Thurston Muskelly Interview

PSARA Advocate Archives

November 2022 Page 9 Part I

December 2022 Page 9 Part II

 

 

 

“My Greatest Thing is Helping People” 

An Interview with Thurston Muskelly 

By Angie Bartels

 

If you ask Thurston Muskelly what he likes to do most in the world, he’ll tell you it’s reaching out and helping others. He’s been doing this ever since childhood when he worked on the family farm. Thurston was born in Union, SC, in 1933, and grew up in Salisbury, NC.

 

His mother, Eloise Robinson Muskelly, was an English teacher and taught middle school through college. She was full Cherokee, 6’6” tall and weighed 250 pounds. His father, Edward, was Native American, African American, Italian, and Caucasian, and 6’1” tall. He was an engineer for Southern Railway and ran Engine No. 34. He would be gone working a few days at a time so the Muskelly kids learned to take responsibility. At the age of 7, Thurston cared for the family’s 13 dairy cows and calves, feeding, milking, watering, and laying fresh straw for their beds. 

 

All the Muskelly children had chores to do “because my father pressed us into thinking that we help the family by doing these chores. And it was easy, but it was great responsibility.” When a cow or pig was slaughtered, Edward made sure that everyone in the community was given a share of the meat. “He believed in sharing, he just couldn't get around it. My mother would say, carry this piece of meat down to so-and-so. Everybody got a piece of joy.” 

 

Edward took Thurston to the railroad yard from the time he was quite young, where Thurston learned mechanics and how to fix the engines and other railroad equipment. Learning engineer­ing came naturally to Thurston. Edward wept the day Thurston left for the US Navy in 1950. 

After boot camp, he was assigned to an aircraft carrier, the USS Albany. While serving in Pensacola, FL, Thurston met the love of his life, Joyce Williams. Joyce was working as a car hop at a BBQ joint, and he gently flirted with her. She talked with him, and soon Thurston was making frequent trips to the BBQ place to get his sandwiches and begin his courtship with Joyce. She was the eldest of five children and had the responsibility of raising her younger siblings. After a short while, they were married in 1954 in Lucedale, Mississippi, and made their home in Salisbury, NC, with his parents while Thurston served out his time in the Navy. 

 

Thurston had an accident on the ship where his arm was caught up in a winch. He received months of treatment but was permanently partially disabled. 

 

Upon discharge, he worked at the VA Hospital in Salisbury, NC. He and Joyce relocated to Youngstown, OH, upon the invitation of his uncle, who got him a job as a crane operator in a steel mill. “I was a part of the Steel Workers Union, and I worked off of the blast furnace. That's where you poured the ore into a furnace and the overrun went into a water well. The crane ran over the water well, and I would get that overrun ore that went into the water, lift it out, and put it in railroad cars. There were frequent national strikes, and one lasted six months.” 

 

In the meantime, Joyce visited her brother in Seattle, fell in love with the area, and told Thurston they should move there. Thurston was laid off at the time, so they came to Seattle in 1958. “After we got here, the family said they wanted me to work for Boeing, and I said no, I'm not going to work for Boeing because Boeing lays off too much. And I just come off a big layoff. So my brother-in-law took me to the US Public Health Service Hospital. And they only had one job available, which was a janitor's job. And I had to be a disabled veteran to get it. I was both. When I took the job, everybody laughed. With my resume and experience, I was over­qualified. But I took the job because I had a wife and a young baby. I started off at $1.73 an hour. “ 

 

“There was an old German guy by the name of Mr. Monks. Monks came to me and said, ‘Thurston, if you stay here eight months, I’ll have an opening in engineering for you.' So I stayed there eight months and sure enough, I got a job in engineering with much higher pay. The job was repairman for blood pressure equipment, operating equipment, boiler room, all of this fell under engineering. They kept me in mechanics and I worked in that position for 25 years.” 

 

Thurston was instrumental in the formation of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1170 at the USPHSH in 1970.  “The employees at the hospital felt that the union was not representing what the needs of the employees were to the hospital administration. A lot of folks encouraged me to run for president, but a friend told me, ‘Thurston you could be jeopardizing your job.’ So, I went home and talked to the wife, and she said, ‘Well, you can always find another job’. So, I ran for president, and I won." 

 

It was during this time that Thurston’s natural ability to win people’s trust, to represent them fairly, and to bring them together in solidarity fully bloomed. “My father taught me leadership and responsibility, and that’s why the workers at USPHSH wanted me to be the president. It was my first time being the chief spokesman for employees in the union. We had an exciting executive board! I had people who worked together really hard. There was no animosity or division in the union. We were very together on issues that concerned employees and employees’ education, safety on the job, promotions, etc. We worked with the administration and Dr. Willard Johnson, the outstanding new director of the hospital. 

 

“Willard was out of Texas, and he was a very humble and good man who under­stood human needs. Dr. Johnson understood the problems that the employees faced, and he took it to heart. The employees were not treated fairly at the hospital until they elected the AFGE as the union spokesman for the group. We represented professionals and non-professionals alike. In fact, one of the doctors that we represented was Jim McDermott. He went on to be a State Senator”

 

Dr. Johnson also began to under­stand the needs of the community at large. “He called me into his office one day and said, ‘Thurston, I know that you’re in charge of the union here at the hospital and I want to ask you for your help.’ He discussed that he had been in a meeting with the free clinics, and he had 5% of his hospital budget that he could donate to health care for people who didn’t have health care and couldn’t afford it. He wanted to use the US Public Health Service Hospital as a back-up for X-rays, lab work and treating people who didn’t have money. I told him that I would help him. Dr. Johnson put me in touch with David Loud, Tommy Byers, and a whole lot more people. My job with Dr. Johnson and the group was to keep all of the people and groups informed, keep them up to date what was going on and how they could help to sustain this fight.” 

 

The fight was against the federal policy to get out of the business of directly providing health care. Twenty USPHS hospitals had been closed under Republican and Democratic adminis­trations, and the Nixon administration wanted to close the 8 remaining USPHS hospitals. However, the question of how to provide the health care of the legislated beneficiaries of the system - merchant mariners, commercial fishers, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, military retirees and dependents – had not been resolved. Dr. Johnson, who opposed closure, interpreted an obscure regulation in the Public Health Service Act which allowed 5% of the hospital's budget to be used for care of special cases of rare diseases for medical education purposes. He used this 5% of his budget to provide care to uninsured free clinic patients, care that the clinics were unable to offer (i.e., lab, radiology, specialities, acute inpatient care, surgery) and declared them to be special study patients. Thus, the free clinics' patients became beneficiaries of the USPHS, giving the community at large a stake in the preservation of the USPHS Hospital. This led to the formation of the Public Health Care Coalition, the group that would lead the fight against closure. 

 

Thurston got to know numerous elected officials throughout his time working at USPHSH with the union and the health care coalition. “Senator Warren G. Magnuson, Maggie, is the greatest in my time, the greatest senator of all times. He had feeling, charisma, patience, and he could work with anyone. He was also head of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He figured that the employees at the hospital would go the extra mile for people who couldn’t afford health care. He set up a program called Upward Mobility which was funded by the federal government. Hospital employees would apply and the executive board would select individuals blindly, without knowing their names. Everyone was assigned a letter such as A, B, C, etc. These individuals would attend college or technical school to advance their education and career. Many started as LPN or RN and got higher degrees including PhD. A lot of them went from nursing assistants to LPNs. The federal government, Maggie, set up the program so that the employees would work their jobs during the day and go to school at night. I also lobbied in Congress to save the USPHSH and although we didn’t save it, we were able to have the building transferred in 1981 from the USPHS, to the Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority, created by the City of Seattle. That was the year I retired.”