Labor World Tribute to Ed Kranz
Our labor community lost another great friend that many of you may not know. Ed Kranz, 68, of Hastings, MN was the longtime office administrator for the SiebenCarey Law Firm. Ed had been an unbelievable supporter of labor in Duluth for decades. If you
golfed in the Duluth Building & Construction Trades Council’s Golf Outing in June for any of the past 25 years you got a nice Union-made in America shirt and golf towel from Ed and the firm. If you worked or volunteered at the Letter Carriers Annual Food Drive in May, you got to eat at Bernie’s BBQ thanks to Ed and the firm.
The golf outing has a 50/50 drawing and Ed’s ticket was drawn a couple years back. He gave the $500+ he won to our Community Services Program. He has been a staunch supporter of that program since the 1980s I guess when Jackie Docauer was the Director and Jerry Alander chaired the committee. They were both great friends of Ed’s.
Last year he told me I should do an article about what a great job labor does in Duluth about keeping things local and keeping labor strong here. He said that doesn’t happen anywhere else to the degree it happens here and people should be proud of that. I told Ed in order to do it I’d have to cast aspersions a bit on folks elsewhere and I need all the friends I can get. He laughed and said “I guess so.”
From what I’ve heard Ed took his beloved Dalmatian, Daisy, out for a walk and died
suddenly on Nov. 5. His obituary asked that in lieu of flowers memorials were preferred to the Ed Kranz Memorial Dog Park Fund at Vermillion State Bank in Hastings. Ed would have gotten a kick out of that. I can hear him saying, “Somebody might remember we now.” He will be remembered fondly by all who worked for labor and others in Duluth and Twin Cities I’m sure, and his name should last forever at his dog park.
Ed was always easy going as far as I know, and Dalmatians are a very wired breed of
dog that go like hell. Strange pairing those two, but Ed may have had Daisy, and his Dalmatians before her, trained. He was always on point.
Our thoughts are with Ed’s wife, Shelly, his family, and the entire SiebenCarey family.
