[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 48 (Wednesday, March 15, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S3961]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       A FAITHFUL SERVANT PASSES

  Mr. BYRD. Madam President, Cecil Romine, the former president of the 
West Virginia American Postal Workers Union and long time national 
business agent for the American Postal Workers Union, passed away 
earlier this year at age 67. He was born and raised in West Virginia, 
and served in the Navy at a very young age in World War II. He came 
home to reside in Parkersburg, where he went to work in the post 
office. When postal workers were given the right to bargain 
collectively by Congress in 1971 he established his home Local in 
Parkersburg--the Mountaineer Area Local--and then the West Virginia 
State organization.
  Cecil Romine was then elected as national business agent for the 
Clerk Craft for the three-State region of Maryland, Virginia, and West 
Virginia in 1976. It is a mark of his extraordinary skill as an 
advocate and a negotiator that someone from a small Local like 
Parkersburg would be elected--and consistently reelected--in a region 
in which most voters come from much larger Locals such as Baltimore, 
Richmond, or Washington, DC. He was equally respected by postal 
management not only as one of the union's most resourceful and talented 
representatives, but also as a man of his word. He loved the union and 
the Postal Service and fought tirelessly to better both. Even after 
retirement, he worked hard and effectively with my office to preserve 
service in West Virginia.
  Mr. Romine turned down many chances to take better paying and more 
secure jobs in management. Perhaps if he had, he would have enjoyed a 
longer and more normal retirement. But he knew his place was in the 
front line fighting for working people, and he was never interested in 
doing anything else.
  He had 7 children, 13 grandchildren, and recently 2 great 
grandchildren. The pillars of his life were his family, his church, and 
his Union. He was a man of traditional values in the true sense of 
those words.
  I know that Cecil Romine is deeply missed by both his personal family 
and his larger family of postal workers. In submitting this statement, 
I want to let his wife Betty and all of his family know that his memory 
is respected here.

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