TNT Amusements employee John Sheehan turns 88!

Todd Tuckey

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TNT Amusements Inc employee JOHN SHEEHAN celebrates his 88th birthday!

John Sheehan began working as a taxi driver, then joined the National Guard in 1937. He enlisted in the Navy during WW2. After the war, he met and married Joy (and they are still married to this day!) and became a streetcar operator in Chicago. He and his wife returned to Philadelphia in 1951 and went to the local employment office. He was sent to the Scott Crosse Company on Spring Garden Street. This began his career into the amusement business to which he is still employed today!

At Scott Crosse Company he began to work in their export department. His job was to scrape the wood rails on the pinball and bingo machines, cleaning off the old shellac and scratches. He remembers taking apart old transformers to take the plates out of them to use to do that endless scraping! Four coats of new shellac later the games looked great! He then started to learn the mechanical aspects of these machines and began doing repairs and overhauls on them. There was quite a demand for overseas sales of used machines. John remembers working from 8:30am till 1am weekdays, going home for dinner and coming back that night! He chuckled when he mentioned how extra parts that the customer wanted to buy were screwed and attached to the underside of the playfields so no extra duty had to be paid! He also worked on Shuffle Bowling alleys, starting with ball bowlers and moving into puck bowlers.

By 1961, the manufacturers were selling directly to the overseas companies and that business was slowing down. Then Scott Crosse Company opened American Amusements and began street operations. John then began a career as a route man, servicing machines all around the tri-state area. In 1971, American was bought out by Terminal Amusements in New Jersey and John continued his position with Terminal servicing their large route until 1983. He worked on shuffle bowlers, pinball machines and video games.

John then joined Active Amusements, back in center city Philadelphia and worked in the shop exclusively until 1993 when Active sold out to Mondial Amusements. At this point, John was asked to retire.

I remember John came to our company that week to ask for work. He told me "I've got a lot of good years left in me!" We put John right to work shopping our Shuffle Bowling Alleys for home sales and he has continued to do them all these years!

He recently celebrated his 88th birthday. It was at this point, I had to tell him of our company policy that mandates retirement when you turn 100...so John is limited to just 12 more years of work--before he will enjoy retirement! Actually, John tells us that working on the machines keeps him active and gets him out of the house. And there certainly is plenty of satisfaction to bringing these machines back to life for a new generation to enjoy! John has overhauled over 500 shuffle alleys for us since 1993 (along with assorted pinball machines and video games).
 

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Congrats John and happy birthday. Thanks for posting, Todd.

Scott C.
 
I love guy's like John. Strong work ethic and he probably has a great personality as well!

Congrats on hitting the double 8's and hopefully many more to come.
 
Great life story John and Happy Birthday. Hopefully you or Todd can share more stories working in the arcade business over the years.
 
Congrats John and happy birthday. You got 12 years to work on Todd to get that stupid company policy that mandates retirement when you turn 100 to be extended. If not you could always write a book, I would buy it.:)
 
Happy Birthday John and -=S=- salute all veterans!
 
Incredible! Love what you do and do what you love! Happy 88th and looking forward to hearing the story of when he turns 100 and convinces everyone to let him keep working.
 
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