Kenneth Eddo's family: Kneeling; former son-in-law Chris Wright with daughter Shemeriah Eddo. Back row; daughter-in-law Brandi Eddo and son David with grandson Dawwson. Kenneth with Nancy, daughter-in-law Jocelyn and son Josh Eddo. Not pictured: daughter Ivy Love, who took the photo. by Tom Price Longshoreman Kenneth Eddo was doing the job he loved in the early morning hours of Nov. 11 when he had an accident with his hustler that took his life. The container and chassis he was pulling rolled over, standing up his hustler, or tractor, on its rear wheels and slamming his body onto the cab’s interior. The immediate cause of his death was trauma, but the exact circumstances of the accident at Tacoma’s APM Terminal are under investigation.
Eddo had obtained his B registration in April after working as a casual for about a year. Before getting into longshore Local 23, he had worked two jobs at a time most of his life, raising two boys and two girls into adulthood with his wife Nancy.
He was born Dec. 6, 1954 and raised in Los Angeles. Eddo moved his family to Arizona for 12 years where daughter Shemeriah remembers him putting the kids in a raft when it flooded and pushing them down the street.
“We then moved to Tacoma because dad used to log here in the early 1980s and he loved the place. It was green and lush,” Shemeriah said. “I remember him telling me which stars were which, explaining about the Milky Way and teaching me about tools. He was always in his garage, so if you wanted to spend time with him, you went out there.”
She remembers her father always helping people, taking down their trees for fun or hunting mushrooms with her mother.
“He loved longshoring, it was a job he always wanted,” Shemeriah said. “He liked the brotherhood and how they stand for each other. He didn’t get that in his other jobs.”
“His wife told me the job was still exciting to him,” Local 23 Safety Officer Keith Kossman said. “He’d come home tired at 3 a.m. and say what a wonderful thing it is to work with people who care about him. He had worked in all the crappy places, in the mills, in the sweatshops. He’d finally reached a point where he was happy and could slow down a bit.”
Local 23’s safety committee got to the accident scene soon after it happened.
“When we opened the container, we could see the load was terribly unstable,” Kossman said.
In the old days before containerization longshoremen took great pride in the ingenious ways they could pack a ship’s hold, using dunnage of scrap wood, nets, ropes and other items to shore up the load and keep the ship stable in heavy weather. The container on Eddo’s chassis that day had probably been stuffed in a country where there are lax safety rules and no unions to enforce the rules that do exist, Local 23 President Conrad Spell said.
“We just can’t do enough to make a safer workplace,” Spell said. “We already work under the best safety code in the country. That’s great, but we’re always trying to make it better at every bargaining.”
APM Terminals President Anthony Scioscia called ILWU International President Bob McEllrath and said he wanted to shut down all APM terminals in the U.S. for a safety meeting on Nov. 13. McEllrath quickly agreed. In Oakland, APM managers stood with longshore Local 10, bosses’ Local 91 and clerks Local 34 clerks and office clericals for a moment of silence. Local 34 Vice President Frank Riley helped organize that meeting.
“It’s a tragedy when accidents happen, but that’s why it’s very important for members to read our safety code and exercise our rights under Sect. 11 of the contract,” Riley told the members.
Local 23 will get a permissive registration for Eddo’s eldest son David so he can work on the docks. The youngest son Josh was picked in the longshore Local 19 casual lottery.
Local 23 set up an account for the family with the Tacoma Longshoremen’s Credit Union. To contribute contact them at: 3602 Alexander Ave. Tacoma, WA 98424.
Eddo and Nancy, his partner in a 30-year marriage, were renovating their 1913-vintage house when he died, and it’s all torn up, Spell said.
“We have a bunch of guys who were contractors. They’re getting supplies together, and they’re going over to finish it up,” Spell said.
