In honor of Labor Day and my dad

Today is Labor Day – a day honoring the workers in American society. It was first celebrated in the city of New York in 1882, but became a federal holiday in 1894 as a direct result of several deaths during a Pullman Strike. When I think of Labor Day I think of my father, Lowell L. Martin … a true laborer if ever there was one.

Dad worked with his hands, the sweat of his brow and the strength of his back. In Ohio he was a steelworker at Warner and Swasey. He was so effective and knowledgeable of how to treat steel that they made him a supervisor, but it didn’t last very long. He would observe how the men along the line were working the steel, know that they were doing it wrong and would step-in and take over instead of telling them how to do it differently … to show them how to do it correctly. It was a union shop and supervisors were not union and so the union (and the company) would inform dad that he couldn’t do that as long as he was a supervisor. So, dad decided that he would much rather be on the line than a supervisor. It meant less pay, but much less aggravation and besides he would know that the steel they were making would have been made correctly. Maybe that is where I get my basic philosophy of “if it is worth doing it is worth doing correctly.”

When we moved to Miami in the late 40’s there were no steel plants so Dad went to work grinding terrazzo. It was back breaking work with long hours, but he was proud of what he was doing. Some of the famous hotels along the Miami Beach skyline had floors worked on by my father. Eventually he got the opportunity to change jobs and went to work for Home Milk.

He started out with a retail home delivery route – again long hours, he would leave the house around 2 or 3 am and not to return home for about 12 hours. Dad would always put in his bid to take over one of the wholesale routes as they came available and eventually one came to him. Again, it was hard work. I rode “swing” with him on my vacation days and weekends to help out. The milk crates where wood during those days (and often wet) and he would pick them up 2 and 3 at a time filled with 9 half-galloon cartons of milk. This probably explained his back problems later on in life.

Dad was a union man through and through, even though he was a member of a political party that wasn’t pro-union. He and several other milkmen tried to organize the drivers into a union, but their efforts were always broken by the companies who threatened to fire anyone caught trying to organize a union. Dad knew that the job was more important than the union and so would step away from the effort.

Dad never believed that his sons worked for a living. There was a lawyer, a civil engineer, an auditor with the State Revenue Commission and me, an ordained clergyman with the Methodist church. When the discussion came around to work, as it always did with dad, it was never about the salary brought home, the hours put in or the accomplishments. Dad would end the conversation with the standard line: “Show me your hands and the callouses. If there are no callouses then you haven’t done any real work!” Dad’s hands were huge and hard as bricks … trust me on that one since I was on the receiving end of some “corrective” efforts. They were living testimonies to his labor!

So happy Labor Day to all those work … especially those who work with their hands, the strength of their backs and the sweat of the brow. This is your day! Stand tall and proud for all that you accomplish in this life!

Quote for today: My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there. Indira Gandhi