Penn, Paul

Paul Penn helped create decent conditions for workers and through volunteer labor, built a better McLean County.

Paul was born in 1925 to John and Ethel Penn and was raised by his stepfather Nels Nelson. Paul knew Depression’s impact well. A childhood memory is an apartment on South Center Street, across the street from the Laborers Hall, watching unemployed men mill in the streets in 1933 – 34.

Paul started work, with no training, as a construction laborer in 1943. Shortly after that he was drafted, driving trucks for the famous “Red Ball Express” in Europe. After discharge in 1946 he came back to the Laborers Local 362, marrying his wife June (Marble) in October 1946. They have four children, Donald, Linda, John, and David, along with nine grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren.

In 1958 he was elected Laborers Local 362 business manager and has served the local ever since. Under Paul’s leadership, the union established its first health and welfare fund in the late 1950s, and in 1971 its first pension fund. Local 362 is led today by its fourth generation, brothers Anthony and Eric Penn. John Penn is now an International Vice-President and David directs the Midwest Region Laborers Organizing Committee.

Paul’s leadership philosophy was that the local union belongs to and serves the member. He always strives to both ensure fairness for the member and fair treatment for the union contractor. “Never hold a grudge,” Paul says, “because even if you are angry with someone, there still is a family and children depending on that member working.”  Another of Paul’s guiding lights is “if you can give someone a break, do it.”  

McLean County bears the mark of Paul’s “helping” philosophy, through numerous volunteer labor projects. In 1947, newly back from military service, Paul helped build the Girl Scout’s “hike haven” in Forest Park. The local union trades in the 1950s donated an addition to Miller Park Zoo and helped set and move the locomotive to Miller Park. The ballfields and accessory buildings at O’Neill Park were a personal project of Paul, Carl Nierstheimer, Joe Yuriece, Dewey O’Rourke, and “Dubby” Sprague of the Bloomington Police Department. Since then, the Korean-Vietnam Monument, World War II monument, Sheridan School Poetry Place, the Baby Fold, Normal Theater, Easter Seals, Compassion Center, the YWCA, the YMCA, and numerous other community projects have been physically improved by organized labor’s donated skills.

Paul’s other personal passion is golf, having started as a caddy at Bloomington Country Club while a teen. At age 15 he finished third in the Junior City Tournament and has enjoyed the game since. Trying to “give those in need a break” and with a definition of family broader than blood, Paul Penn has greatly enriched our McLean County landscape.