Newsmakers

Helen Coleman, longtime assistant to trustees of The Newspaper Guild International Pension Fund, has retired. For retirees "she was the most important individual ever to work on behalf of Guild members," TNG-CWA President Linda Foley said. As the plan's only full-time employee for the past 27 years, Coleman alone handled everything from office management to calculating benefits and sending checks to 5,000 participants. Coleman joined the Guild staff in 1971 as administrative secretary to then-President Charles A. Perlik Jr. Six years later, she was asked to administer the new multi-employer pension plan, which began with two companies and grew to 40 under her stewardship. Foley credits its success to Coleman. "Her no-nonsense approach has created a level of professionalism and diligence that is probably unequaled in the Guild," she said. "No retiree has ever missed a benefit check during the 27 years of Helen's administration of the plan. No one's claim or question was ever left unanswered."

Leo Ducharme, The Newspaper Guild-CWA's most senior international representative, has retired after 31 years. Ducharme began selling ads at the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts in 1958 and joined a Guild organizing campaign there in 1960. The successful drive propelled Ducharme onto the bargaining committee and ultimately into his Guild career beginning in 1973. His enthusiasm infected his whole family, with his wife and children joining him on assignments and picket lines. He worked with locals from the Associated Press to Wilkes-Barre, where he supported the Guild's longest strike and helped develop the Citizen's Voice, a strike paper that became a permanent, employee-owned newspaper. He worked in virtually every big city with Guild representation but was largely known as New England's international rep. TNG-CWA Linda Foley said his legacy, "includes hundreds of leaflets, pamphlets, bargaining proposals, bulletins and other materials he has written over the years. Often, when newer staff members want to see the perfect blueprint for a bargaining plan or an advertising boycott map, they turn to him."