Edward Brown, Longshore Union Leader, Dies

Edward L. Brown Sr., who led the International Longshoremen’s Association in Hampton Roads through the port’s development into one of the nation’s top container ports, died Feb. 5 of complications from cancer. He was 83.

Mr. Brown joined ILA Local 1248 in 1956 and later spent 18 years as the local’s president. He was elected to the executive board of the union’s Atlantic Coast District in 1983 and to the ILA’s executive council as an international vice president in 1987. He held both of those positions until his death.

ILA President Richard Hughes praised Mr. Brown’s work on contracts and said he was instrumental in establishment of the MILA coastwide medical program for ILA members. “The ILA’s ability to create this great health care plan for thousands of ILA members and their families would never have happened without Ed,” Hughes said. “Ed’s legacy will be measured by all of those members in the ILA family whose lives he helped improve throughout his career.”

Roger Giesinger, president of the Hampton Roads Shipping Association, said Mr. Brown was “a colleague and friend … one of a kind.” Giesinger said Mr. Brown led the ILA in Hampton Roads “with his forward thinking and his ability to make decisions when they were not popular with all his members. Typically, these decisions were not only the right decisions but decisions that created more jobs and more money for ILA benefits.”
Mr. Brown was a Norfolk Native who attended Norfolk State University and received honorary doctoral degrees from Norfolk State and Richmond Virginia Seminary. During World War II he served in the Army and the merchant marine. He was elected three times as a Virginia delegate to Democratic national conventions.

His funeral is scheduled for Thursday at Kempsville Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach, where Mr. Brown was a deacon.