Steve Kindred, an irrepressible American radical — student and anti-war activist, socialist, and labor organizer — died of cancer on December 9, 2013 in New York City at the age of sixty-nine.

A legendary figure among Teamster activists, Kindred had worked in various states as a freight driver, car hauler, and limousine driver, helped to establish several Teamsters for a Democratic Union chapters, led wildcat strikes, and counseled reformers who ran for union office.

Kindred was born on May 14, 1944, in Waverly, Iowa, and grew up in that state. He was the son of Arthur Kindred, a Methodist minister, and Carol Hunt Kindred, the church’s musician who visited the congregation’s poor, sick, and elderly, and raised three boys. Steve’s brother Mike told the 150 friends and family members who attended the memorial on February 8 at CUNY’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies that Arthur Kindred’s support for the civil rights movement and opposition to the war against Vietnam strongly influenced his sons. The family’s Methodist missionary visitors who had served in other countries around the world widened the children’s horizons. Their mother’s work among the poor served as a model for the concern and kindness toward the less fortunate that came to form part of the core of Steve’s character.