William “David” Iddings, a 40-year employee of the Missouri Department of Transportation, will retire on August 1, 2016.
Iddings retires as a senior maintenance worker at Gallatin. Iddings began working with MoDOT in 1976 as a crew worker at the former Coffey maintenance facility. In addition to his work at MoDOT, Iddings has worked at a sawmill and farming cattle and row crops.
Iddings and his wife Teresa will enjoy retirement as it gives them more time to work around the house and spend more time with their church activities. They will also be found enjoying the company of their three children: Devan, Derrick, and Darcie, as well as their grandchildren: Gage, Addi, Memphis and a fourth grandchild who’s on the way.
Iddings’ favorite part of working with MoDOT has been the people with whom he’s worked and seeing something new, as he’s seen a lot of changes in the way the department does its work from the 70s until now. One memory that stands out – and speaks to the changes in safety for workers that MoDOT has implemented over his 40 years of service – is what workers called the ‘diving board.’ It was a 4 by 12-inch board, 16 feet long, which attached to the tailgate of a truck. Workers would stand on the end of the board, holding a spray wand to spray weeds as a co-worker drove down the road. As for what he will miss about MoDOT, Iddings said he, like 90 percent of all workers, will not miss night snow removal.
But to Iddings, it was all part of being a public servant. For the coworkers he leaves behind, he has these parting words: “Have a servant’s heart, be good to all, find out where you came from and where you are going.”
“We want to thank David for his 40 years of service to the department and the citizens of Missouri,” said District Engineer Don Wichern. “We appreciate his dedication and hard work and wish him and Teresa a very happy and long retirement.”
