Story Created:
May 26, 2008 at 1:29 PM EST
Story Updated:
Jul 9, 2008 at 3:54 PM EST
SAGINAW, Mich. (AP) — Two lists of employees at a General Motors Corp. plant who were drafted into World War II will be restored and displayed in a United Auto Workers union hall.
"These are not just any old lists," said Wayne Paquette, chairman of Local 467's 1,600-member retiree group. "We want to put them where people can take time to look at them. Many of the people on these lists had sons and daughters who were hired in and retired from this plant."
Local president Jim Hurren was cleaning out a storeroom in the former union hall in Saginaw when he found the names of Chevrolet Transmission manufacturing plant employees exquisitely written on parchment-type paper by William Powell, who worked at the plant.
At the bottom of the lists, entitled United States Armed Forces Victory Honor Roll, were ads to buy U.S. savings bonds and stamps and the phrase "Victory through Equality of Sacrifice." The individual's branch of service was written in smaller script next to each name.
Paquette, a U.S. Navy veteran from Saginaw County's Carrollton Township, told The Saginaw News the documents once hung in the former union hall.
"They may have been taken down after the war, and these guys (who served) might never have seen them," he said.
Paquette said he would ask other retiree group members to help him catalog the names, find out if workers drafted from all areas of the plant were listed, determine where the surviving veterans are living and establish how many did not come home from battle.
Local 467 still represents workers at the plant, now called TRW Automotive Integrated Chassis Systems. Their union hall now is located in Bridgeport Township, where Paquette plans to place the newly framed lists of names.