Editor’s note: The Seafarers LOG reserves the right to edit letters for grammar as well as space provisions without changing the writer’s intent. The LOG welcomes letters from members, pensioners, their families and shipmates and will publish them on a timely basis.Grateful Family of Seafarers
The SIU has been good to me ever since I finished high school and went to work.
I am grateful to the Seafarers International Union for all the good work on union ships that it has brought to my family. Most of my family worked and organized out of New Orleans. Nearly 50 years later, uncles and sons and nephews of my brothers still are working aboard union vessels.
My uncle, J.A. Spina, and my brother, S.J. Canales Sr. were full book members and lifelong Seafarers. They began in the ’40s from New Orleans. I was taken to the union hall on Decatur Street in New Orleans by an uncle to see Harry Lundeberg and hear Paul Hall speak.
I began working tugs and Higgins boats intercoastal to Orange and Port Arthur. I got my Coast Guard papers in Mobile and then sailed deep sea. Back in 1945 and ’46, the line around the Customs House on Canal Street was two and three rows thick.
I gave up my permit in 1950 to go to Korea. I had sailed Delta and Alcoa bauxite and coffee runs to South America. But I had to sign up to go fight the communists. I knew the battle it was to keep them out of the halls.
God bless the SIU.
Modesto Canales
San Benito, Texas
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