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Chat with union members about hunting and fishing and you get to know them in a different way than, say, talking workplace issues or politics. A window opens into cherished family traditions, outdoors skills passed from one generation to the next, and reveals how a union job with good wages and benefits helps make those special experiences possible.
Outdoor sports are the focus of the annual Game Fair, which will feature a labor booth.
Tyler Redden, AFSCME Local 3800
Tyler Redden is only 22 years old but the AFSCME Local 3800 member already is a proud steward of family hunting and fishing skills, especially skills he learned from his great-grandfather.
Redden, Minneapolis, works full-time at the University of Minnesota as an office manager and receives a full Regents Scholarship to also attend the U as a full-time student. “It’s a benefit the union fought to protect,” explained Redden. He’s been a member of AFSCME Local 3800 for two years and is training to become a union steward.
Born and raised in St. Paul, Redden graduated from Como Park High School and will graduate from the U of M this December with a major in Biology, Society and the Environment. “I became an environmental major because it’s such a part of my family,” he related.
“I was in the Conservation Corps for the summer of 2010 and 2011,” Redden reported, an experience which also helped confirm his choice to be an environmental studies major. The Conservation Corps work — including building boardwalks and clearing downed trees to reopen trails — took him to state parks across Minnesota and Wisconsin, plus to Voyageurs National Park and Isle Royale National Park.
In addition to conservation work in the field, Redden also is an environmental activist. He attended the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City and will be attending the Power Shift conference this year. At the U of M, he has designed workshops for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education and has worked to get the university to source food from local and fair trade suppliers.
“I find the most spiritual place when I’m in nature. That’s when I’m most connected to myself,” Redden said.
Redden began accompanying his dad deer-hunting at age 11. “I’d go and sit with him in the stand,” he related. Redden took firearms safety training at age 13 and has been deer-hunting with his dad since age 16. “Both of my brothers and I hunt,” Redden said.
“We do the whole cleaning process by ourselves,” Redden noted. “We field dress them. We do the butchering by ourselves, too.”
“There’s three of us who always go hunting in Woodville and Glenwood City, Wisconsin,” Redden said, including his dad and a friend of his dad. One recent year, Redden shot three of the six deer harvested by the group.
He has yet to bring down a buck, however. “Last year I had a shot at a nice big buck — but I didn’t take it. He was out of range for me.”
When Redden does bring home a deer, he uses the whole animal, drawing on skills he learned from his great-grandfather, Wesley Ellis. Growing up, Redden said, “every summer I’d go up to Bemidji for about a month and visit him.”
Redden speaks fondly of his great-grandfather— who lived to age 101. Great-grandfather Ellis lived on 80 acres where the two would catch and mount butterflies and make plaster casts of footprints left by cougars, wolves, and bears. “He’d teach me to carve things out of different woods,” Redden added. “He’d do chainsaw carving when he was 99 years old,” fashioning figures such as sandhill cranes and whooping cranes.
The two also hunted deer together, Redden said, noting admiringly that his great-grandfather had shot a deer every year since he was eight years old.
“He would use not only the meat but also the bones of the animals… to carve different things,” Redden said.
Some of Redden’s great-grandfather’s artistic creations now sit on Redden’s desk at the U of M. Those small momentos — representing the outdoors skills and heritage his great-grandfather shared with Redden — loom large in his life.
“That’s something I really hold dear,” Redden said.
Dean Weikle, IBEW Local 292, and LeAnn Weikle, Education Minnesota
Dean and LeAnn Weikle, Lakeville, share classic photos of a 2015 fishing trip to Glacier Bay, Alaska: Yellow-eyed Rock Fish, Coho Salmon, King Salmon, and a giant Halibut.
“We like to travel,” Dean said. “We love the outdoors.” Last summer, the couple hiked the 75-mile West Coast trail on Vancouver Island.
Dean, 54, is a 32-year member of IBEW Local 292 and currently works teaching electrical technology at St. Paul Technical College. He is a Minneapolis native and Roosevelt High graduate, attended Minneapolis Community and Technical College, then entered Local 292’s apprentice program. After working as a journeyman, Wiekle taught for 16 years at MCTC.
“It was a good move,” he said. “I get to teach these kids and help steer them in the right direction — to the unions.”
“He takes his mentoring role seriously,” LeAnn said, sharing Dean stays in contact with his current and former students via text messages.
LeAnn, 52, is a 16-year member of Education Minnesota and teaches first grade at Jeffers Pond elementary school in Prior Lake. “All good,” LeAnn said. “You teach them to read and write and love school and develop good school habits.”
Originally from Minneapolis, LeAnn spent part of her growing-up years in Alaska — fishing, kayaking, canoeing, hiking— moving back to Minnesota to graduate from Bloomington Jefferson High. She attended Normandale Community College and, after their two daughters were older, went on to the University of St. Catherine to earn her teaching degree.
“The school I teach at is dedicated to environmental sustainability,” LeAnn said, and in the summers she runs an eco-adventure and eco-science camp for the school district.
Dean sometimes joins her to help — demonstrating turkey calls for the kids.
Outdoor activities are fundamental to Dean and LeAnn Weikle’s family life, including fishing, hunting, backpacking.
In fact, “I met her at my dad’s best friend’s cabin when she was six years old,” Dean related. Dean and LeAnn began dating at age 18 and now have celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary. Daughter CiAnna is a 2009 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and current U.S. Navy lieutenant while daughter Corrie has worked in the building industry performing LEED certifications.
In addition to their shared love of the outdoors, LeAnn and Dean share a proud union heritage. LeAnn’s grandfather and two uncles were IBEW Local 292 members while Dean’s father was a Cement Masons union member.
Dean grew up hunting and fishing with his dad, Gary Wiekle. The family has had a cabin on Diamond Lake near Aitkin, Minnesota. “We go to our cabin for deer camp,” Dean said. “It’s a great cabin for deer hunting.”
Several of Dean’s fellow IBEW Local 292 members have joined him at the cabin for deer hunting, turkey hunting and pheasant hunting.
“Hunting and fishing are the thing you do with family and friends and the people you care about,” Dean said. “It’s that thing you can do with every generation. It’s that thing you can do outside instead of watching TV and playing video games.”
“We need lots of natural spaces,” LeAnn said. “We need to protect those.” She added: “I think if more humans had more outdoor, wild spaces, they’d be calmer and there would be less violence in the world.”
And, for time and money for outdoors interests: “Unions provide a quality of life for Americans and a value on family,” LeAnn said. “Unions provide a 40-hour week or time and one-half. You can earn a wage to support your family, have evenings and weekends, a safe working environment so there’s no injuries… You get to take a vacation. You get to live the American dream.”