An investigation continues into the rare death Friday afternoon [August 12] of a longshoreman at the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in South Philadelphia, where workers today are devastated by the loss of a colleague.
Carmen “Chuckie” DiRago’s longtime friend and waterfront colleague, Albert Howlett, said DiRago was crushed when a “yard horse,” the tractor part of a tractor-trailer, backed into him.
“Chuckie was well-liked, so there’s a lot of emotion, people are very emotional now,” Albert Howlett, business agent of Local 1291 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, said today, just after leaving the marine terminal. DiRago, a foreman at Packer, was a member of Local 1291. The son of a longshoreman, DiRago had worked on the waterfront 36 years and for Packer about 30 years, according to Howlett and Holt. He was also a father of four.
Said Robert Blackburn, senior deputy executive director of the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, a state agency that owns the Packer marine terminal: “The ILA has truly lost one of its very best.”