William ‘Rosie’ Schultze
Interview October 27, 2005
Died June 9, 2006
…And they had a lot of trouble on a machine over there [in Holland], so out of the organization they picked me to go. And the mill manager called me into the office. You know, they don’t call you into the office unless they’re going to give you hell.
Fire you.
Yeah. But he told me what they wanted, and I says, “What are you doing, getting down to the bottom of the barrel?” “No, we figure you can do some good.” So I was over there for about a year. That was really interesting. You know, Holland and England, and I went to Hamburg, Germany, and I went all over.
Did you get to take your family?
Yeah, 1975. Took the wife. I’ve been to Spain, too. I went from Spain over to Africa. Morocco, yeah. It was interesting.
[Roy Paradis sat in on the interview]
Are you a storyteller?
Oh, I’ve got a few that I could tell, I guess.
I’m going to ask, for the record, your name and your age and what year you retired.
Okay. Well, my name is William Sherman Schultze. I got the nickname of Rosie when I was in high school. I went through all my life, working years, by the name of Rosie. I had a fellow come in from the watchman shack. I was working with a crew of about six men. Asked for Bill Schultze, and they didn’t know who it was. So I went by the name of Rosie all my years. And after I retired, I told them that my name was Bill.
And how old are you?
I’m 96 years old. I went to work in the middle of May 1927.
What was your first job?
My first job was a roll bucker on No. 7 paper machine.
Do you remember what you did on your first day at work?
Well, I was the lowest part of the paper machine. That’s the roll bucker. I was to wrap rolls and transport them out