Memorial to honor lost workers

COEUR d’ALENE — Leslie Dale Gardner was 72 when he died last year from a disease caused by breathing asbestos while he worked more than 50 years for Bunker Hill and Kaiser Aluminum.

Arthur Brand, 74, of Worley died in a gravel pit near Fighting Creek in October while operating a Caterpillar tractor. His wife, an emergency dispatcher, alerted authorities to the scene.

Jeffrey Bierce died in a logging accident near St. Maries. He was 54 and is survived by a daughter and two grandchildren.

Robert Billingsley, 45, was a lumber sorter in Athol when he suffered a fatal workplace injury.

Scotty Burbank of Moscow was 22 when he was killed by a piece of heavy equipment last year on an Idaho job site.

They were laborers, electricians, equipment operators, the kind of jobs not often memorialized with statues or celebrations.

Brad Cederblom knows that labor, work, the stuff that progress is made of, is an important contribution to society; and that sometimes things run amok.

Cederblom, president of the North Idaho Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said a memorial dedicated to the men and women of North Idaho who lost their lives on the job is a long time coming.

This year, however, with help from city of Coeur d’Alene, more than nine years of planning has come to fruition.

A 5 p.m. ceremony Saturday in Coeur d’Alene City Park will unveil plans for a memorial that will include columns, plaques and a viewing platform.

City Parks Director Bill Greenwood said the city will modify irrigation and landscaping for the memorial, and add shrubs to the back of the wall of the structure.

“He’s really excited. I don’t think I’ve seen Brad smile as much. He’s a pretty serious guy,” Greenwood told the Parks and Rec board this week. “He is pretty happy because it’s moving along for them.”

Cederblom has raised about half of the $70,000 necessary to start the memorial, he said.

Coeur d’Alene’s North Idaho workers memorial is among similar memorials in other locations, including Pocatello, Idaho Falls and Boise, where efforts “are about as far along as we are,” Cedarblom said. Twin Falls is also contemplating a memorial.

For almost 40 years, April 28 has been declared Workers’ Memorial Day, a day to recognize lives given on jobs across the nation and the world. The recognition began in 1970 by the AFL-CIO to honor working people annually killed and injured in the workplace. It followed on the heels of the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act by Congress.

Locally, the day has been officially recognized by Gov. Butch Otter and the Idaho Legislature, Cederblom said.

Last year, 10 people died on the job in Idaho, with several fatal accidents documented in North Idaho.

Cederblom’s organization each year on April 28 holds a reading of names of the people who died on the job in Idaho. Once the monument on the northwest corner of City Park is completed, the ceremony will have a dedicated place.

“Sometimes family members show up,” Cederblom said. “That’s a real tear jerker.”