By DIANNE ALWARD-BIERY
Cleaver Senior Staff Writer
HARRISON – On Feb. 5, Tom Pirnstill will be marking 20 years of service as the executive director of the Clare County Transit Corp. An open house from 1-4 p.m. at the Transit will celebrate that landmark, as well as honor Pirnstill’s official retirement at the end of February. Pirnstill took some time recently to speak with the Cleaver and reminisce about his life and work for the county.
Pirnstill’s story began in Bucyrus, Ohio, where he was raised by two working parents, and was the youngest of four siblings. Thinking about how times have changed, he mentioned having gone through some papers after his mother’s passing, and finding his parents W-2 forms from the 1950s showing their combined income of $10,000.
Pirnstill said he attributes most of his qualities to his mother who was someone who taught by example.
“I attribute her as my lead in life,” Pirnstill said. He added that he has always had a strong influence of women in his life including his sister who was much like his mother, and also his wife, Paula. “And there’s a lot more women in the workplace now, which is great. And I’ve learned a lot from them; men have a different way of looking at things sometimes.”
Noting that he tries to look at both sides of things, he added, “Sometimes I think that God gave me a curse: ‘You will look at both sides, and you will make a decision.’ I find that very difficult to do, and I try to use my faith when it comes down to that, of what’s the best thing to do.”
Pirnstill recalls his childhood as a very good and typical one, although being a bit introverted kept him from spreading his wings widely. He said a middle school years stuttering problem added difficulty, but fortunately that dissipated when he matured into high school.
After high school, Pirnstill tackled a college course which included physics, calculus and trigonometry – all of which he said he was unprepared for. He then found a business school in Columbus, Ohio, and pursued coursework there. That was a three-year course, which extended over four years which enabled him to work each summer in order to pay for the next year. Ultimately, he graduated with an accounting degree in 1968 – which meant going from having a college deferment to being classified 1A. Pirnstill said that also included having a big “1A flag on your head” that said “don’t hire this guy.”
Undaunted, Pirnstill sent out resumes anyway, and IBM hired him despite knowing he soon would undoubtedly be drafted. Although unable to stay under hire for a year which would have enabled a better pay compensation when combined with his Army pay, IBM did by law have to hold his job for him.
He was indeed drafted and after spending a year training stateside, Pirnstill was stationed in Korea for a year. Starting with an infantry MOS, he attended what was referred to as a Shake N Bake school where he attained the rank of E5 with orders for Vietnam. The next step was considered on the job training, which for Pirnstill was Officers Candidate School.
“I reported there and they had too many people there already,” he said. “So they sent me to Ranger School – like Green Beret.”
His orders then were for Korea, but a different order came down for Vietnam and Pirnstill questioned why there had been a change. He learned that when the orders went to the printer there had been a mix-up, and getting that corrected meant Pirnstill went to Korea.
“If I hadn’t done that, my odds of coming back in a body bag were really high,” he said. “’Cause I don’t know if I could kill somebody; you never really know until you’re faced with it.”
At Kimpo Air Base in-country processing he was asked if he could type, and was sent to Osan Air Base and assigned to an artillery brigade that fired the missiles atop the mountain.
“And that’s where I spent the year,” Pirnstill said. “Every month I had to fly out on a chopper to the mountains and give them the paperwork and then come back.”
He then waxed a bit sorrowful about the post-war information which revealed the actions of “higher ups” [aka Pentagon Papers], and the 58,000 kids who had perished.
“And which one of those could be the next president or discovered a cure for cancer,” he said. “I’m not a war monger, but if somebody’s going to mess with you, there’s other ways you can inflict problems with them instead of just putting boots on the ground, and they’re doing that now.”
Pirnstill mustered out of the Army after his two years, and went back to work for IBM in Columbus from 1972-1979. He then was promoted to the regional office in Southfield, Michigan, where he worked in the administrative side of the business. Then in the 1980s he was promoted to the data center and provided internal computer support. That included about 6,000 IBM-ers in Ohio and parts of Kentucky and West Virginia.
“And I had a help desk we filled with kids going to college,” he said. “If people had problems, they’d call the help desk and we’d solve them and get them on their way.”
In 1992, Pirnstill accepted a buyout offer from IBM. At that time, Paula Pirnstill had been diagnosed with lupus and medical coverage was a concern. The plan was to take the buyout, which would bridge over to retirement, then get another job and pension down the road. That left a six-year span with no paycheck, but did provide medical coverage.
“It was a longer row to hoe, but I didn’t think it would be that way – until I found out nobody was hiring,” he said. “And I lived in the Detroit area; I sent like 500 resumes and got three responses.”
Pirnstill said he had bought a cabin on Gray Lake in 1979 from his uncle, and had rented it out to vacationers during the summers. Paula had indicated she wanted to come north and buy a house, and having begun doing silk and dried floral crafts which she sold in shop in Rochester Hills, she wanted to do the same sort of thing in Clare County.
Having held out until finances ran thin, the Pirnstills made the decision to come north to live in their rustic cabin. That meant moving from a 2,400 square foot quad to a 700 square foot cabin. There, Paula kept doing crafts and the two of them would go out to do weekend craft shows – which got them by for a couple years, including upgrading the cabin.
Paula’s silk flower arrangements were described as extraordinary, and Pirnstill recalled one wedding show at the Doherty where an attendee came over and actually tried to get a whiff of floral fragrance.
While she was working on silks, he picked up a job with a company that stocked food shelves at Meijer’s in Mount Pleasant and Midland for a year or two. For a while, the couple’s car would be loaded with wreaths and other arrangements, and toted to shows. Later on, a building was purchased in Lake Station which was repaired and turned into a proper shop.
Later, Pirnstill applied with Stageright, which had an athletic division in Farwell selling to high school, college and pro football teams. That division, Rodgers Athletic, made sled dummies, down marker flags, chain markers and more. Pirnstill was there for about three years, then shifted to working in the shop with Paula. They also expanded the business into more of a retail gift shop.
“We did well,” he said. “It kept us going and it paid the bills. I think we started that in 1997, then in 2002 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, stage 4. She was a hard fighter, that’s another woman in my life that taught me things.”
The couple fought that battle for two years, with Paula saying she was going to live longer than Gilda Radner and that maybe there would be a cure by then. Unfortunately, that cure did not come and Paula passed away in 2006.
Pirnstill joked that he wasn’t likely going to be able to make a flower arrangement, and might have done better to put the materials in a blender. Thus, the shop dwindled and eventually went out of business.
The year prior he had seen a Clare County Transit ad in the paper for a director. That spurred the memory of IBM aptitude testing done years ago which had revealed that after 20 years with IBM his top job suggestion was Bus Driver. Ultimately Pirnstill was called in for an interview with six CCTC board members, then called back to receive a job offer. And so Pirnstill’s CCTC tenure began.
One difficulty that persists is securing bus drivers. Pirnstill said COVID took a toll on those ranks, and the intensity of CDL licensing is a hurdle as well.
“We’ve had to change our business model because the bigger buses [15 or more passengers] need a CDL,” he said. “Anything else you can use a chauffeur’s license. And we can’t find any CDL drivers.”
Of course there is still a set of criteria to be met. However, statistically, once the applicants go through the Secretary of State and the LEIN [Law Enforcement Information Network] every 10 applications are whittled down to two. Pirnstill emphasized the importance of applicants being truthful about anything that may have happened in their history, no matter how long ago, because if the LEIN shows something that was not noted on the application, “it’s end of conversation.”
“So, we’ve had to order smaller buses, just so we could have drivers,” he said. “Which affects some of our strategies, like the SPARKS program where they need bigger buses for more people.”
Pirnstill also said that COVID didn’t do the Transit any favors with ridership, although it is getting built back up. “But it’s gong to take a long, long time.”
That ridership includes a lot of elderly people, students, and people that go to work.
“New problems need new solutions and a new outlook,” Pirnstill said, noting that he sees it as time for someone else to take the helm. “I did my thing, and it’s time for somebody else. I’ve enjoyed this. The transits, all the ones that are in the state and in the country, are a different kind of people. We’re here to serve the public and we do anything we can do.”
Pirnstill admitted that his departure will be bittersweet. “I’ll miss the people,” he said. “I don’t like to look back. We ran it the best we could. Katie MacInnes is going to take over; she’s solid. We’ve never had a bad audit, she knows money up one side and down the other.”
Pirnstill also noted there is a new office manager position, which is now held by Rachell Ramirez. Another shift has been the departure of Cory Barz who went to MDOT, whose operations manager position is now held by Jeremy Switzer. Pirnstill said he is confident that all three will bring good ideas to their new positions.
“I really don’t have a legacy,” he said. “My goal is to try to leave things better than they were. I’ve always felt my role in life was a facilitator: if you need something and I can find something that’ll help you, and we do that.”
Pirnstill said that helpfulness mindset carries over to what he does in his church, The Community of Hope clothing distribution, and the Paula Pirnstill Memorial Health Fair.
“I’m proud that we built this building [2010],” he said. “This was cool. We put in the solar field in 2013. You can easily say I did this, I did that, but the guy upstairs gave me the ability to do that. I feel the same way with the Health Fair. Paula and I started that in 2005 and she died the next year. She went to the first one, then she couldn’t make any more of them.
“The idea was to get the people that have the knowledge and the people that don’t have the knowledge and put them in a room. And that’s kind of what we’ve been doing.”
He described the Health Fair as a big thing, as was moving from the original Transit building to the new building.
“The Community of Hope – we had a mustard seed and God said ‘Get out of the way,’ and whoosh,” he said. “I’d like to do more down there but we can’t afford to do anything more.”
Pirnstill said no money had to be borrowed for that building, but it eventually cost about $120,000-$130,000 – and it could easily have been twice the size now to handle all the materials.
“All in all, I’ve had a pretty good life,” Pirnstill said. “I really don’t have anything to be mad at God about. I feel right now it’s a natural transformation, and I’m not worried about nothin’. I attribute that to God, because he’s given me everything I needed so far. There were some rough times in our marriage while changing jobs, didn’t have a place to stay, shelter, food – and he took care of that.”
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