On Sunday, November 3 Paul passed away at his home in Berkeley surrounded by his family. Always a thoughtful planner he timed things just right. His beloved Dodgers won the World Series against the hated Yankees on Wednesday, October 30 and Paul checked out on Sunday, November 3, 2 days prior to the election of Donald J. Trump. 

Paul was a dear friend and comrade to many of us throughout the country and particularly in the labor movement in California. 

We at The Stansbury Forum want to remember “Pete” Worthman. We have reached out to family, friends and colleagues for their memories. We decided to dedicate several episodes of the Forum to our friend. We start with my tribute to Paul at his 60^th birthday party in Los Angeles in November of 2000.

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The Measure of the Man: Worthperson at Sixty

On occasions like this it is customary to look for essence, or that one defining characteristic that captures the honoree. When I think about Paul “Pete” Worthman I think about the quotation: To afllict the Comfortable and Comfort the afflicted.

Paul has won our everlasting respect as a tireless advocate for working people. He has been the principal spokesperson for thousands of workers seeking justice at the bargaining table and in the streets.

When Worthman goes to the table you get a first class organizer, lawyer, researcher and accountant all rolled into one. Artistes in Hollywood, utility workers at the gas company, healthcare workers at Kaiser, 8000 janitors in commercial office buildings, California state university faculty, airline pilots and all kinds of public employees have all benefited from Worthman’s smarts, skills and toughness.

Bargaining committee members and union members wherever Paul has worked remember him for his ability to dispel the boss’s logic, and their fuzzy numbers. In short he has been a first class afflicter of the powerful and the comfortable.

But what I love about Paul is his dogged irreverence and his capacity to afflict all of us too:

• How about those outrageous neckties? Is he wearing one tonite?
• How about the wordplays that transform venerable LA educational institutions from USC and UCLA to USK and UKLA?
• His own surname was transformed to Worthperson as a playful gender equality statement. A Dodger utility infielder named Mike Sharperson followed Paul’s lead.
• I can never forget Paul’s actions at my wedding in 1985 after my wife’s cousin Eddy went out and bought some extra beer for the guests. Cousin Eddy liked Coors. No sooner had the beer been delivered to the kitchen at the Grace Simmons lodge in Elsysian Park than I heard Worthman cursing “phony liberals” and pouring all the cans down the sink!
• His etiquette and breeding at dinner are also an experience. I remember a Southwest nouvelle meal once replete with all the presentation perfection and lack of chow that those cuisines thrive on. A little dash of ketchup substitutes for a hearty helping of vegetables. After Paul feasted on medallions of beef that looked more like dimes, it was time for dessert. The waiter asked Paul what he wanted for sweets and Paul promptly and boldly replied: “the biggest thing you have on the menu”.
• You have heard Fred Sollowey’ s tale of Paul’s politique encounter with a Soviet political commissar and Rene Talbot’s story of Paul eloquent upbraiding of the City of Santa Monica.
• You all no doubt have your own story of Worthman afflicting you with some irreverent remark or aggressive action. I value those memories and we love him for them.

One of the great puzzle’s of Paul has been solved for me in the process of organizing this tribute. When I first met Worthman in 1983, and started going over to his place in Mar Vista, I was perplexed by the fact that Linda, Catha and Kristin all called him Pete. I never asked why, I just assumed it was some intimate family thing that was none of my business. Turns out, as many of you know, Pete is a nomer that Paul chose in junior high because he liked a Brooklyn Dodger named Harold Patrick Reiser, nicknamed and known to the Dodger faithful as Pistol Pete, or just Pete. He was a St. Louis native born in 1919 who in his first year with the Dodgers, one year after Paul was born in 1941, batted .343 and won the batting title. He was 5’11” and weighed 185. He played third base and the outfield and was known for his fearless playing style. Sound familiar? Many say he could have been one of the all-time greats, but he was injured running into outfield fences, and walls.

He along with Pee Wee Reese refused to sign the petition circulated by Dodger outfielder Dixie Walker that asked Dodger players to declare their unwillingness to play on the same team with the first Black ballplayer in the majors, Jackie Robinson. Paul adopted the name Pete in junior high and carried it all through high school forcing friends, and family alike to call him Pete and not Paul. It wasn’t until noted historian C. Vann Woodward at Yale called him Paul that he permitted folks thereafter to use the name most of us know him by.

Paul was not an armchair fan of the Brooklyn Bums. Many of you may not know that Paul was a fine athlete in many sports. He was a basketball guard, a track sprinter and a third baseman. He was invited in the summer of 1959 to play ball in the Cape Cod League in Massachusetts. Baseball fanatics know that this has become the premier summer baseball league for college players, and many pros have caught the eye of their first pro scouts in this league because it is the only amateur league that uses wooden bats. Paul worked as a shipyard worker in that summer and played third base for the Chatham A’s.

So, I want to call Paul “Pete” Worthman, a very worth person, to come up and cap off this evening by saying a few words himself.

Happy Sixtieth Paul!

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