Let me say this about that
—By Gene Klare
Students try handling 40-ton crane
Operating Engineers
Local 701 offers test
drive at Roosevelt High
Greer in Hall of Fame
GERRY GREER, 64, a retired Grand Lodge representative for the Interna-
tional| Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (I AM), is the newest
member of the Labor Hall of Fame, which is sponsored by the Northwest Oregon
Labor Retirees Council. The NOLRC is affiliated with the Northwest Oregon La-
bor Council, AFL-CIO.
Greer, who lives in Washougal, Washington, with his wife, Annie, also a retired
union member, retired from the IAM international
staff in 2005. At the time of his retirement, he was
based at the IAM’s Western Regional Headquarters
in Sacramento, California.
GERRY GREER was born on Jan. 13, 1943 in
New York City. After his mother divorced and re-
married, he moved to Richmond, an industrial city
in California’s East Bay across from San Francisco.
Gerry did not get along with his stepfather, and ran
away from home at age 13, for a time staying with
an older brother in Clovis, New Mexico. Then he
went to Salina, Kansas to live at the St. Francis
School for Boys.
After a college football scholarship failed to ma-
GERRY GREER
terialize, Gerry enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He
spent most of his time in the Air Force as a jet air-
craft mechanic stationed at a base across from the
Boeing plant in Wichita, Kansas, where the IAM
represented the workers.
After receiving his honorable discharge with the
three stripes of an airman third class, he returned to
California and patched up his relationship with his
mother and stepfather. By this time he had become
a musician who could play the piano and guitar, and
he used those talents to form a rock and roll band.
Greer and his colleagues joined the American Fed-
eration of Musicians and the American Federation
of Television and Radio Artists. From 1964 to 1970,
the band traveled along a circuit, playing in Alaska,
Montana, Idaho, Seattle, Portland and other places.
ANNIE GREER
On the band’s itinerary was a Portland lounge on
SE Powell Blvd. near 32nd Ave., just around the corner from the Machinists Build-
ing, where he would later work. After the music business began changing, the band
disbanded and Greer took a job as a bartender in Denver.
ONE NIGHT IN DENVER, a customer left $300 on the bar when he de-
parted. When the man next came in, Greer asked him if he had meant to leave a
$300 tip. Surprised, the customer said he wondered where he’d lost the money.
Greer handed him the $300, but the customer insisted that Greer keep half of it.
Then he offered Greer a job with the restaurant chain Mr. Steak. The man was vice
president of the corporation. Greer was hired as an opening specialist, and worked
his way up to area vice president responsible for restaurants in Wisconsin, Iowa
and Illinois.
After three busy years on that job, his then-wife, Mary Jo, urged that the Greer
family move to her hometown of Salem, Oregon, and they did. Greer found a job
as a welder at a Caterpillar lift-truck plant in nearby Dallas. There he joined Ma-
chinists Local 1506 and became active in the union. Lee G. Hunsaker of Albany-
based IAM District 163 was the business agent who represented Dallas Local 1506.
On April 4, students at Roosevelt
High School in North Portland found
a 40-ton crane on their football field,
courtesy of Campbell Crane. Build-
ing trades unions are trying to recruit
young people and wanted to draw at-
tention to a new after-school trades
program.
One hundred students gathered on
the bleachers, and Operating Engi-
neers Assistant Business Manager
Nelda Wilson pitched building trades
apprenticeships — “earn while you
learn” — as a worthy career track.
Then it was time for volunteers to
try operating the crane. The goal was
to lower a ball into one of several blue
cans, but it wasn’t as easy as it
looked. It took the principal an eter-
nity to get the job done. When Debo-
rah Peterson, the first student, tried to
make the basket, the ball swung so
wildly on its cable it looked like it
might hit a precariously parked SUV.
A star athlete and two other students
did little better; the prize for fastest
basket — a $100 gift certificate —
went to the school’s Rose Festival
Princess Sascha-Eden Samantha Pre-
ston. Maybe after four years of ap-
prenticeship, they’ll do better — and
be ready to earn the $29-an-hour
wage that comes with that skill.
The after-school trades program
began this week intended to interest
students in union apprenticeship pro-
grams and help them get ready to par-
ticipate as soon as they graduate. Fif-
teen students signed up for the class,
which is being taught by a trainer
from the United Brotherhood of Car-
penters apprenticeship program. Stu-
dents will build a work table and
other basic furniture at Roosevelt, and
will take tours of union apprentice-
ship programs.
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WITHIN A SHORT TIME, Greer became president of the Salem-based Mar-
ion, Polk and Yamhill Counties Central Labor Council. He helped revitalize the
In front of about a hundred of her fellow students, Roosevelt High School
student Deborah Peterson gets a crash course in crane operation from Jerry
Deruyter, a member of Operating Engineers Local 701.
b h
m k
Bennett Hartman
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(Turn to Page 15)
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NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
APRIL 20. 2007