Sunday, October 9th Update
As we all now know, we have lost a member and a friend to members of Local 5 when we lost our friend, Walt "Waldo" Stanton. He was a human Dynamo who did more to help his fellow man than any one person in the thirty four years I have been in this trade. He not only gave a silver coin to all the new people he encountered on every job he worked on as far as I know, he is the man who championed the M.A.F. which is now going to be called officially the Waldo Fund in our local if the members vote to make that happen at the October meeting. When I built the website in Feruary of 2009, I made the page called the Waldo Fund. Since that time, I have had travelers who subscribe to our website ask me what the Waldo Fund is. A couple of months ago, Waldo asked me to put a blog on the website explaining what his M.A.F program is all about. The words I put on that page are the words of Brother Walt Stanton and I will not remove his words from his own page on our website as long as I have anything to do with it. Now, if we can all agree, the M.A.F will officially be called The Waldo Fund which we already have a page honoring all his generousity and love for his fellow man. Five men who are totally dedicated to his cause could not fill the shoes of this beloved man who cared more for all of us than he did for himself. He not only touched many of the lives of members of Local 5 as well as travelers he encountered as they came to San Onofre and Diablo Canyon to help out with our outages, he also touched the lives of the families of these members. If half the people in this world had the love in their hearts for their fellow man as he did, there would be no poverty, wars, or homeless people in this world. I am honored to have known Waldo for as long as I have known him but there are many members who loved and knew him better than I did. When I received the call from Brother Gene Clark while working in North Carolina, I was devastated by the news and the news even affected my health with an increase of my level of stress I was experiencing to having chest pains which I was afraid would be the death of me. I ended up in the hospital 2500 miles from home and underwent all kinds of tests that revealed my stress levels had risen to the level of causing me chest pains. I am not dying and I did not have a heart attack but I thought for a day or so I was going to be seeing my friend, Waldo on the other side. We must celebrate his life and come together as members who respect and appreciate the man and all he did behind the scenes to help his fellow man. About a year ago, Waldo asked me to help him with his efforts by organizing the M.A.F. and make it a viable way to help our members who fall on hard times. I told him my help had to be limited to making announcements on our website because I don't have near the organizational skills waldo had and also, I travel too much to have a greater involvement in the program. M.A.F. was his dream alone and he made it happen. Let's not let it fizzle out and let's continue what our friend started with absolutely no help from anyone else. Look for a page on our In Memorium page in the next few days as I get the funeral announcement and other things from the hall this week because I just returned to L.A. Saturday night from my trip to N.C.
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