polite. No requests for floors are granted unless they come packaged in a pleasant “please.”
. . . . Harry carries on conversations as he carries passengers. . . . He takes about 310,000 people for friendly rides each year. Crowding and crushing are outlawed . . . since he dislikes having the elevator as black pits of Calcutta travelling vertically.
In 1950 and 1951, Harry was the winner of the APO student fraternity-sponsored Ugly Man Contest. This tongue-in-cheek annual contest was a charity fundraiser (in 1951 the money raised went to the Cancer Society). Candidates filled a collection can, with each dime counting as a vote. The frontrunner in a field of 17, Harry garnered 800 votes, or $80. The May 16, 1951, issue of The Ticker reported on this popular event:
His award will consist of an ugly man key and tickets to a show. He generously donated his other prizes to Al Katz, the runner up, who will have a date with Miss Lorna Bolton, a beautiful model, and dinner and dancing at Le Donbray and Le Coq Rouge, respectively, all being given by the Cancer Fund. . . . Harry swung into an early lead in the balloting last Monday when he completely filled a collection can like those given to all candidates, within a few hours.
A decade later Harry was still Baruch’s illustrious elevator operator. On Oct. 3, 1961, the student newspaper ran “Remarks Harry the Elevator Operator Delights in Repeating” (Harry was frequently mentioned in the pages of The Ticker over his three-decade-long career at the College):
Of course there’s room for one more. We’ll make an even three dozen… What’s the matter with your eyes? The schedule’s right on the door… Girlie, are these boys bothering you? Look, everyone, she’s blushing… This elevator doesn’t go anywhere until everyone faces the front… I’m sorry, lady, you should’ve called your floor in a louder voice, I’ve already passed it… I’m working incognito. I’m really Dean Saxe… Good morning, doll.
Generations of Baruchians also have fond memories of elevator operator Tony Ermilio (above). Ermilio, one of the College’s last elevator operators (no one has held this position since the 1980s), brought much-appreciated humor to the 17 Lex “experience.” His humor was usually presented in the form of questions to which, at least when first asked, only he knew the answer. For example: “Do you know what to call a clock on the moon? A lunatic!” or “Why shouldn’t a girl marry a guy who lives on a hill? Because he’s not on the level!” Tony was made an Honorary Dean of Transportation by Baruch’s students, and he, in turn, always had a kind word to say about them. In the 1977 Lexicon, he was quoted as saying: “I feel like a father to you all, always bringing you up. In fact, the other day a student came over to me and said, ‘Hey dad, how about giving me some allowance?’”
Two years before Ermilio’s retirement in 1980, Steven Moskowitz (’81) paid Tony homage in rhyme in The Ticker:
I was in Tony’s elevator just the other day
When to a Baruch student I heard him say,
“Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants?”
The student looked up with a baffled glance.
“The answer,” Tony said, “is a little pun:
He wears them in case he gets a hole in one”
The student replied, “I’ve heard it before.”
“How long you been here?” asked Tony, in awe.
“Too long,” said the student, breaking into a grin.
“I’ve been here so long that my hair’s getting thin.
But I’ve heard all your jokes,” he said with a smile.
“All?” queried Tony. “You’ve been here a while.”
“Why did the apple turnover?” asked our guest
“Because he saw the jelly roll,” replied the student in jest.
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” said Tony, surprised.
The student just smiled with a gleam in his eyes.
“Tenth floor,” proclaimed Tony, in a voice rather loud.
“Getting out,” said the student, making his way through the crowd.
“You mean getting off,” Tony said with delight.
“Oops!” exclaimed the student, “I forgot. You’re right.”
As the student stepped off he bid Tony goodbye.
“By the way, what’s your name?” Tony asked in reply.
“Just call me Tony Jr.,” the student retorted.
“They say I’m your double,” so it’s been reported.
“In that case,” said Tony, “next time take the stairs;
There’s only been one Tony throughout the years.”
“Right again,” beamed the student, who seemed rather glad.
“You’re the best that Baruch has ever had.”
Tony closed the door and headed back down.
Of course, he was all smiles; he never frowns.
And Tony, it’s because of your good spirit and cheer
That I say, “Hope to see you for many more years.”
(The Ticker, Apr. 26, 1978)
Of course, not all elevator operators were cut from the same cloth. Harry Hager and Tony Ermilio were famous for their lightheartedness. But one “mild-mannered operator” was loved for different reasons. Hugh Hicks was not only an elevator operator but also a part-time CCNY/Baruch student. The human-interest profile “H. Hicks, Operator Extraordinary, Doubles As Student at City College,” which ran in the May 10, 1949 edition of The Ticker, showed a man whose journey to higher education was a long and arduous one. Ticker writer Murray Pollack (’50) knew that readers—knowing Hicks’s background—would relate to him on a more personal level.
Hicks attended high school in Indiana and Pennsylvania. He left school in 1925, though, without a diploma, in order to work and help finance his sister’s college education. But Hicks, even without a high school education, hadn’t given up on his own college aspirations. In 1948 he earned an equivalency degree from Washington Irving High School, which helped him get admitted to CCNY/Baruch. Twenty-four years after dropping out of high school, Hicks had begun earning a bachelor’s degree in insurance and real estate.
The polite elevator operator was known for one peculiarity. If, once the elevator car was full and no one called out a floor number and female students were present, he would courteously inquire, “What floor, little ladies?”
Eventually, curious students asked Hicks why he addressed the coeds as “little ladies.” He gave The Ticker a definitive answer to this repeated question:
Searching for the reply he reminisced about the good old days when he was working for a horticulturist who developed a cross between a red and a yellow rose. “Hugh, what shall I name it?” asked the flower technician. Gazing at the rose, Hugh noticed it reminded him of the charming smile of a pretty girl, so he named it “Little Lady.” Now, when a darling young miss calls for an odd numbered floor on the even side he says, “Sure, little lady,” and gladly obliges.
(The Ticker, May 10, 1949)
Today Baruch has no record of Hicks having completed his degree, but we certainly hope that he did eventually, and that—like a good elevator—Baruch helped him get where he wanted to go.
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