Local News

“I WAS A mean kid,” admits Don Rojem, 86, a Michigan native and retired member of Local 169 (Detroit). “I just wasn’t cut out for school.”

After being twice kicked out for being a rebellious student, Rojem, at age 12, put formal education permanently behind him and began an adventure that ultimately led him to become a Boilermaker, a job he grew to love and would one day write about in a newfound passion for poetry.

Local 1 • Chicago

JOHN F. RIEL, BM-ST of Local 1, Chicago, reports presentation of membership pins to the following:

IEC committee announces local, CFL winners

THE BOILERMAKERS’ International Executive Council has announced its selection of scholarship recipients for two local lodges and the Canadian Federation of Labour (CFL).

The committee selected Jason Boutilier, son of Daniel Boutilier, Lodge 73 (St. John, New Brunswick), and Dawn Elizabeth Curran, granddaughter of Edward Curran, Lodge 146 (Edmonton, Alberta), to each receive a $1,000 CFL scholarship award.

Local 659 members constructed monument sections in Warren, Pa.

A SMALL CONTINGENT of former Boilermakers who helped build sections of the Gateway Arch were on hand at the Missouri History Museum Oct. 28 to commemorate the “topping out” of the national monument in 1965.

Facility will generate electricity, melt snow

EIGHTEEN MEMBERS OF Local 169 (Detroit) are among the building trade workers constructing a $240 million combined cycle plant in Holland, Mich., a community of 28,000 in the state’s western Lower Peninsula. The new plant, situated on about 26 acres, will replace and double the output of the aging James DeYoung coal-fired facility, which was completed in 1939.

JIM DELSORDO has followed his passion for big game hunting across North America and as far away as South Africa. The Local 13 (Philadelphia) retiree and former lodge president is pictured with a gemsbok taken in South Africa in 2007. He has also hunted in Newfoundland, Canada (caribou); Wyoming (mule deer and antelope); and North Carolina (whitetail). During other trips to South Africa, he has taken a fallow deer and a kudu.

Volunteers donate skills to heritage society

VOLUNTEERS FROM LODGE 359 (Burnaby, British Columbia) have been connecting with history and the work of past generations of boilermakers by restoring steam-powered equipment at the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society at Port Alberni.

Local 1 • Chicago

JOHN F. RIEL, BM-ST of Local 1, Chicago, reports presentation of membership pins to the following:

Gift cites Boilermakers’ chemical wash and re-tube work

A JOB WELL done is often its own reward. But when members of Local 13 (Philadelphia) completed outage work at the NextEra Energy power plant in Marcus Hook, Pa., recently, contractors Delta Products Group and Thermal Solutions happily showed their appreciation with a contribution of $2,500 toward the local’s scholarship fund.

L-456 member sells, donates tool buckets

ABOUT THREE YEARS ago, Local 456 member Gikus Bigelow decided to make a tool bucket for himself that was lightweight, tall enough to sit on comfortably and fitted with a sturdy rope handle for hoisting. When he brought the bucket to work it was an immediate hit with his fellow Boilermakers.

“Everybody wanted one,” Bigelow says. He began making buckets as fast as he could. “I sold 230 of them on one job,” he recalls.