Margaret White

Career telephone operators have a lot to thank the late Margaret "Peg" White for when it comes to their benefits packages, which she fought vigorously for over the years as a chief negotiator for the Communication Workers of America.

So says friend and fellow union activist Linda Graves of Fort Wayne, the onetime CWA steward for many of the 40 years Mrs. White was a general telephone operator at GTE.

Mrs. White, nee Murphy, a lifelong Fort Wayne resident, died at Parkview Hospital May 4 following complications from diabetes. She was 80.

"She was a great lady and a dear friend," said Ed Lowdenslager, longtime president of CWA Local 4473, who negotiated many a union contract with Mrs. White and whose local her smaller Fort Wayne operators local merged with in the mid-1970s. "She will be dearly missed."

Mrs. White, he recalled, was president of not only the Fort Wayne local from roughly 1960 to 1975 -- even through the more tumultuous times which led to a major GTE operator's strike in 1973 -- but was very tenacious as the union's political director for many years.

Serving in that role brought her to Washington, D.C. many times, where over the years she met the late Sen. Robert Kennedy several times and became personal friends with the late U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Indiana.

A delegate to then-Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter at the Democratic National Convention in 1976, Mrs. White was deeply entrenched in her love of politics, the workings of Washington and the state legislature and of the Democratic Party.

Roland Michael, president of CWA Local 4780 out of Richmond, Ind., remembers Mrs. White as a loyal friend and a tough fighter.

"Peg was a heck of a woman," said Michael. "She was a tough cookie in (collective)

bargaining. She'd climb on top of company bargaining people and she rode 'em and rode 'em hard 'til she got what she wanted. She was real tough."

At one point in her career -- she worked some 40 years as a telephone operator -- she was vice president of all general telephone operators in the state of Indiana.

Her son, Gregory, said he believes his mother was so well known due to her union activism up until her retirement in the mid-1990s that undoubtedly every politician who either served or frequented Indiana knew her well or at least knew of her.

Mrs. White, widow of the late Warren and mother of sons Calvin, Gregory and Todd, all of Fort Wayne, was almost considered the matriarch of her extended family as she ran a household, along with her dear sister, the late Florence, where family and friends alike frequently gathered.

The fourth-oldest child of 11 of the late Marie, nee Lynch, and William, she helped the family get back on its feet after they lost both of their parents within three months of each other in the winter of 1943 and almost all of the Murphy clan became orphaned at the St. Vincent de Paul's Boys and Girls Home (now the YWCA on Wells Street) in Fort Wayne.

That is where Mrs. White met her lifelong friend, Bancy Schindler, who preceded her in death by two years.

Although Peg was 13-going-on-14 when her parents passed away, she left the home at a young age and got married -- but not before her and Bancy worked in the kitchen at the former Snow White diner at Creighton and Calhoun -- and became the place where everyone visited first upon coming to town or ran away to, as was the case with some of the orphaned siblings.

She is survived by a brother, Lawrence and a sister, Anne, as well as her children and grandchildren Chad, Jordan and Tyler, as well as numerous cousins, nieces and nephews. Preceding her in death were her parents, William and Marie, and her siblings Mary Smith, William, Frank, Catherine, Helen Pluta, Robert, Edward and Florence.

Visitation is from 2 to 8 p.m. Friday, May 7 at C.M. Sloan & Sons Funeral Home, 1327 N. Wells St., Fort Wayne, and from 9 to 10 a.m. Saturday, May 8, at Most Precious Blood Catholic Church, 1515 Barthold St., Fort Wayne. A 10 a.m. funeral Mass will follow at the church.

Written by James Pluta (nephew)