For nearly the last half-century, the Haddon Township Department of Public Works (DPW) has benefited from the steady hand of Joe Haigh.
Haigh, who spent his earliest days with the department hanging off the back of a garbage truck for $3.50 an hour, closed out his career this month as DPW foreman.
At 46 years of service, Haigh was the longest-tenured public employee in the township; a familiar face in all seasons, whether he was maintaining its roadways, repairing sewer and water lines, or pitching in with public events.
At the beginning, however, he didn’t walk into the garage on Oneida Avenue with a career in mind.
“I figured I’d do it for a few years and then move on,” Haigh said.
Instead, he found himself picking up new skills and finding a rhythm for public service. Recruited from his job at the Sunoco station by a friend, Haigh joined the DPW at 19, and immediately leaned into long hours performing manual labor.
When the township began its recycling program, Haigh was tasked with filling up a dump truck with discarded newspapers. As the years went along, he became a heavy equipment operator, moving from shovels and jackhammers to backhoes and excavators, and learning from his coworkers as he went.
Haigh became so comfortable with his routine in heavy equipment that when Haddon Township DPW Director Jim Stevenson first offered Haigh a chance to move into a leadership role, he declined the opportunity.
“Jimmy’s an awesome boss,” Haigh said.
“He’s so intelligent and easy to get along with.
“He wanted me to be a foreman for a long time. I said, ‘Not yet, not yet.’”
Finally, when the chance came his way again after some 40 years in the department, Haigh took Stevenson up on it. In leadership, the benefit of his experiences at the junior positions in the department lent him greater credibility with his coworkers.
“It was a good end to my career; something different,” Haigh said. “I treated them the way I would want to be treated.
“I’m not going to give them anything more than I would do, or something I haven’t done,” he said. “This way, they could never say, ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’ Yeah, I do.”
Asked to recall some of the highlights of his career, Haigh remembered the snowstorm of 1996. It took plow drivers working around the clock four days and nights to clear, with snowdrifts 20 feet high. The weather was so relentless that it almost derailed Haigh’s honeymoon flight to Hawaii with his wife Debbie.
“It was one of the toughest storms to plow because it just kept coming down so fast,” Haigh said. “It was so hard to keep up with. By the time you got done your section, you had another eight to 10 inches of snow, and had to just keep going.”
In addition to his career with Haddon Township, Haigh has traveled with his church on relief efforts, helping hurricane victims in Philippi, West Virginia and Andrews, South Carolina to rebuild. He’s also been to Africa and South America on comparable mission trips, dedicating his free time to acts of service.
“We’re blessed with what we have, and there’s always going to be people in need,” Haigh said. “You can help them out any way you can.
“A lot of people look at it like you’re doing work for them, but they give you a lot back, too, in their appreciation.”
Haigh takes a similar view of his time with the DPW in Haddon Township.
“I enjoyed what I had out of helping the residents for these years; all the different people that you meet,” he said. “I just love doing it.”
Haddon Township Mayor Randy Teague, who has been the DPW liaison throughout his time in office, described Haigh as “a really nice guy, great with the public; a great employee.
“You could call him any time; he was always there,” Teague said. “He would always do the job and do an exceptional job. Always a smiling face, and just a great worker.”
The mayor said that Haddon Township benefits greatly from the pride that DPW workers take in their work, and praised Haigh for helping instill and model that work ethic throughout his years.
“Public Works [employees] are hard workers,” Teague said. “They want to be the best, whether it’s a snowstorm, leaf removal, finding a water leak; they want our events to be the best.
“There is a pride there that really can be seen, and I think the public picks up on that,” he said.
“It starts at the top and goes all the way down to the newest employee.
“Joe was an integral part of that at Public Works,” Teague said.
In retirement, Haigh will enjoy his days gardening and woodworking, and spending time enjoying life at a slower pace.
Joe and Debbie are the proud parents of 37-year-old Joe Jr., who operates an independent trucking business, and Victoria, 23, who is in her final year of a physician assistant program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
To ease Joe into his new life, the family has begun a weekly movie night, in which they’ll take in a film for every year he worked for the township, starting with the date of his hire (1978).
By the time they get done 46 films, he should have a handle on retirement — or at least a solid head start on figuring it out.
