Loner

Cecil Eklund, born in early 1910, lived more than 100 years. His life was touched by great events of the 20th century. Only surviving son of a Swedish immigrant, a boy doing a man's work in a logging camp, working in his teens in apple orchards and selling tickets for the silent movies, Cecil grew up fast. He spent much of his time alone, with wild nature as solace. With his one true friend, Berg, Cecil went off to find his fortune in San Francisco at the age of 17. Relating his experiences as a young worker in a glass factory, then as a young husband and father, Cecil offers a first-hand look at the Great Depression and the events that made him a Union man for the rest of his life. His firsthand experience inside the formation of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) story adds a personal touch that catches the reader's attention.
Janelle Eklund, youngest of Cecil and Dolores Eklund's five children, transcribed her father's stories from videotapes. Janelle searched this history to answer her own questions: why had he been remote and often angry in the middle of what seemed such a successful life? She finds some answers in the tumultuous social struggles he lived through, the justice for working people that he fought for. Helping him tell his own story in this book, Janelle says, is the conversation she always longed to have with her father.

Cecil Eklund was born in 1910 and lived to be over 100 years old. Son of a Swedish immigrant, he experienced the Great Depression and participated in the tumultuous formation of the west coast labor unions. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) played a big part in his life where he fought for the rights of workers. Self-educated, he was interested in politics and human rights. He had deep insights about human nature, and the lives of working people. Although his childhood had been solitary, he and his wife, Dolores, had a large family and he enjoyed providing for and mentoring his many descendants. At the end of his long life, Cecil recorded his life story on video.Janelle Eklund transcribed and compiled her father's stories for Loner. Janelle's commentary on her father's life and their relationship adds context throughout the narrative. She writes articles for her local newspaper and environmental organizations. Her subjects include medicinal plants and her adventures through the Alaska landscape. She lives and writes with the inspirational dynamic backdrop of the Wrangell Mountains in Alaska's Copper River country.