In 1995, Lucent Technologies was spun off from AT&T, and Lucent spun off units of its own in an attempt to restructure its struggling operations. Avaya was then spun off from Lucent as its own company in 2000.

The Telecom Pioneers had been the corporate community service organization for the company from the early days of Western Electric Co. and fully supported by the corporation. Shortly after Avaya was spun off they decided that they would no longer support the Pioneers leaving the Pioneers to be a self supporting organization.

As the Pioneers found out that they would lose many services from the company. One of the benefits the Pioneers lost was being notified by the company of the passing of retired co-workers. With no notices from the company we no longer knew who and when former co-workers passed.

The lists that we have developed come from other retirees letting us know when a co-worker passes. The lists aren’t a complete list of all that have passed in previous years. So if you know a co-worker that has passed, copy the link and email it and the obituary to webmaster@heartlandpioneers.com. The lists we have have assembled are only of those that others have notified us of and are’t complete.

Submitted by the webmaster@heartlandpioneers.com