Go back to News pagePALO ALTO -- Nearly 400 people, many of them fellow union members, attended memorial services Thursday for Kent Herbert Wilson, the 45-year-old truck driver for the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner who died Sunday.
Mr. Wilson was killed after apparently tampering with an electrical box near the San Francisco Newspaper Agency's office in Mountain View.
At services held at the Elks Club in Palo Alto, friends and relatives fondly recalled a fun-loving man from Sunnyvale who made them laugh, and who cared deeply about his job and fellow union members.
"He made you laugh, and if you can make people laugh under the conditions we sometimes had to work under, that was really something," said Mike Losonsky, a newspaper rack repairman and fellow union member. "He was a helluva guy."
On the fifth day of a strike by 2,600 union members against the San Francisco newspapers, Mr. Wilson was walking the picket line during the early morning hours Sunday when, police believe, he stepped away to try to cut off the lights at the agency building. His brother-in-law, Craig Pratt, 36, who was picketing with him, stood by helplessly as emergency medical technicians worked to revive him.
"He was one in a million," Pratt told the standing-room-only gathering, many of whom arrived straight from the picket lines, still wearing red arm bands of solidarity. "I'm sure we are all eager to get back to work. I'm sure Kent would be eager to get back to work. It's what we were all striving to do."
Another brother-in-law, Greg Val, said Mr. Wilson's twin passions were flying his private Cessna 182 and fishing at his second home, which he designed and built, at Pine Mountain Lake in California's Gold Country.
"Kent had no family of his own, but his wife, Carole, who has four sisters and four brothers-in-law and many nieces and nephews, became his family," Val said. "He was always there for them."
Earlier in the week, Mr. Wilson's wife, along with Pratt and Michael O'Hara, another brother-in-law and fellow union member, went to San Francisco to meet the negotiators and talk to Mayor Frank Jordan. A faxed message from Jordan expressing his condolences was read at the memorial.
The family prefers contributions to the Kent Wilson Memorial Fund, in care of the S.F. Newspaper Federal Credit Union, 426 Jessie St., San Francisco, CA 94103; or to Midpeninsula Home Care and Hospice, 201 San Antonio Circle, Suite 135, Mountain View, CA 94040.
Go back to News page