The Lucrative Career of Timothy Kitchell, Senior Lineman

It’s 2 a.m. on a cold January morning: thrust from his sleep, Timothy Kitchell must respond to a call for the Butler Electrical Department. In weather where icicles dangle from the mustache of his partner, Kitchell must repair a downed power line as winds in the negative ten-degree weather nearly jolt the lineman off his feet.

This is only a glimpse of what Kitchell has seen his 43 years at the municipality’s electric company.

Kitchell, 62 in August, will be retiring on Dec. 31, and had his letter of retirement presented before the borough’s council last week.

Though the physical repercussions of his job, including two bum knees, have inflamed in the past few years, Kitchell reflected on his career with Butler in high praise.

It all began in the late 1960s, when Kitchell was working as an installer for a phone company out of Morristown. He’d been with the company for about five months, but making only $82.50 per week, he needed to seek more prosperous avenues.

With an application in at Butler’s Electric Department for a job that paid $100 per week, or $2.50 per hour, he became an excited 19-year old.

Eventually sealing up the job, the Butler High School graduate started off with tedious work, cleaning the toilets, carrying items and did little ground work.

In 1978, he became a lineman with the company, and in 1984-85, he served as the company’s foreman, working out of the now-archaic ladder trucks that the town owned.

“I was the only guy there at the time,” said Kitchell. “I had to take a Civil Service exam, passed the test, and moved ahead of some of the non-veterans. However, eventually a NAVY guy got the job.”

But since that time, he’s served as a senior lineman for the company, morally responsible for those younger employees who work with him.

“You have to worry about everyone else,” he said. “You have to look out for someone who might be acting foolishly, and it’s also a large mental responsibility.”

In his extensive time with Butler, he said there have been countless moments that will remain with him for life. A few noteworthy ones however, were Hurricane Sandy and a few projects he helped actualize.

“The devastation of Hurricane Sandy was terrible,” he said. “On every street, there were downed wires laying in the road. That’s been the first really bad one since Hurricane David in the 70s. But at that time, we had only 5,000 meters in the system compared to 12,000 today!”

Another project that remains memorable was a project where Kitchell ran underground primary lines to an old church in Smokerise Island.

“The church used to hold services in the 30s and 40s, and still does from time to time, I believe,” he said. “In the early 90s, we ran a wire out there (which was really neat).”

Also, he’s done everything from: extracting bodies from homes that experienced electrical fires, to pulling people from cars that had crashed into poles, to working days on end with hardly any time to sleep.

“There’s things that we’ve done that a normal power company just wouldn’t do,” he said.

Butler’s Electric Company, as a municipality service, differs immensely from other utility companies. With its two substations fed by Jersey Central, Butler then distributes the electricity at what was once the cheapest power in the Northeast, according to Kitchell.

It services everywhere from Butler, Bloomingdale and Kinnelon, to Haskell and parts of West Milford.

In the job description, however, there remains outside work such as trimming trees and hedges to clear way for the lines.

Aside from these demanding components of the day-to-day grind, it also caused Kitchell to miss Christmases and other holidays.

“I work about 2,080 hours per year,” he said. “But I probably have 16-17 years worth of pay in just overtime hours – I’ve been here about 60 years.”

“Eventually you just have to say ‘Uncle!’” he said humorously.

What Lies Ahead

In his looming retirement, he does not know precisely what he will do, other than work with Habitat for Humanity.

“I came here as a teenager and I’m leaving collecting Social Security,” he laughed. “…I’m going to do something now, I just don’t know what (per se). I’m probably just going to take some deep breaths for a couple of months.”

Though he wishes his retirement could come in the warmer months, he looks at it with excitement and anticipation.

“My wife’s been kind of leery about it, but I’m looking at this as a new chapter in my life,” he concluded.

So in the waning months of Kitchell’s tenure in Butler, he will cherish his last moments with his crew and in a way, look forward to the days where he’s not wearing long sleeves, gloves and flame retardant clothes on 100-degree days.

And when a thunderstorm rolls in, he may just naturally race to the door expecting a callout…but then take solace in the fact that he can stay safe, dry and warm at home.