Passing of farm worker champion Joe Gunterman
The Chavez family and farm worker movement learned with sadness of the Dec. 4, 2014 passing at 101 of Joe Gunterman, who with his late wife Emma were stalwart supporters of the movement since the early 1960s, when Joe photographed the birth of the United Farm Workers during the union’s founding convention at an abandoned Fresno theater in September 1962. The UFW’s iconic black eagle flag was unveiled there for the first time. Joe’s photos are the only surviving images of that historic milestone.
Both Joe and Emma Gunterman spent their lives fighting for peace and justice. Joe lobbied for the Friends Committee on Legislature at the state Capitol in Sacramento from 1961 to 1975. Farm workers were still excluded from most state legal protections. Joe’s lobbying helped win coverage under disability and unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, toilets and drinking water in the fields, safer working conditions and eventually union bargaining rights. Emma also lobbied for decades on behalf of farm workers and other poor people.
Generations of UFW volunteers, who were then “paid” $5 a week, found their way to stay at Joe and Emma Gunterman’s Sacramento home beginning in the 1960s. Their daughter Joan recalls coming home from school it was common for her mother to call from the Capitol because Emma would be bringing some people home for dinner. One day there were 25 farm workers as dinner guests.
When Emma passed away earlier in 2014, UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez and Cesar Chavez Foundation President Paul F. Chavez explained in a letter to Joe that, “Cesar Chavez used to distinguish between those who are of service and those who are servants. Many decent men and women engage in daily acts of altruism or charity. But a relative few become servants, totally dedicating themselves to the most needy among us. By that definition, Emma Gunterman was a genuine servant. So are you.”
Joe Gunterman passed away peacefully at his home in Sacramento. The family has set a memorial service for Joe from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 21, at Ethel Hart Senior Center, 915 – 27th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816. For more information contact Tom Gunterman at tomgunterman@hotmail.com or Karen at hamamurak@hotmail.com.
This Joe Gunterman photo of the UFW founding convention at a Fresno theater in 1962 pictured Dolores Huerta (second from left) and Cesar Chavez (right). The UFW’s iconic black-eagle symbol in the background had just been unveiled for the first time. (Courtesy of the UFW collection at the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University.)