A Printer All His Life
For Nick Monello, moveable type and letterpress printing are not just curiosities from the past; they were the tools of his boyhood. Now director of the Reproduction Unit for the New York City Department of Health, the –amiable, Brooklyn-born Monello has worked in print shops since he was a boy—which, considering he's now 71, gives him one of the longest tenures in the printing business.
"My father started a business in 1945, and I just fell right into it," he explains. "I used to work after school."
This meant foregoing a lot of play time, but Monello has no regrets. Coming from a hard-working Italian family, he says it was expected.
"It was my life, really," he admits.
Once out of school, he worked for his father full-time, until his dad retired in 1972. Then Monello took over the business—and worked even harder.
"During the busy season, we used to work day and night," he recalls; sometimes he didn't come home for days. And during slow times, he –occasionally didn't take a salary. But he's proud that he never laid anyone off.
Monello's life changed in 1986, when he decided to dissolve the business. His brother, who ran the Department of Health's in-plant, was about to leave for another job. He was having trouble finding a replacement, so he asked Monello to do him a "favor" and manage the shop for a while.
"I took this job as a temporary job," says Monello. "I was ready to go on a cruise."
What he found when he arrived 24 years ago was a shop full of salvaged, older equipment. One of the first things he did was insist that press operators start running jobs two-up on 11x17˝ paper instead of using only 81⁄2x11˝ sheets. Suddenly the in-plant's productivity went up.
The shop installed a two-color Shinohara press soon after Monello arrived and began printing two-color and even four-color jobs for the Health Department. Looking for more work, Monello decided to try printing envelopes on the shop's Multi 1250, and ended up bringing a lot of envelope printing in-house.
Then he noticed that the shop was sending thousands of NCR forms outside to be numbered.
"I told my boss, I said, 'that's foolish,'" Monello recalls. "I said, 'why don't we get a little numbering machine?'" So the in-plant did, bringing all that work in-house. Later, the shop added a Ryobi 500 with a perforating attachment, so it could number while printing.
"It saved us a lot of time, and it saved the city a lot of money," he declares.
Through the years, whenever a health crisis loomed, Monello and his staff were there to help. When HIV entered the public's awareness in the '80s, the in-plant printed piles of informational brochures. When the West Nile virus surfaced, his shop was right there, printing material for dissemination all over the city.
"We had to get almost a million impressions out" in two days, Monello recalls. "We got it out ahead of time."
Then came September 11, 2001. Just blocks from the World Trade Center, the in-plant was evacuated for days. Still, Monello and a few of his staff slipped in to print an emergency job.
Grant Brings Major Growth
The terrorist attacks of that day had an inadvertent effect on the in-plant. The Health Department got heavily involved in federal programs to increase preparedness in the homeland. In the end, federal bio-terrorism grant money funded a major equipment infusion unlike anything the in-plant had ever seen. This followed a $1.2 million investment by the department in new press, computer-to-plate and bindery equipment. In just a short time, Monello's in-plant grew from a small basement shop to a three-facility operation: two in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn.
"I was ecstatic," proclaims Monello.
The Brooklyn shop now has a five-color Ryobi 755P perfector press, a Presstek Dimension 412 CTP system and a full bindery. Monello is proud that his in-plant has two separate binderies—a rarity—and can thus complete a high volume of work without a bindery bottleneck.
A pleasant, gracious man, Monello is quick to give credit to past bosses for their support, and to praise fellow manager Bruce Krueger, director of Graphic Services for the Health Department. The admiration is mutual.
"Having worked with Nick these past 24 years, I've never met anyone who brings more intensity to his job," lauds Krueger. "Even when it's chaos all around, you can still tell he loves every minute. Now and then he may talk about retiring, but I'll believe it when I see it. They don't make printers like this anymore."
With so many years of dedicated service behind him, –Monello could easily retire and spend more time with his four grandchildren, but he insists he's doing what he likes.
"I enjoy this because this is my life," proclaims the father of four children (one of whom is a New York City police officer). What's more, Monello is proud of the public service he and his staff provide for the city.
"That's really our job here," he concludes, "to help the– –people of New York City."IPG
Manager Nick Monello stands with press operator Thomas Turner by the in-plant's five-color press.
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
