Friends and family of Julia S. Kulp knew she would always remember their birthdays. Mrs. Kulp never missed a birthday greeting, including to a large group of friends she made while working 45 years as an assembler of telephone parts in Western Electric Co.’s Hawthorne Works in Cicero. A dainty woman who favored the color pink and preferred dresses to slacks, Mrs. Kulp, 92, died of renal failure Sunday, April 13, in St. Mary’s Hospice, Milwaukee. “My Aunt Julie would meet you once, find out your birthday and remember it–even if she met you 40 years ago,” said her nephew, Charles White Jr. “She was a wonderful, personable woman whose hobbies were her friends.” Although Mrs. Kulp went blind 15 years ago after contracting shingles, she stayed in touch with friends by telephone. For more than 80 years, Mrs. Kulp lived in the same two-flat in Cicero about a mile from the Western Electric plant. Mrs. Kulp began working at there in 1931, joining her mother, sister and brother-in-law. She retired in 1976, the year she married Louis F. Kulp, her cousin’s widow and the manager of St. Casimir Catholic Cemetery in Chicago. Mr. Kulp died in 1984. “After she went blind, her telephone and radio became her two forms of amusement,” her nephew said. “She loved listening to radio programs that played music from the 1940s and ’50s.” A regular churchgoer, Mrs. Kulp also turned to the radio for mass, he said. About a year ago, Mrs. Kulp moved to Milwaukee near her nephew. Other survivors include seven great-nieces and nephews. Mass will be said at 9 a.m. Wednesday at St. Anthony Church, 1515 S. 50th Ave., Cicero.
