43-year ComEd worker made pals of his adversaries

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - Lawrence A. Cullen was a guy with an electric personality that he put to good use during his 43 years working for ComEd.

Mr. Cullen was the company's chief union contract negotiator and such an engaging sort he even made pals with union workers caught on the wrong side of a bargaining table.

"He had legions of friends. Everybody knew the name Larry Cullen. He went to everyone's wake and funeral, their picnics. He was almost like a politician," said his namesake son, Lawrence Cullen Jr.

Mr. Cullen died February 12. He was 93.

Mr. Cullen was born in Bridgeport and reared in Chicago Lawn. He started a family in the St. Rita Parish on the South Side, later moved them to Northbrook and spent his golden years between Tinley Park and his beloved lakefront getaway in Long Beach, Ind.

He was a people person, a poker player, a do-it-yourselfer, a swing dancer and a White Sox fan who always had to have things his way, his kids say.

The son of a Chicago streetcar motorman, Mr. Cullen graduated from Tilden Tech in 1930 and earned an electrical engineering degree from Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1935 and got a job with Commonwealth Edison.

He met his late wife, then Margaret Kehoe, at a South Side dance hall. They both loved Big Band tunes and were great dancers. They were married for 60 years, his son Lawrence said.

They got their Long Beach getaway and he called it the "Irish Riviera." He was a member of the Long Beach Country Club. The family spent every summer there.

On work days, Mr. Cullen commuted on the South Shore line.

"He was a putterer," Lawrence Cullen Jr. said. "He like to putt around the house fixing things."

And whatever he was doing always seemed to take forever.

"He was always mixing concrete, having the boys carry buckets of gravel to mix concrete," his daughter Margaret "Peggy" West said. "He'd make one 2x2 square of concrete... it took a couple years to build a patio. He'd take bricks from old Edison substations, cut them in half and use them on something.

"He was always trying to do something for free. Always making something out of nothing."

And Mr. Cullen was a guy's guy who, in his children's eyes, could simply fix everything.

In retirement, Mr. Cullen traveled to Ireland and around Europe with his wife. And until he was 90 years old, he was chairman of Operation ABLE (Ability Based on Long Experience), a group that found work for people who found themselves unemployed after age 55.

After his wife died, Mr. Cullen found joy in playing with his grandchildren and "giving people grief" in a nice way, West said.

"Oh, he did it to be funny. He always wanted to talk to people to get something out of them. He wanted to hear what people had to say. Hear their story," she said. "And he wanted to give people his story."

At 93, Mr. Cullen told his son the trouble with living a long life was that he outlived all his pals.

"He died of old age." Lawrence Cullen Jr. said. "He was worn out."

He is also survived by another son, Richard Cullen; another daughter, Mary Ellen Burns, 11 grandchildren and eight great- grandchildren.