What do Danny serenading Sandy in Grease, the first Superman movie and the birth of the world’s first IVF baby have in common? The answer is that they were all major events that took place in 1978.

Something else significant happened in 1978, less likely to have an impact on the news headlines for sure, but it was to see the start of an exciting career for one individual at the IEE and later the IET.

Earlier this week, on July 3, Community Manager Deborah McKenzie celebrated 45 years at the IET – she’s seen the organisation led by 12 Secretaries and Chief Executive and Secretaries in that time and stayed in her role longer than the past ten Prime Ministers.

Joanne Longton, a mere newbie who joined the Institution in 1991, has worked with Deborah since her first day. At that point Deborah had been working in our Manchester office for 13 years.

Joanne told me: “She was a fount of all wisdom for the Centres (as they were called then) – there wasn’t really anything I could ask her that she didn’t know!”

The suite of offices in Alstom, Trafford Park, was base for a small team who still used typewriters and communicated by post, the phone and fax machine! When the office got email, it was a revolution – however, there was only one email address for the whole office to share!

Joanne added: “We only supported the Centres north of the Watford Gap in those days – a lot of attending meetings/minutes taking/typing up minutes on electric typewriters and using Tipex when mistakes were made. We had to do a lot of things manually – including mailshots for each Centre twice a year. We must have literally stuffed tens of thousands of envelopes by hand between us.”

The Trafford Park team never really saw their colleagues in Stevenage or London, but there was a period of time when Deborah worked in Savoy Place for a couple of weeks, covering for one of the Directors’ PAs who was on leave.

“When Alstom closed, we moved to an office in UMIST, and by that time it was just Deborah and me. Both of us started working from home in 2003”, added Joanne.

Deborah has practically worked with all the Local Networks (LNs) in the UK at some point and plenty outside of the UK, many in Europe, but also Australia and New Zealand.

She must have dealt with thousands of volunteers in her time at the IEE/IET and I hear that many of the older volunteers kept in touch with her long after they finished on the committees such was the high regard, they held her in.

Joanne said: “I’m sure Deborah won’t mind me saying that she can be technically “challenged” and there was a time when we were undergoing training for the new ‘MyCommunity’ at Savoy Place when she almost inadvertently deleted all the LN accounts – at that point we had access to the “back end” – this was swiftly removed but caused a lot of hilarity at the time in the team!”

45 years is a very long time, and I would personally like to thank Deborah for all her hard work and commitment to the IET, our volunteers and championing our organisational purpose.

I’m sure everyone will join me in thanking Deborah for her contributions to the Institution and congratulate her on hitting such a remarkable milestone with the IET.