The Gary Puleio Story, Part 2: Who Was the Man They Killed? - Matewan - Journal

The Gary Puleio Story, Part 2: Who Was the Man They Killed? - Matewan - Journal
The Gary Puleio Story, Part 2: Who Was the Man They Killed?
In the first installment of this series, we told the story of Gary Puleio’s death by a fall into a hopper at the Redi-Mix concrete batch plant in Meadeville, PA. We dismissed the story of RM’s plant operations manager that Gary ‘wandered up there on his own’ for the callous CYA BS it is and raised some pertinent questions about RM’s history (more on that to come) and safety procedures.

But Gary Puleio wasn’t just an example of possible corporate malfeasance and/or negligence. He was a human being, too, a 53-yr-old man with a wife, two young sons, and a long history of choices, decisions, and hardships, of meeting and overcoming obstacles, of getting through the days and weeks of his life like the rest of us, one halting, uncertain step at a time. He wasn’t a huge financial success but he managed to provide a home for his family and put food on the table. He didn’t discover the cure for a new disease or write the great American Novel or invent the Pocket Fisherman. He wasn’t an artist or an investment banker or a movie star, and he never ran for the US Senate or headed up his own dot-com. He was just a guy like millions of other guys. Nothing special. So why should we care?

Maybe we should care precisely because he was nothing special, because he was cut down in the prime of life for the crime of not being special and of just trying to do the best he could. We tend to dismiss people like Gary in this society, people who don’t make a fortune or seek celebrity; if you never make the cover of a magazine in America, you don’t count for much. It’s OK—or at least acceptable—if you’re trying to make that cover. But if you’re not, if you’re not ambitious enough or talented enough or driven enough or dumb enough to think that success is the most important goal a human can have, then you’re simply…dismissed. You don’t matter. You’re lazy, frightened, stupid, or selfish, maybe all four. You’re not worth worrying about, caring about, or protecting. You’re a Kleenex, and when you’re used up you get thrown away without a second thought—there’s plenty more just like you in the box. Yours is a throw-away life, your virtues and experiences and kindnesses, whatever they may have been, as disposable as that used tissue.

Or maybe we should care because Gary was special—special in a private, ordinary way that doesn’t get put on the cover of Time or Newsweek or compete for a Nobel Prize; special in the way a lot of people are special: because they took care of business and didn’t whine about it, because they were generous when being stingy would have been more to their advantage, because they didn’t break a promise when it would have been easy, because they saw someone who needed help and they helped them when walking away would have been more practical and prudent. We take that kind of special for granted despite knowing full well how rare it is.

I’m not saying Gary was a saint. I’m sure he wasn’t. Few of us are. But the picture of Gary Puleio that emerges from the stories about his life is that of a man who was by turns all of those things.

A Short Biography

Gary was born in McKeesrocks, PA in 1948. His parents, Donald and Mary, had lost an infant son only two years before, so it’s probably fair to say they doted on him. He had two older sibs—a brother, Paul, and a sister, Marion. Given what the family had just been through, it’s probably fair to assume that they, too, doted on him. At least—according to his younger sister, Donna—they took him everywhere with them. As a little kid his nickname was ‘Tag-along’.

The family was working-class, as were most folks in that part of Pennsylvania, and there wasn’t much money. When Gary graduated from high school and decided to go to college he had to work his way through, holding a variety of jobs and sandwiching his studies in between his work schedule. He graduated from Duquesne University in 1970 with a degree in Business Administration. He never got the chance to use it.

What his sister calls ‘economic circumstances’ forced Gary to take a series of entry-level manual-labor jobs that didn’t have much future but helped pay the rent. Somewhere along the line, he seems to have abandoned his hopes for a business career and settled into life as a truck driver, a job that paid well enough that when Donna decided to go to medical school, he was able to help her in the way that no one had been able to help him. And he did.

At his funeral, Donna said in her eulogy, in part, ‘All this time, he supported and aided his family and friends. I, like many others in this room, owe Gary a debt I can never repay. He helped me all through my schooling from elementary school through medical school. He was always there whenever and wherever he was needed. He never refused anyone help.’

Possibly because he knew how hard it was to get along without it, Gary was one of those guys who went out of his way when somebody was in trouble. He didn’t make a big thing of it, just did it. He didn’t expect to be interviewed by Oprah or profiled in USA Today, and he wasn’t. That didn’t stop him from doing what he thought was necessary and right. We seem to have forgotten this in the last few years but wealth and celebrity aren’t the only reasons for valuing a life.

In 1978, when Gary was only 30, his father died of cancer. I’m going to get personal here for a minute. In 1983, when I was 35, my mother died of cancer. I don’t know how his father’s death affected Gary, but my mother’s death—she was only 58, two years older than I am now—changed my life. Not radically, but enough that it was never the same. I had just married again, and my mother’s death focused me for the first time in my selfish life on my new family (my wife had a 9-yr-old daughter by a previous marriage).

If I said I was good at being a family-man, I’d be lying. I wasn’t. I’d had no experience with it and I had no natural aptitude for it. I made a lot of mistakes. My daughter has, I think, forgiven me for them, at least I hope she has. My wife didn’t, couldn’t. I don’t blame her. They weren’t the kind of mistakes easily forgiven. We divorced after ten years of marriage. For what it’s worth, I haven’t forgiven myself for screwing up the only relationship in my life that ever meant anything to me or ever will. I never married again and I won’t. There are some things better left alone, and I’m one of them.

I mention this because I have to admit that I am in awe of people like Gary. I know how hard it is to sustain a real relationship. I know that mine failed because I couldn’t make the necessary adjustments until it was too late for them to mean anything. I know that the pressures on a young couple are enormous and that when there are kids involved those pressures increase exponentially. The year my mother died, Gary married for the first time, five years after his father’s death. It couldn’t have been easy, yet the marriage was strong enough to last—two years after he died, Gary and Linda would have celebrated their 20th Wedding Anniversary. In my book, that’s an achievement worthy of applause and admiration. I wish I’d had his talent for it when it mattered.

Next: Gary’s Family

Posted on Oct 4, 2004 at 02:18AM by Mick in Labor Issues | 1 Comment
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