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Call Sign
takes its’ annual break in June, the month that marks a year
since Dial-a-Cab’s dispatching legend, Lou Gitlin
passed away. A memorial service was held this month and this
magazine wanted to mark the affection many held for a man whose
history with this Society stretched back almost as long as ODRTS
itself, after walking into the office that was then based in
Pentonville Road in late 1957. Then in 1961, he formed a Saturday dispatching team with Ivor Belkin (C97), Lou doing the evening shift and Ivor the day. Their partnership ran till 2006 – 45 years - when Lou had to undergo a double cataract operation and on his return to the dispatcher’s box at Brunswick House, found the VDU glare to be too much to take. On that retirement, Call Sign was inundated with dispatchers and drivers all wanting to say how highly they thought of Lou. It’s hard not to think of Lou without smiling. He loved telling jokes, with his wife Ruth being the butt of so many of them. Yet there was a deep love between the two that would have amazed drivers brought up on those joke sessions! |
In memory of Lou Gitlin… |
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Then there were
the Saturday football scores. Lou disliked footieand during the
voice years he would often wind-up drivers by refusing to give
out the scores until drivers virtually begged him! That was, of
course, before many had FM radios in their taxis. But it wasn’t all jokes because anyone that regularly worked on a Saturday knew that when it got busy, both Lou and Ivor had just one priority – to cover the work first. Joking came a long way down in second place! April 29th 1989 was a Saturday and the day DaC became the first radio taxi organisation in Europe to go live using just data dispatch and no voice. So being a |
Saturday, who would be the two
dispatchers to see the process through but Lou and Ivor.
Call Sign has a video of the day and when you look at both Lou and Ivor at work with a system that took us years into the future literally overnight, you would have thought they had been using it forever. There was no joking, just their sheer professionalism shining through. Lou Gitlin will forever be a legend in Dial-a-Cab’s history and such was his association to DaC that the whole Board attended the funeral. Now one year on, we sincerely hope that Lou has found the peace he so richly deserved… |
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Views on life as seen
through the eyes of David Kupler (Y74) at… KUPKAKE’S KORNER An Olympics wish…
One year 'till the Olympic Games Official cars and minivans Of course the Tube will not break down But what's for us amid the throng, Kopyright Kupkake 2011 |
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