Arthur Winston: 70 Years In L.A.'s Transit Agencies

"In 1924, at age 17, Mr. Winston started cleaning trolley cars for the Los Angeles Railway Co., which morphed and merged nearly half a dozen times and is now the Metropolitan Transportation Authority... In 70 years, according to the MTA, Mr. Winston has missed just a single day of work -- the day his wife died in 1988. The records show that he has never been late, never left early... The closest to him in seniority at the MTA has 25 fewer years on the job, and weeks of absences. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor says he's never heard of anyone like Mr. Winston. The American Public Transportation Assn. searched and could not find anybody like him in the transit industry... The way Mr. Winston sees it, the trolleys stopped running at just the wrong moment. Just when the civil rights movement was blossoming, with a new openness afoot, Los Angeles lost its trains and became a city of distant, disconnected neighborhoods."

Thanks to Chris Steins