Unions throw picket line wedding for one of their own

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.gulflive.com/news/mississippipress/index.ssf?/base/news/1174731363179620.xml

Unions throw picket line wedding for one of their own
Saturday, March 24, 2007
By AMBER CRAIG

The Mississippi Press

PASCAGOULA -- The picket line outside Northrop Grumman transformed into a wedding sanctuary Friday afternoon as Kenneth and Sonya Hill said "I do" in front of hundreds of union workers at the same spot where they've been protesting for more than two weeks.

Instead of pews or decorated folding chairs, wedding guests stood or sat in their own lawn chairs they've been using since the March 8 strike began. The occasional car drove by just yards away.

But the highway wedding still held some of the same traditions as any other wedding -- the flower girl dressed in white, the cutting of the wedding cake and the nervous bride walking down the aisle.

"When I came down, my whole body was shaking like a leaf," Sonya Hill said about her moment in the spotlight.

The new bride, who admitted to crying her eyes out before the ceremony, ex-pressed relief that it's finally over, and her husband said the ceremony fulfilled his hopes for the day.

"It was everything I expected and more," Kenneth Hill said.

Sonya and Kenneth Hill moved to the area from West Virginia, and he started his job as a boilermaker at Northrop Grumman three weeks before the March 8 strike began.

Kenneth Hill remembers his first glimpse of the shipyard during a visit to the area.

"When I saw it, I said, That's where I'm going to work,'" he said.

But now that he and his fellow workers have been on strike for more than two weeks, Kenneth Hill wanted to show the company that he is serious about the strike by sharing one of the most important moments in his life with his union family, especially because neither have any relatives in the area.

"We did it because the union is our family," he said. "We are all one."

The union family stepped up to the task like any blood-related family, union members said.

FULL story at link.