I am proud to have been a part of America’s workforce over the past seven decades. My first job was delivering the morning edition of the Scranton Tribune to households in a 12 block area not far from my home. I was 13 years old. I had to pick up my stack of papers before 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday. I could not have handled that without the commitment of my Uncle Joe Gallagher. He was the janitor at the office/warehouse where my father and my Uncle Bill worked and he had to catch a 6 a.m. bus, so he assumed the responsibility of waking me up around 5:30. I peddled the papers on foot, but on rainy days my father or my sister would get up with me and drive me around my route. This is a good example of how I was always spoiled as a child. I became fairly adept at folding and tossing the paper, rarely missing the porch even on the darkest of mornings. My job also entailed collecting the cost of the papers from my route customers. Don’t ask me why the customers didn’t just receive a bill from the newspaper and pay the bill by mail. It’s like the life insurance agent who came to your home every month to collect the premium. That’s just the way things were done in the late ’50s, at least in Scranton. I usually did my collection by bike every other Friday, learning quickly that the best time to find folks home was suppertime. My pay was the tips I received so it was important to catch people at their happiest, such as the end of the work week. I served the economy as a paper boy for about two years, but at age 15 I decided it was time to move on to bigger and better things, i.e., seek employment with Skettino’s, a neighborhood grocery store that was located just across the street from my house.

The family that operated Skettino’s also owned our house, so there was that connection when I asked to work there. I started as a potato sacker, carefully filling 5 pound bags with Idaho’s and/or Maine’s finest potatoes. When all the potatoes were sacked I assisted in replenishing the shelves. I apparently performed well because I was put on a fast track and after only about two months I was promoted to the stamper position. That involved stamping the price on every can, jar, box, carton, and bottle. It was an awesome responsibility because if I made a mistake and stamped the wrong price the store would suffer the consequence. My next promotion was the position to which I aspired – the checkout bagger boy! There was only one cash register in Skettino’s and I got to work at that checkout site, bagging or boxing the groceries for the customers. Also, if there were many bags or a large carton of groceries and the customer had walked to the store from their nearby home I was expected to carry the groceries to the customer’s house, if within a two block radius of Skettino’s. I usually did so willingly because it gave me a little break from the confines of the store and often the grateful customer would give me a tip (which was mine to keep, never to be reported to the Skettino family). Another benefit of hauling the heavy groceries was that it did wonders in my teen years bodybuilding stage. I worked part-time at Skettino’s for about five years. It was an enjoyable experience which allowed me to meet and converse with so many neighbors and other customers. My lasting memory from that job, however, was first-hand observation of the grief, sadness, and disbelief of the folks who came into the store the day President Kennedy was assassinated and the following day.

During my junior and senior years at college I worked at Samter’s, part-time during the school years and full-time in the summers. Samter’s was primarily a men’s furnishings store in downtown Scranton, but it did sell women’s apparel on two floors. The Vice-President of Samter’s was an acquaintance of my father and he learned that I was an accounting student at the University of Scranton. He hired me to work on accounting and bookkeeping matters for the women’s department. That department was managed by a hard-nosed man who was feared by the ladies who worked there. I had an office desk just outside his office and around the corner from the section on the floor where the unmentionables were sold. We were the only males involved with women’s apparel sales in the store and over time we got along fine. I was gradually given more responsibility, even to the degree that I started to regard myself as the junior boss of women’s apparel. I would mingle every day with all the middle-age and older ladies who worked in women’s apparel and they loved me. I know that comes across as immodest, but it’s true. Even today older women generally like me. As I mentioned in another story I did become good friends with a girl my age who also worked at the store and that is a significant part of the pleasant memories I have of my Samter’s employment. My boss and the sales force and the bookkeeping gals gave me a few presents and a nice send-off to law school in August 1966.

In my final semester of college I had an internship in the New York office of Arthur Andersen & Company, one of the Big Eight of international CPA firms at that time. The internship was a non-paying job, but I did receive college credits for it. As my graduation from law school approached three years later I interviewed with Arthur Andersen for a position on their tax staff and received an offer for that employment, my first full-time career job. My annual salary was $12,000, which blew my mind because I knew that the highest salary my father earned after working 42 years for the same company was $10,000. How could I be so fortunate to earn so much? I worked in the firm’s Washington’s office from August 1969 to May, 1971, although I was temporarily assigned to the Cincinnati office for 2 months in the summer of 1970. I primarily worked on research of tax issues and preparation of individual, fiduciary, partnership and corporate tax returns, but also participated in the presentation of requested tax rulings from the National Office of IRS. Arthur Andersen required that all professional employees, including those on the tax staff, work on at least two financial statement audit engagements, and I fulfilled that requirement by participating in the audit of a chemical plant in Norfolk, VA, and a nursing home in Clinton, MD. My job with Arthur Andersen involved many hours of labor. A 40 hour work week was a rare exception, even during the slower summer season. I did learn a lot about the practice of tax law from that experience, however, and as a young single guy it was great to be working in an office building between Farragut Square and Lafayette Park, close to the White House and not far from whatever the happenings were in D.C. Of course, the absolute best blessing of that employment was that it resulted in me being introduced to my future bride by a tax staff co-worker. 

My employment with Arthur Andersen ended abruptly and in regrettable shame in May 1971. The reason for that is perhaps a story for another day. The truth of the matter, though, is that I was getting close to resigning anyway, as I had sights on heading West. As has been well documented I drove across country with a lovely passenger and visited California for close to a month. Upon returning to the East Coast I was jobless in Scranton. I searched the help wanted ads in the Scranton Tribune but only a few had any appeal to me (e.g., process server, trainer at dog obedience school, dancing instructor) and they didn’t pay anywhere near the $1,000 a month I had been earning. So I decided to return to Washington and seek interviews with law firms that had a tax practice. That is how I wound up being hired as an associate in the law firm of Ash, Bauersfeld, Burton & Mooers at a starting annual salary of (yet again) $12,000. I worked there from August 1971 through June 1986, becoming a full partner on January 1 1975. The firm’s name was subsequently changed to Ash, Bauersfeld, Burton, Hendricks & Tyrrell, an obviously alphabetical listing decided upon so as not to offend those older has-been lawyers. While the firm did indeed have a tax practice (which actually was quite prestigious back in the day when Mr. Ash was one of the most sought-after tax litigators in the country), it had in more recent years developed a small business and estates and trust practice as well. I did work on a number of tax cases, including numerous tax protests filed with the Appeals Office of IRS and tax trials in the Court of Claims in New York City and the U.S. Tax Court in Miami and Richmond. Some of the longest engagements involved travel and stays in Phoenix, New York, Jersey City, Roanoke, and Durham. I also started a real estate settlement practice in the firm. The best part of my experience with the firm was the opportunities it provided for me to meet clients who have stayed with me for decades.

While with the law firm I became acquainted with Martin Dembo. His CPA firm (Dembo Jones) and the law firm were in three different office buildings at the same time. When one firm moved the other did too. Mr. Dembo would often stop by my office and discuss tax planning and tax issues. He started to introduce me to many of his clients, usually at a breakfast meeting at the old Hot Shoppes in downtown Bethesda, and he referred a number of them to me for preparation of estate planning documents. I am grateful to him for the significant impact of those referrals on my professional career. Mr. Dembo was the tax guru of his firm and when he decided to retire at age 75 two of his partners (Stan Jones and Joe Healy) offered me the job of being in charge of the tax department at Dembo Jones. The offer was appealing to me because at that time I was concerned about the future of the law firm. Mr. Bauersfeld’s experience was that of a tax case litigator in the 1950-1965 era, but after that period tax trials were principally going to larger firms around the country, and he had no continuing client base. Mr. Burton did still have the client base but so much of it was dependent upon personal relationships he developed with clients of his age or older and they were starting to sell their business or turn it over to the next generation which sought younger advisors. John Hendricks and I did all of the nitty-gritty work and had no time to market or develop new clients. I also felt that my compensation was below market and I didn’t see any potential for change. As mentioned earlier I already knew many of the Dembo Jones clients so I made the decision to leave the law firm and join the CPA firm as of July 1, 1986. This mid-career change turned out to be a good financial decision as my compensation significantly increased with Dembo Jones. Nevertheless, at the time it was not an easy decision to make because I felt indebted to Mr. Bauersfeld and Mr. Burton for their hiring of me in 1971 when I was at a low point in my life and because they demonstrated trust and confidence in my ability which they conveyed to their clients, many of whom became mine after they retired, and also because I felt like I was abandoning John Hendricks who I really liked and respected. I am grateful that I didn’t burn any bridges and I was able to remain on very friendly terms with both Mr. Bauersfeld and Mr. Burton until their deaths.

I stipulated one condition to my joining Dembo Jones as its Tax Department Director and that was that I be permitted to continue my estate and trust law practice so long as it didn’t detract from the performance of my job with the CPA firm. I incorporated myself as Robert J. Tyrrell, P.A. Around 1990 or so Mike Mason, also an attorney, joined the CPA firm and I welcomed him as a partner in the law firm, changing the name to Tyrrell & Mason, P.C. After my heart attack in 2006 we joined forces with Bob Pillote, who had a sole practitioner tax, estate and trust practice in Bethesda and we changed the law firm’s name to Tyrrell, Mason & Pillote, P.C., which is still the name today even though Mike and I are both retired. 

I’ve made many friends throughout the course of my employment with Dembo Jones, and many clients of my law practice (such as the Scott family in New York/New Jersey, the Brown family in Martinsville, the Ferguson family in the D.C. metro area) have become friends as well. You have asked if there was a time in my life when my work was more fulfilling than others. There were many such times when my work was satisfying and there were many times, too many, when my work was stressful, and there were times when the work was both fulfilling and stressful. What I will say, though, is that the career span I most treasure is the period from July 1986 when I joined Dembo Jones and started my own law practice through the date of my retirement because I was my own boss. As such I confirm that I was a great employee.

While I am still dabbling each tax season in a select number of tax returns I am essentially retired and just thrilled each month to receive from the government a social security benefit that I partially funded since 1971 by paying social security tax on my hard-earned wages.