Baseball Player, Ice Hockey Player, Lumber Jack!
Union Leader!
… Or maybe “jack of all trades.” My Dad had a lot of stories.
Mostly, he made them sound happy, but there wasn’t any money. His father had moved them all — Mom, Dad, and six stairstep boys, from South Dakota to a farm where land was cheap in Alberta, Canada. They went part of the way in a railroad box car. At the end of 8th grade, his father made my Dad quit school so his younger brothers could go to school; my Dad was expected to go to work. He did — one short-term job after another.
He played semi-pro baseball and ice hockey, saying he would have made the pros in baseball if his shoulder hadn’t given out. He was a pitcher. Among my family’s photos, I have a great picture of him with his lumberjack crew, clearly well-liked by the rough-looking men he worked with. Dad was one of them.
There were more jobs, too — jobs that allowed life to be patched together, but the Great Depression was approaching. No stability, and then no money. Time moved into desperation.
He and a brother heard there were jobs in Montreal; they hitchhiked there, but alas, no jobs. They had $2.67 between them to get back home to Alberta, Canada, where at least their Mom’s huge garden had food. The next time my Dad tried for a job began with letters exchanged with a second cousin in Des Moines, Iowa. The cousin wrote back, saying, “If you can get here, I can get you a job on the railroad section gang.”
This time, my Dad went alone. He “got there” by himself, riding the rails and hitchhiking to Des Moines from near Edmonton, Alberta, to get that job. He probably earned a little survival money along the way at a few poker tables.
He got the job, and he joined the railroad Union. In Des Moines, he met my mother and was drafted for WWII. After the war, he returned to Iowa for that job and married my mother. The Union had saved his job.
As a kid, I knew my Dad to be a signal maintainer for the Rock Island Railroad. I learned it was an important job — important because without my Dad’s skills with the ever-more complicated electrical systems that kept the trains safe, the trains could not run.
What I didn’t quite understand then was how the job was most important to us because it was a Union job. The Union job, i.e., organized Labor, made it possible for my family — Mom, Dad, and me, to enter and be stable in the Middle Class. In general, blue-collar jobs did not pay a Middle-Class wage, but the Union — people working together for better wages, resulted in my Mom and Dad owning a house, having time to read to me every night, and saving a little money. It meant I could attend school, get an allowance, and take music lessons. No worries about whether there was a roof over my head!
My Dad was promoted to Signal Maintainer before I was born. He kept that job through several moves from one territory to another — Neola near Council Bluffs, Atlantic, Des Moines. Atlantic is where I grew up. Dad’s Union meetings alternated between Omaha, Nebraska, and Des Moines. My Dad got raises, all carefully negotiated between the Rock Island officials and the CIO, and eventually the AFL-CIO Union. Several times, my Dad counted the days — We’ve only got six more to go … if the bosses don’t come through, we’re going on strike. My Mom and Dad saved up, preparing themselves for a period of no paychecks until an agreement could be struck.
When I was in junior high, my dad was elected Chief of his four-state Signal Maintainers Union — Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. He took the duties seriously. Among them, he led the negotiations between the company and workers who had been injured on the job, and he helped his fellow Signal Maintainers stay strong and speak in one voice when it came time for negotiations on wages and safety regulations.
My Dad was sweet, generous, and tough. Since today is Labor Day, I’ll end this memory with a story that combines the generous and the tough.
A single mother and her teenage son lived on the corner of the block I grew up on. As Raymond — the teenager, graduated from high school, he needed work to help him pay for college. My Dad got him a summer job on the railroad section gang. Raymond did the work and, as planned, went away to college. The following summer, he wanted to return to the section gang for another summer’s work and pay, but oops! Raymond had refused to join the Union. I imagine he had thought to himself, “Oh, well. It’s just a summer job — no reason to join.”
But no, it wasn’t just a summer job for my Dad. He blocked Raymond from returning to work that following summer, saying, “None of us would have good jobs without the Union; I refuse to allow anyone to take wages that Labor fought for without being on the team, without having respect for the Union.”
Now, in 2023, I can almost hear my Dad (1911 – 1971) cheering for all the Labor successes this summer. The most important lesson I learned from him is that teamwork matters and teamwork is precisely what organized Labor is all about. I stand with Dad on these successes, e.g., Tremendous Victory: Worker Wins. The more Labor wins, the more stable our future will be. As the song goes, “Rich Men North of Richmond” must share their wealth with the workers who make it happen.
HAPPY LABOR DAY!