RosaLee Flitter received a plaque from longshore Local 10 in appreciation for her 39 years of work there from Local 10 President Dave Gonzales.  Photo by: Tom Price.

RosaLee Flitter left 39 years of memories to her friends and successors at longshore Local 10 when she retired March 1. She started work at the ILWU-PMA Benefits Plan Office in 1967, fresh out of high school and 18 years old. Harry Bridges was still president.

“I’m bi-lingual, and Harry’s secretary came down to our basement office and asked someone to come upstairs and translate some Spanish for Harry,” RosaLee said. “That was kind of scary, but as a result I developed a good relationship with the International. I was very fortunate to work for him while he was president.”

RosaLee accepted the job of administrative assistant at Local 10 in 1987. Because of term limits, officer turnover is high at Local 10. RosaLee was the ancestral memory of Local 10, and each new officer benefited from her knowledge.

“I’ve gone through so many of them, and when they come in it’s up to us to train them,” she said. One of her jobs was to type the chronos, or daily reports. “But I learned from the best. ‘Read the chronos,’ they said when I first started. Back then we had typewriters, and we made three copies, the original, green paper, which was the chrono, and the file paper. The chronos were kept in a separate place, and their way of teaching us was to have us read the chronos. I read everything.”

She will remain active in the pensioners’ club and her son, Ricardo Barajas, is now a member of Local 10. Local 10’s membership voted RosaLee Flitter an honorary member March 11.

“It’s the membership who really made it worthwhile for me. I always remembered the motto, ‘You don’t have the right to tear down what cost blood to build,’” RosaLee said.

—Tom Price