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Jim Ketola, Presente!

By Steve Morse and Lee Thorn

Jim Ketola, 1948-2011, was an anti-war veteran and labor activist. He was killed by a motorist in Stockton, California on the rainy night of March 23rd.

Jim did two and a half tours in Vietnam as a tunnel rat and sniper, among other duties. He finished his Army hitch at the end of 1971 in the Presidio hospital, recovering not from a combat injury but from an attack by an Army lifer, over Jim's increasingly vocal anti-war activism. Jim became immersed in the San Francisco VVAW chapter right away, taking part in actions such as the takeover of the Air Force Recruiters' office in San Francisco in response to the April 1972 bombing of North Vietnam. Jim later was active in Veteran Speakers Alliance and Veterans For Peace.

Jim grew up poor in the iron range country of upstate Minnesota, around many other Finnish Americans. By his teen years, he had learned the woods and logged when he could get the work. Jim was a welder in the Bay Area for over 30 years, in both the Boilermakers' and Steamfitters' unions. At career's end, he was still climbing on top of refineries doing the most dangerous and most skilled work. He'd say, "It's better if I do these things—I know what I'm doing." For years, Jim helped publish "Hard Hat," a rank and file construction workers' journal.

Jim worked hard, was on constant alert, talked to anyone and everyone and at length, was a loyal friend to many, and was a mentor to several youngsters. There was a gleam in Jim's eye as he fused information with irony in telling a story, recounting a piece of history or making a class-conscious observation.

Jim had a heart operation and an aneurysm in rapid succession. He felt both lucky to survive and that his mind had been affected. At the end, he was living in shelters and in a cardboard box with a woman friend in Stockton.

Jim both studied war and hated it. He had deep knowledge of the history, politics, culture and wars of Vietnam. He did his second tour to keep his brother out of Vietnam. Jim's father had been in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, a fact his father hadn't bothered to tell him. Jim was both an excellent soldier and a consistent activist for peace and justice for 40 years. He thus had an intense and complex relationship to war, and to the war that finally took him.

He is survived by his wife Gretchen Koch, from whom he had been separated for several years, and by their sons Erkke and Michael.

Steve and Lee have been active in Bay Area anti-war veterans' work since they were in the San Francisco VVAW chapter in the early '70's.