Kids, This Is Why You Need To Stay In School
During the strike threat by the United Auto Workers against GM over the summer, I ran across the following photo on Reuters:
That’s Ron Gettelfinger, President of the UAW union, who could obviously use a good proofreader on his staff.
September 30, 2008 at 10:03 am
Uncle Jim McKinney–my favorite of dad’s brothers–was picketing Ford Motor Co during the strike when Henry brought in the Pinkertons and other goons to break the strike. One of the goons fired a .22 pistol blinding Uncle Jim in one eye. He returned to Johnson City, TN where he became a teacher with less than a high school education. Later, Uncle Jim and his wife, Virgie, returned to the hills of western North Carolina. There Uncle Jim became the Post Master and Virgie hiked through the laurel to teach adults living in remote cabins to read and write. Both Jim and Virgie are now long gone, but their son, James became one of the first men in our clan to graduate from college; he went on to become a lawyer and eventually the State’s Attorney.
I visited Jim Junior and asked what moved him to become a lawyer. “Two things,” he said. “First it was dad’s case against the Social Security Administrator, which I helped him prepare by doing the library research; by then dad was blind. The second thing was the Watergate Hearings held by dad’s old friend, Senator Sam Irvin.”
I submit this comment without the benefit of Bowl of Cherries editing.
October 9, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Great story, Ron. Thanks for sharing it. This posting turned out to be my last on Excellent Fodder, pretty much a year ago, it looks like. I’m going to archive this blog and let it stay up, gets pretty steady traffic for some posts.
The photo with the extraneous apostrophe reminded me of one of my early heroes, Herb Caen. He had a “thing” about rampant misuse of the apostrophe. I used to read his column when I was attending Berkeley High School back in the mid 70s.