Labor Day: Grandmother teaches importance of holiday

Millions of Americans celebrating the upcoming holiday weekend may not know that Labor Day was established to honor America’s growing trade unions and labor movements. However, one MAPE member vividly remembers how important the holiday was to his grandmother.

“As kids, we often spent Labor Day at my grandparents’ cabin. My grandmother, who was a United Auto Workers member, reminded us that we had the day off because unions worked for it,” Gerry Keenan Jr. said. “I remember how proud she was to show off her UAW buttons. She would only buy American-made products.”

In the photo on the right, Local 1502’s Gerry Keenan Jr. takes notes while inspecting one of Alexandria High School’s elevators.

Union membership comes naturally to Local 1502’s Keenan, an elevator inspector with the Department of Labor and Industry. His grandmother, Florence Capistrant, was the matriarch of a four-generation union family. She was a sheet metal worker, an unusual position for a woman, at the Donaldson Company from 1941 to 1968. The St. Paul company produced air filters for trucks and farm machinery. Keenan, who did what he called “a bit of farming” years ago, said his first tractor had a Donaldson air filter and “when my grandmother saw that, she was quick to say, ‘I probably made that!’ ”

According to Keenan, during his grandmother’s time, women could only solder equipment, but his grandmother wanted to do more. “The UAW helped her get minimum wage. She went to the union, and they went to bat for her and got her a position in the job shop where she was the first female to advance to a tool and die position,” Keenan said with admiration. “She earned her co-workers’ respect and always said, ‘You have to work in a place that respects you.’

“My grandma always wore one of those blue denim aprons when she became a punch press operator. She said the piece she needed was always on the bottom, so she came up with a way to reverse the procedure, and she got an award because her idea speeded up the process,” he added.

In the photo on the right, Gerry Keenan’s grandmother Florence Capistrant (in patterned blouse in front row in back of cake) celebrated her retirement from Donaldson Co. in 1968. Gerry Keenan’s paternal grandmother Leona Keenan, a former nurse at the company, is beside her in the gold dress.

After serving as a steam boiler engineer in the Navy, Keenan’s father came back to Minnesota where he used those skills at the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Athletic Club. “His union, Operating Engineers Local 34, provided a bargaining unit and educational benefits. He worked his way up to chief engineer and eventually facilities manager,” Keenan said.

Following a 31-year career of constructing and servicing elevators, Keenan joined state service as an elevator inspector earlier this year. “I’m not working with the tools building elevators anymore, instead I’m walking in with a flashlight, notebook, and pencil and writing reports about the elevators’ safety. Public service is a way to give back and I’m able to help society in a different way now,” he said during a recent elevator inspection at Alexandria Area High School.

Keenen said being a union member for 31 years made him aware of the benefits of belonging to a union so he “could not refuse the opportunity to join MAPE. I believe we have to stick together to help each other.”

Keenan recently attended a Local 1502 meeting in East Grand Forks, which he said was “fantastic.” He said he enjoyed meeting members from across the area and learning about available resources. “MAPE was very important to them so it just reinforced my thoughts, and I know I’m in the right place.”

He continued, “I know that MAPE is working to make sure we don’t get brushed off at the Legislature. My grandma got involved in politics through her local -- we always had the biggest campaign yard signs on the block!”

Keenan’s nephew Bill Keenan is a member of SEIU Local 284, so the fourth union generation is carrying on the labor tradition. “My grandma was a trail blazer who believed in everyone being treated fairly. She’d be happy to see we’ve followed her lead and are proud union members,” Keenan said.