A cook who moved from New York to Bellingham; a former student of Clarence Darrow who was at Haymarket in 1886; a Vietnam veteran who fought for peace; a civil rights lawyer who represented Leonard Peltier; a meatcutter who was arrested repeatedly for distributing union literature. What do these people have in common? They are all Wobblies – members of the Industrial Workers of the World – who were buried in Whatcom County.
This past weekend, a number of us, both from the Whatcom-Skagit branch as as far afield as Tacoma and Bainbridge Island, visited the gravesites of these and other Wobblies who have been laid to rest here in Whatcom County. Fellow Worker Tuck, a longtime Wobbly and keen historian of the IWW, combed the archives of the Industrial Worker and the Bellingham Herald, looking for the names of Wobblies associated with Bellingham, cross-referencing against burial records, and obtaining maps from local cemeteries. Ultimately, we now know the burial locations of at least fifteen Wobblies past.
To commemorate these fellow workers, and in the IWW tradition of “In November, we remember,” the Whatcom-Skagit branch organized a tour of these gravesites. On a chilly autumn morning, we gathered together at Civic Field, before loading up into carpools and setting off.
Over a period of about five hours on a crisp autumn afternoon, we visited four cemeteries – Blaine Cemetery, Green Acres and Woodlawn in Ferndale, and Bayview in Bellingham, respectively – and visited the graves of those fellow workers who have taken rest from their fight. Amongst these are the graves of some who were tried and found innocent in the 1919 criminal syndicalism trial (including Hank Larson, about whom we have a more extensive article on the blog); a fellow worker called William Clarke who was speaking on industrial unionism in 1899 – six years before the advent of the IWW – when he was only 17 years old; and several Wobblies who tragically died in Bellingham with no known family, whose graves have likely not been visited since they died, right up until we visited them.
At Bayview, we took a one-mile walk to visit the majority of the graves, including those of the aforementioned William Clarke and former IWW Local 337 secretaries Carl Kindlund and George Laviolette. At each grave throughout the tour, we laid wreaths; and, where necessary, we cleaned up the gravesites and headstones to honor these departed workers.
After we had visited our last grave, and with the sun setting, FW Tuck took a moment to speak. It is important, he said, to consider who we want to remember us, and how we want to be remembered. Some of these graves do not likely see many visitors; some are unmarked; some have probably never seen visitors before we visited them. And yet, we remember them all as fellow workers struggling against capitalism and its oppression. Tuck told us all that he wants to be remembered as a Wobbly – it’s central to who he is. And, while it is likely few will visit our graves a hundred years after we die, either, it would be good if those who did chance upon us knew that we also fought for our fellow workers.
