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.Thankful Message
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks for the generous help provided to me and my family by union brothers and sisters during our time of need following our recent loss resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Also, I would like to add a special “Thank You!” to the officers and crew of the Westward Venture for their support and generosity.
The emotional and financial support we have received from the SIU (Seafarers Disaster Relief Fund), fellow shipmates and friends has been remarkable and much-appreciated. You all have our undying gratitude and appreciation.
Daniel Laitinen
Sutherland Springs, Texas
Supporting H.R. 23
To all personnel of the SIU, I salute you and wish you a prosperous New Year.
I am very happy about the possibility of enactment of the Belated Thank You to the Merchant Mariners of World War II Act (H.R. 23) to give a little help to those who are still alive, who were valiant crew members and risked their lives. Yes, by luck, some of us are still living.
I started sailing in 1943, first aboard SIU ships and later with the NMU, the union through which I retired. I know that today the SIU is as much my union as the NMU was back when I was sailing.
Today’s SIU members are just like those of us in the 1940s that were eager to volunteer to help the cause. I hope you will now help those few of us from that era that remain.
Thank you all and God bless you.
Ruperto Lopez Rosado
Puerto Rico
Exhibit Shows How
Work Has Changed
I am writing to call your attention to a new and exciting exhibit at the National Archives building: “The Way We Worked.” This exhibit illustrates the transformations of work, workers and workplaces that occurred between the mid-19th and late 20th centuries. This amazing collection of photographs, augmented with audio and video, can be viewed until May 29, 2006.
Please consider this letter an open invitation to your union members to tour this exhibit some time in the near future. (Admission is free.) When you visit the National Archives, of course, you can also view the Charters of Freedom—U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill or Rights—and our permanent exhibit “The Public Vaults.”
Allen Weinstein
Archivist of the United States
Washington, D.C.
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