Eddie Starr


	Eddie Starr (1956 - 2003)

     All of us in the Labor Heritage Foundation were shocked and saddened when we received word of Eddie's sudden death, cut down in his prime at age 47.
     In the Psalms, the poet wrote about the bird who was cut down in flight and whose song will be heard no more in the land. It is true that we will no longer hear Eddie's songs while he plays his big electric guitar, but thousands of workers will remember his songs, and the spirit of joy and solidarity, and yes - sometimes anger and outrage - that he brought everywhere he went.
     Eddie liked to say that he was a steelworker, "just like a million other steelworkers, getting mill grease on my elbows and slag dust in my hair, hacking out a living, a good living, by the sweat of my brow, thanks to the good old United Steelworkers of America." But he was something more than your average steelworker. He was a singer-songwriter of union songs, and he brought the drive, excitement, and enthusiasm of rock and roll to his music.
     Whether he was singing before hundreds of thousands of workers at a huge rally in Washington, DC, or before a half dozen strikers on a raggedy picket line in Saugus, a Mississippi industrial town, he always poured out his heart and his talent without reservation.
     Eddie was a third generation steelworker, proud to be a member of the working class. As he wrote in one of his songs:

Our hearts go out to Eddie's wife Nancy and his family for their loss, and the pain and the tears that it brings.
Eddie Starr made an invaluable contribution to the work of the Labor Heritage Foundation and to the labor movement, through his music and his joyous spirit. We loved him. We will miss him. But we will never forget him.