Opinion by Bonnie Henry: Hispanic rail blazer - William Sayre joined Southern Pacific in 1942 at a time when co-workers would regularly give him whippings

“It was hot, dirty, dangerous work. But it was work that would feed his family. Work worth a whipping.
“He used to come home beat up,” says Edith Auslander, whose father, William Sayre, in 1942 became Tucsons first Mexican-American to work as a fireman for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Back then, Hispanic men could work in the roundhouse or on the tracks. Some even moved the engines around in the yard and roundhouse. But none had taken a locomotive on a main-line run, says railroad historian William Kalt”

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