The Man in the Chair

"Pay no attention to the man sitting down in the big chair."

It is a little different from that great line in the Wizard of Oz i.e. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" but just as in that movie, you SHOULD pay attention to the man.

The man in the chair can be seen twice in our waiting room where Ana works. They are similar versions of statues on Massachusetts Avenue, NW between 10th and 11th of Samuel Gompers with some Greek gods in the background lounging behind him. Mister Gompers was the first president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) - the forerunner of today's AFL-CIO. Since this company's labor niche is an important part of what we do here, I submit he is important to us.

He was born in London, England on March 5, 1850, the son of a cigar maker. As a young boy he moved with his family to New York City in 1863. He became a U.S. citizen in 1872. Before coming to the United States he already had become a cigar maker and he joined the Cigarmakers and became a leader in the union.

In 1886 he was elected the first president of the AFL, a position he held for almost forty years. He was a far too complex man to sum up in a brief blog but he certainly was a major player in building and developing the American Labor Movement.

I didn't have anything to do with putting in the statuary I spoke about at 11th and Massachusetts, but I did get an assignment to "clean it up" some time in the early 1980's. Mostly pigeons and gulls, but also some humans, found the statue and the surrounding area a great place to relieve themselves. Lane Kirkland (then AFL-CIO president) noticed and he and Tom Donahue (AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer) asked me to speak to the Department of Parks to see what could be done about the mess that Sam was residing in. It did just that and working with some great people at the National Park Service found the original firm that created the work of art in Corona, Queens, New York and commissioned them to freshen up their creation. After months of haggling and cajoling with some financial contributors from the labor movement to sweeten everything, we got Sam looking almost as good as he does in Ana's waiting room.