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| Courtesy of Bondbrothers.com |
Ruth June Zaccagnini likes to think she is 110 pounds of muscle.
As soon as she steps in the door from a long day at work, she places her muddy work boots near the welcome mat, and her bright yellow hard hat beside a family picture.
Zaccagnini has worked in construction for over 25 years; a field where women make up two percent of the workforce.
“It’s a man’s world, I just work in it,” Zaccagnini, 52, said.
In August 2011, Zaccagnini was appointed to foreman of the Bond Brothers construction company, located in Everett, Mass. She is the first woman to ever hold such a position.
“It’s an honor, but it was a struggle to get there,” she said. “These guys are like my brothers now, but it wasn’t always like this.”
Zaccagnini leaves her small Brockton apartment at around 5 a.m. each morning. She gets into her black Ford F1-50 pickup truck, and places her brown bagged lunch in the same duffel bag as her hard hat.
She commutes to different job sites all over New England, and is usually there right on time - before 6 a.m.
“I’ve been at the Big Dig, the runways of Logan Airport, you name it,” Zaccagnini said. “At the end of the day, it all blurs together and becomes the same place.”
But the one location that stuck out from the blur was the Harvard University, 10 Akron site. Zaccagnini was at the site three years ago, in 2008, and it became a day that would affect the rest of the construction worker’s life.
* * *
Zaccagnini drove through the winding highway roads that led into Boston. Her MapQuest directions sat in her lap, and she glanced down at them every couple of minutes, keeping to her typical middle lane.
Zaccagnini knew she found the job site when she saw three of her coworkers parked in front of miles of open dirt terrain.
“We were going in to build a new sewer treatment plant that day. I had done some projects like this before, so I wasn’t worried,” Zaccagnini said.
The four construction workers got together and discussed their plans of attack on the terrain. Zaccagnini was in charge of renovating the old sewer, a job that required a lot of patience and a loss of smell.
The first portion of her shift went well. During her midday break, Zaccagnini ate her lunch on the bed of her pickup truck, and looked at the dark clouds that were gradually rolling in. It was a windy, brisk spring day, and Zaccagnini was praying for the rain to hold off so she could continue to work.
After she devoured her peanut butter and fluff sandwich, she called her best friend, Rosemary Muldoon.
“I remember getting that phone call. We spoke about once every week, and tried to find time during our breaks or drives home from work to speak to each other,” Muldoon, a public relations specialist, said.
“I don’t really remember what I talked to her about,” Zaccagnini said. “Probably the usual, ‘how’s your kids?’, ‘how’s your job?’”
After the hour break was over, Zaccagnini was back at it near the sewer plant.
“Smelled like garbage, and feces, and decaying rodent all mixed into one,” she recalled.
She latched herself onto the top rail of the sewer plant, and gradually hoisted herself down into the caves of a sewer.
“[My coworker] Mark was working near me. He said I was brave for going into a ditch like that,” Zaccagnini said.
The lower she got into the sewer, the more it smelled, and the faster Zaccagnini worked. She wanted to get out of there as fast as she could.
She made a movement to her left. And that movement resulted in a tumble to the bottom of the sewer.
BOOM. BAM. BOOM.
“It felt like I was a tennis ball, being wacked from court to court as I hit each dent and wall of the underground sewer,” Zaccagnini said. “I don’t remember much after that.”
Zaccagnini was unconscious, and soaked in sewage water. She was rushed to Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Her coworkers called her son, who then called me,” Muldoon said. “I immediately went to the hospital. It was one of the only times I’ve ever driven over the speed limit.”
The news Muldoon received when she got to the hospital was even more upsetting.
Zaccagnini would need brain surgery.
“I burst into tears. Brain surgery? There goes her life,” Muldoon said.
While both of the best friends do not like discussing the surgery itself, Muldoon remembers Zaccagnini saying she had to live for her son’s sake.
“She would just keep talking about him, in a way that was more motivation to heal than anything,” Muldoon said.
Zaccagnini had a successful surgery. She was released from the hospital after two months.
After spending two months lying in a hospital bed, Zaccagnini tried to become as active as possible while recovering at home. She began challenging herself with crossword puzzles and Sudoku, and watched almost every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.
She never found herself to be completely alone throughout the recovery. Visitors streamed in and out of her Brockton home for months, bringing flowers, greeting cards, and their sympathy.
But the biggest adjustment was Zaccagnini’s new physical appearance. She had her head shaved during surgery, and was nearly bald.
“I was never embarrassed to go out in public with muddy boots and black fingernails, but bald was a whole ‘nother story,” Zaccagnini said.
Zaccagnini remembers receiving strange glares from passersby.
“If you look at me funny when I’m in my work clothes, I feel pride because I’m out there making money and supporting my son. But if you look at me because I’m bald, then I don’t want your pity and sympathy. I’m a big girl,” Zaccagnini said.
The two friends walked into a small wig shop in Braintree, Mass.
“We tried on about fifteen wigs that day,” Muldoon said. “She bought herself a practical brown haired one, and I offered her a wacky red one to wear whenever she needed a good laugh.”
She named that wig “the red badge of courage.”
After the surgery, Muldoon spent time off of work, and slept over Zaccagnini’s apartment whenever she could.
“I just wanted to make her smile any way I could,” Muldoon said.
One night, Zaccagnini admitted the wigs were uncomfortable and itchy, and she took them off. She said she felt self-conscious, even in front of Muldoon, her best friend.
Muldoon noticed a lack of self-esteem coming from her friend.
“So I went through her closet and got the nicest dress she ever bought,” Muldoon said.
Muldoon described the dress as a dark plum knee length dress that had silver embroidery on the collar line.
“I said, ‘Put it back, that’s for special occasions only,’” Zaccagnini recalled. “But she insisted recovery was a special occasion in and of itself.”
Together, the two sat on the couch in their fancy dresses and high heels, and shared a memory that would stick with them years later.
“I just wanted to get her feeling like a woman again,” Muldoon said. “Get her out of those god damn boots and into some high heels.”
Works Cited
Interviews: Ruth Zaccagnini (phone and in person), Rosemary Muldoon (phone)
Construction site information: http://www.bondbrothers.com/index.cfm
Information on weather: http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/bos/2008/4/6/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
Zaccagnini’s address: http://www.whitepages.com/
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