Mar 1, 1998

When the union’s one and only executive vice president trades in his suit and tie for a pair of Levis late this summer, he’s planning to spend time on a range of personal pursuits that have been shunted aside by more than a half century of union work.

Executive Vice President M.E. Nichols will be breaking a pattern of working on behalf of CWA members that goes back 51 years, to June 19, 1947 — his first day on the job as an unlocated line technician with Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. in a rural area near Houston, Tex.

Nick — as his friends call him — not only joined Southwestern Bell on that day — he also joined CWA Local 6222, a veritable hotbed of future union leadership. Two weeks later, he was serving in his first union capacity — as a job steward.

“I cannot think of a more rewarding way to spend one’s working life than serving the members of CWA. Thanks for the memories. I shall treasure them as long as I live,” Nichols said in a Feb. 20 letter announcing his plan to retire effective with the installation of his successor.

Six-Term EVP
He will be in his sixth term as executive vice president at that time — a position he has held since his election in 1980 as a local leader who won the office in a runoff vote. Nichols was president of Local 6222 at the time of his election as executive vice president of CWA.
One of Nick’s early campaigns for office came in 1963, when he and

W.C. Button, who later became vice president of CWA District 5 and who is now retired, were elected full-time vice presidents of Local 6222.

Serving as local president at that time was another tall Texan, Joe Gunn — who today is president of the Texas AFL-CIO. Gunn was elected to succeed T. O. (Tommy) Parsons as local president, after Parsons resigned from the local to accept a staff position in CWA. Parsons, now retired, was eventually elected vice president of District 6, which covers Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas.

Sprinkle of Humor
“There must have been something in the water in Houston in those days,” Nick jokes, looking back at the ocean of talent that swept over the union in various high-ranking offices from that one local.

Nick embraced unionism enthusiastically and eagerly, he says — partly because he was so glad to have “escaped” the life of his youth.

Born to a father who was a sharecropper on a cotton farm outside El Campo, Tex., a town of 5,000, Nick had his fill of picking cotton by 1944, when he left home to go to college at Texas A&M in College Station, Tex. Three years later, he drifted onto the payroll at Southwestern Bell.

Today, at age 69 Nick says he’s looking forward to retirement and “going to bed at night without worrying about what time I have to get up in the morning.” He’ll also be avoiding a 100-mile round-trip commute from his home in the rustic Virginia countryside along a clogged interstate system leading to and from Washington, D.C.

Nick has been known to go out of his way to attend membership meetings and other events — and if there’s a place where the fish are biting along the way or nearby, so much the better.

Full Life Ahead
But, he also has other pursuits planned. “I’d like to learn a foreign language, either Spanish or German. I want to learn to play the piano. And, I’d like to teach reading, either to young people or adults. I’m not sure.”

Sometime ago, Nick recalls, a friend at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville suggested that Nick might actually step into a classroom on the campus once a month or so — sharing with students, especially business majors, “what it’s like in the real world.”

“I just might take him up on that too,” Nick says.