Retired Member's Fond Reflections of Career

Retired Local 6 LA/MS/AL member Walter McClatchey, whose father drove cattle from Texas to Kansas, still has fond memories of the Midwest of his youth.

Retired bricklayer and stonemason Walter McClatchey, a 57-year member of Local 6 Louisiana / Mississippi / Alabama, was a teenager when he began his masonry career in 1934 working in a stone quarry. Two years later, he became an apprentice for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Oklahoma. He progressed in the trade and worked steadily as a stonemason throughout the Midwest with a hiatus of several years to serve in the Army during WWII. McClatchey still owns the original tools he used to learn the trade – the stone hammer issued to him by the WPA and a trowel he bought before joining the Army.

In 1953, those tough Kansas winters finally got to him. After one too many days of sub-zero temperatures that made outside work dangerous, slowed projects, and reduced hours, McClatchey decided he had had enough. “I said ‘I’m going to go as far south as I can go without running into the ocean.’ So I got in my old Buick and drove all the way from Claflin, Kansas to New Orleans. When I got to New Orleans, it was 76 degrees and the sun was shining,” McClatchey recalls. “I saw all the new buildings going up and I said to myself, ‘Where in the world have I been all my life.’”

On the first construction site he went to, he ran into a former employer from Kansas. The company needed a brick mason, and although McClatchey had only worked with stone, he learned the fundamentals and continued working there for two years.

Then it was on to Baton Rouge where he had heard of more work opportunities. It was there that he met his wife, Maxine. They had two sons, and raised their children in nearby Baker, where they still live. McClatchey taught both his sons the masonry trade, but he also gave them the opportunity to chose their own paths in life. He worked hard to provide for their education and today, Walter, Jr. and David are both attorneys.

McClatchey, built this granite fireplace in 1976 working only from his memory of the granite fireplaces he saw in Italy during World War II.

The McClatcheys were relieved to find they were not alone after the terrible hurricane season of 2005. Along with many Local 6 members and families, they were grateful for the assistance from the BAC Disaster Relief Fund, made possible through members’ generous donations, McClatchey used his $500 gift card to make roof repairs, and purchase building supplies and groceries.

He is grateful and proud of the solidarity BAC members have shown in helping their Union brothers and sisters through these trying times.