Meet the Founders & Committee Members
Terry Poplawski
I was president of my union local for twenty-five years and am presently on the executive board of the North Bay Central Council. For years, I had seen the ad on the back of my national union magazine for Workers Memorial Day, urging union members to observe April 29, the anniversary of the signing of the law creating OSHA, to aid the attempt of the AFL-CIO to have a national holiday created to honor workers who have been killed, injured or permanently disabled on the job. After Bob McAsey, my co-worker Shari's husband was killed on the job, the next time I saw that ad, it finally clicked for me that this was an effort to become involved. With the help of other union activists, I held a yearly observance of Workers Memorial day in Ukiah for twenty years. Out of that tradition, we created and grew the Workers Memorial Fund, now an endowment fund of The Community Foundation of Mendocino County.
Shari McAsey
My friend and co-worker, Terry Poplawski, brought to our County the observance of Workers Memorial Day in 2000. I became involved as my husband had been killed on the job one month before he retired in 1999. I felt a deep passion for wanting to help families who find themselves profoundly paralyzed emotionally and physically when they hear the horrific news a loved one has been killed and will not be coming home. I wanted to ease some of the stress for others in some small way, as many families rely on a paycheck coming in every week. Together with Terry, we formed the Workers Memorial Fund.