Retired Ninth District International Representative Walter "Steve" Ray, who went from wiring space shuttle and spy satellite systems to bringing in hundreds of new IBEW members, died on Aug. 12. He was 74.

Ray was a lifelong member of Santa Barbara, Calif., Local 413, following his father into the Brotherhood with his initiation in 1969.

"Our father's endearment to the IBEW was ingrained in us from Day 1," said Ray's brother, Beau, who also became a member of Local 413.

After topping out in 1972, Steve Ray worked as a journeyman wireman with his IBEW brothers and sisters — occasionally as a general foreman and often with Beau — as a traveler, as well as on drilling rigs near Santa Barbara, at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and at what was then Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force has tested missiles and launched spacecraft for numerous customers and missions — including spy satellites for the U.S. military — from Vandenberg, now under the jurisdiction of the Space Force. By the 1980s, construction was fully underway to build a second Space Shuttle preparation, launch and landing site there, and Local 413 members could be found working all over the site.

"The first time I was given a chance to work with my brother, I found myself 13 floors up working on the underside of a platform as his welder's helper," Beau Ray said. "It was an exciting time."

Bert Gamble, who also worked on projects at Vandenberg and elsewhere with the Ray brothers, considered both lifelong friends. "I moved to Local 413 to get into an apprenticeship, and I didn't know anybody," he said. "The Rays took me in, and I became family. They just taught me so much."

Steve Ray also was a popular host. "Sometimes after work, I'd go right over to Steve's house," said Local 413 President Chuck Huddleston.

"Steve was just a blast to be with and had respect everywhere we went," Beau Ray said.

After the Challenger disaster in 1986 halted NASA's aspirations for a West Coast shuttle base, the Ray brothers traveled some more. "The true meaning of brotherhood always shone brightest among our traveling brothers and sisters," Beau Ray said.

Getting more active with Local 413, Steve Ray served on its JATC and as an organizer. In 1992, he was elected business manager.

"Steve was a true trade unionist. He got it and understood it," Huddleston said. "He truly cared."

In 1997, Ray was appointed by International President J.J. Barry to be an international representative with the Ninth District, which has a jurisdiction that includes California.

Huddleston noted that Barry quickly assigned Ray to represent the IBEW in the Building Trades Organizing Project, a multi-union pilot project to organize workers in Las Vegas who were helping to support that city's massive construction boom. Thanks in part to Ray's dedication and hard work, the BTOP effort brought nearly 7,000 tradesmen and tradeswomen into the IBEW and other unions.

Ray eventually returned to California to service locals in the central part of the state, overseeing numerous organizing campaigns, assisting with negotiations toward first contracts and contract extensions, and handling grievances.

"To Steve, it wasn't just a job, learning to be an electrician," said Gamble, who retired from the IBEW as a member of Reno, Nevada, Local 401. "There was more to it."

"He would help anybody," Beau Ray added.

Steve Ray also served for several years as president of the building trades for Santa Barbara and San Louis Obispo counties, and he consulted on a local government program that connected Santa Barbara residents with job opportunities.

After retiring in 2011, Ray remained a member of Elks Lodge 1538, and he spent his free time honing his interests in hunting, home improvement and maintaining his Jeep.

"He was just an amazing fabricator," Beau Ray said. "He had a full fab shop in the garage and built parts and bumpers and whatever else."

The Ray brothers' families also continued taking regular vacations along the 22-mile Rubicon Trail in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

"Steve was great with my boys and so proud that they got in the trade," said Beau Ray, whose sons Jake and Benton are Local 413 journeyman wiremen. "He was also great with our family as our parents got older. We would be barbecuing with them almost every weekend."

"Steve was always a great friend, always there for you," said Gamble. "He just was all brotherhood."

Please join the IBEW's officers and staff as we send our deepest condolences to Ray's wife, Carol, and their family members and many friends.

Almost immediately after Gary Griffin joined the Baltimore Local 24 apprenticeship in 1980, he was pretty sure he made a mistake.

"I was making $4.44 an hour, and most of my buddies worked at Bethlehem Steel making $13 an hour," he said. "But my father said: 'Stay put. Bide your time.' There was no reason to think a few years later the mill would close and they'd be out of work. It was one of the few times I listened to him, and it really paid off."

After 44 years as a member and 45 working under an IBEW contract, Brother Griffin, an international representative for the Fourth District, retired Nov. 1.

In 1978, when Griffin first applied for the apprenticeship, Baltimore was like many American cities, with a large industrial base. In Baltimore, it centered on Sparrows Point, home to Bethlehem Steel, the tens of thousands of people who lived and worked nearby, and the industry that supported and fed off its products.

One of his first jobs was installing the 68-inch hot strip mill at Bethlehem. But by 1985, that work slowed, and downtown Baltimore was changing. Like many IBEW members of his generation, Griffin worked through the long dismantling of the industrial American city. He worked on the famed Baltimore Aquarium and Camden Yards — home of the Baltimore Orioles — from the first day to the last, and many hospitals in the city and the suburbs.

"We always did commercial work," he said. "We just did a lot more."

Griffin said he never set out to run for office, let alone rise to the loftiest heights of the union.

"It was happenstance," he said. "In apprenticeship, there were four or five of us who volunteered for everything. We did phone banks and door knocking, and after we would go out and … celebrate. It was fun. It was friends."

While he was working at a powerhouse in 1989, some of the older journeymen on the job were officers. They told him and his friends that they should make the jump from volunteer to officer.

"The examining board is the lowest office there is, and I was asked by a guy who was running for business manager to run. He lost and all 13 other officers on the ticket won," Griffin said.

He liked it and was good at. He won a seat on the executive board in 1995 and stayed there for a decade. In 1998, he came into the office, eventually taking the job of referral agent. He was elected vice president in 2001 and then president in 2005.

By 2007, he was Business Manager Jim Kaufman's closest aide. When Kaufman was appointed to the Fourth District office, Griffin decided to run. It was a three-way race, and he won, but at a cost.

"The politics were confrontational at the local. It wasn't driven by policy or where people lived or what they did. It was factions and personality. Nothing else," he said.

He said his proudest achievement was navigating the pension fund through the shoals of the Great Recession. He led negotiations for a much better contract, giving the local room to increase support to the pension.

"In 2008, the pension took a 24% hit overnight. The annuity fund was just sitting there. We took a dollar out and put it in the pension and repaid it with a quarter out of the annual $1 raises we negotiated," he said. "We caught the market coming back, repaid the annuity, the pension fund is stable, and the health fund is doing great. And all within that one agreement."

In 2010, his two opponents combined into a single ticket. He lost and went back to the tools for the first time in a dozen years. But even though he was out, he still went to union meetings and tried to lower the temperature in the local.

When the next election rolled up in 2013, he ran again. This time he won, and Griffin was reelected again in 2016.

Griffin served on the National Training Institute Advisory Committee and the Electrical Training Alliance Core Curriculum Committee and was vice president of the Maryland and District of Columbia AFL-CIO, where he sat on the COPE committee. He was vice president at the Baltimore Metro Council AFL-CIO and served as a member of the community service board.

In 2017, Fourth District International Vice President Brian Malloy asked Griffin to accept the role of international representative and desk rep. He held that position for both Malloy and current district International Vice President Gina Cooper.

"Gary's attention to detail and eagerness to help make projects successful will be missed. Gary loves his family, especially his grandchildren, and I could not be happier for him entering this next chapter of life," Cooper said.

Griffin said he and wife, Josie, have no great travel plans for retirement but plenty of local trips.

"I have five grandkids within 15 minutes," he said. "I've also been playing golf for years, and I still suck. I'd like to improve."

Please join the officers and staff of the IBEW wishing Brother Griffin a long, healthy retirement surrounded by family where every drive lands squarely on the green.

International Representative CJ King, a former member of the Eleventh District staff who played a key role in the Education Department in the last 15 years, retired Sept. 1.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Brother King took a circuitous route to the Brotherhood. On a lark, he traveled with some friends to Southern California just after his high school graduation.

"We just wanted to learn to surf and tan and become a beautiful person," he said. "There was no plan whatsoever."

Rent had to be paid, however, and King landed a nonunion job at California's San Onofre nuclear power plant as a radiation protection aide.

He stayed there for several months before returning to Massachusetts, where he began working as a radiation protection technician. He traveled the country helping nuclear plants safely go through refueling shutdowns.

It was another nonunion position, and King, with a growing family, decided after nine years that he didn't want to spend so much time on the road. Thus, he accepted a position at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant just north of Omaha, Neb., and the family moved to the Cornhusker State in 1989.

The plant's employees were represented by Omaha Local 1483, but membership was not mandatory in a so-called right-to-work state. King joined Local 1483 in 1990, when he realized he was being shortchanged overtime pay that was called for in the collective bargaining agreement and the local helped him recover it.

"I just felt that it was not right to be a freeloader," he said. "You gain a benefit, you pay for it."

Not long after, he attended his first union meeting. It was being held just as contract negotiations were about to begin with the Omaha Power District, the plant's owner.

"I went to yell and scream at the business manager about how he wasn't doing a good job, even though I had never been to a meeting before," King said. "He told me what they were trying to accomplish, and I thought, 'This makes sense.'

"That's when I got involved."

He soon became a steward and earned a spot on the local's executive board. He was elected business manager in 1994 and reelected three years later. It wasn't a full-time position, and King continued to work at Fort Calhoun.

In 1999, he joined the Eleventh District staff as an international representative servicing professional and industrial local unions. He later branched into organizing and served as membership coordinator for the Sixth and Eleventh districts.

"I needed somebody with that kind of experience, in both utility and nuclear, and CJ was that man," said Bill Eads, who was Eleventh District international vice president at that time. "We got him aboard, and he was a really good international rep and an all-around good guy."

For his part, King said he enjoyed traveling again and working with members face to face. He led successful organizing drives at Black Hills Energy and Bodine Electric Co., both in Iowa.

"I enjoyed the interaction with people, and it felt so good when you were able to change lives," he said.

He's best known by younger IBEW activists for his work in the Education Department, which he joined as an international representative in 2009. King has traveled the country leading training for P&I organizers, stewards and business managers.

"I just loved working with members," King said. "It was great to work with leaders and to spend time with the rank-and-file membership. When I did the stewards and Code of Excellence training, that really was the best."

Education Director Amanda Pacheco said with a laugh that she did everything she could to keep him from retiring.

"It's impossible for me to express what an amazing brother CJ is, was and always will be," added Pacheco, who has served in her role since 2013. "When I came into this job, I had a lot to learn, and he taught me so much. I've always told CJ that I'll put his institutional knowledge against anyone in our union."

King has long been active in politics. He is chairman of the Douglas County Democratic Party — which includes Omaha — and attended his fifth Democratic National Convention as a delegate in August.

In retirement, he plans to continue to live in Omaha with his partner, Kim Macias, and spend additional time with his four children and four grandchildren while also doing some traveling. He has also volunteered to speak to groups about labor history and the importance of the IBEW and other unions.

Despite leaving New England many years ago, he remains an avid fan of Boston sports teams.

CJ stands for Clarence Joseph. King said he didn't particularly care for his first name during his younger years, so he asked friends to call him CJ.

"I loved the work that I did, and I really struggled with retiring," he said. "I've been eligible to retire for about seven years. But it's time for a younger person to come in, and hopefully they'll have the same opportunities I've had."

The officers and staff thank Brother King for his many years of service and wish him a long, happy retirement.