Don Shelton, Local Labor Leader

Don Shelton passed away several months ago.  His daughter Diane invited me to his memorial service at Casas Adobes Congregational Church UCC.  I was glad to join with others to remember and celebrate his life.  Don figures prominently in one of the chapters in David Sometimes Wins.  I got to know him a bit in the writing of it. 

I first met Don at a union meeting in Oracle in the mid 1980s.  He was a dominant figure in the meeting.  Aggressive and impressive - the way labor leaders should be and sometimes are.  I may have introduced myself but that was about it.  After that I saw him around the Tri-Community once in a while, including at a big rally/party/meeting in 1989.
When I started writing the chapter about Magma Copper Company and its unions, Don was my go-to guy.  Mostly in rapid fire exchanges of emails over many months, we broke open the story of Magma's transformation in the early 1990s.   That's the important story I wanted to tell. In the process I learned a lot about Don and the labor movement and developed even deeper respect for labor organizing and some of Don's co-conspirators like Harry Clark and Bob Mueller who were prominent in the work.

I suppose one might say I was lucky to connect with the guy when I did, around time he was diagnosed with a terminal cancer.  But in my mind luck doesn't explain connections made between fellow travelers on the social justice road who meet up along the way.