Why we're proud

NEA Today, Sep 1994

* IN LOUISIANA

Wiring a Collective Victory

Eddie Middleton sat patiently at the banquet table with his camera ready, waiting to snap a picture of the Support Person of the Year at the NEA's ESP National Conference in Albuquerque.

He was stunned when all eyes turned to him as his name was announced as this year's honoree. "Eddie Middleton," said NEA President Keith Geiger, "is an example of what NEA is all about."

That was in April, and Middleton is still puzzling over just why everyone's made such a fuss.

Sure, he was instrumental in the two-year battle to bring collective bargaining to school support workers in St. Bernard Parish. Middleton led the way, getting signature cards and serving as chief negotiator. In February, ESP members ratified their first contract.

And sure, he's devoted to his work as a school electrician and locksmith. For the past 15 years, he's done everything from creating a wiring system for the new movie studio at Chalmotte High School to extracting little fingers caught in desks.

"I like the variety," says Middleton. "And I like being around the kids. They find everything you do fascinating."

Middleton, now the first president of his local Association, says he and other ESP members also "like the idea of belonging to a professional association, except we call it a union. When people are together for a common goal, it's a union." Next year, teachers and support workers in St. Bernard Parish will bargain as a wall-to-wall unit.

So why the fuss? "People remember me," Middleton says, "because of what we as a union have accomplished."

* IN IOWA

Marathon for a Cause

For eight days, Linda Hepker walked through talcum powder dust over rocky terrain. Temperatures hovered in the 90s. No shade. No rain in sight. The special ed assistant from Cedar Rapids was a long way from "nice, flat Iowa farm land.

Half way around the world. in fact. Hepker was in the Rift Valley in Tanzania last summer, walking 211 miles to raise money for Operation Bootstrap. an organization that helps fund school construction in rural African villages.

What Hepker saw there gave her a jolt. "There were 50 to 60 kids in elementary classrooms, students sitting three and four to a desk. They had no books and limited paper." In many villages, there were no schools at all.

Still, she was impressed by the "open, friendly" people, their efforts to make a life in the desert without water, electricity, or medical care, and their pleasure in the simple things in life.

So far, Hepker's raised $4,000 for the cause. "I've always sat back and said, 'That's terrible, but there isn't anything I can do,'" she says. "This showed me that one person can make a difference, no matter how small.

* IN NEW MEXICO

Persistence Pays Off

Eva Gomez is a computer lab technician--and a great organizer. Her talent surfaced when she started working to implement New Mexico's new collective bargaining law on behalf of her local, the Roswell Education Association (REA-NEA).

The New Mexico bargaining law passed in 1993 through the efforts of NEA-New Mexico members like Gomez and members of other unions. School boards are now required to engage in formal collective bargaining with school staff. No more optional agreements to "discuss" board policy.

To represent workers at the bargaining table, a union must get at least 60 percent of the employee vote in each job category. Gomez was persistent in getting out the ESP vote for REA-NEA.

"I talked a lady out of her sick bed at five minutes to six," she admits. "The polls closed at 6 p.m., and she lived a block away." Her tenacity paid off.

"Support workers were intimidated by administrators," Gomez explains, "but we got 62 percent of their vote." REA-NEA also won the teacher vote.

"When I believe in something, I say so whole-heartedly," Gomez explains. "I think lots of people signed up just so I'd stop talking to them!"

* IN PENNSYLVANIA

Passion for Painting

Pennsylvania custodian Townsell Thomas has a passion for painting, but it's not classroom walls that call out to him. It's canvas.

Before taking a job as a custodian in the Aliquippa schools in 1976, Thomas worked in a steel mill, in an airport, in kitchen, and in the Army. All those years, his leisure time hobby as an artist kept him going.

"I never cared what job I did as long as I could paint," says Thomas, who routinely loses himself in portraits, landscapes, and seascapes.

"I can spend a whole day on a canvas. It's a way of relaxing and forgetting my problems."

Thomas, who retired in May, graduated from Aliquippa High School in the late 1930s and went to a Pittsburgh art school for four years.

But his hopes of getting a job as an artist soon faded. "At that time," he explains, "if you were Black, there wasn't work in the art field."

Instead, Thomas found solace in his devotion to children. "Kids are full of freshness. They're so eager to learn."

To spark their interest, Thomas occasionally gave a buck or two to kids who got good grades. More memorable, however, are the portraits he painted of kids, then gave away as gifts.