John Melvin Gaige

John Melvin Gaige

John Melvin Gaige, born March 13, 1947, died January 28, 2025, from a brain injury resulting from a fall. He was 77 years old.

The youngest of three, John was born in Sylvania, Ohio; his father was a plumber and his mother a librarian. An all-star basketball player for Sylvania High School, he graduated in 1965. In 1969, he received his bachelor’s degree from Defiance College, affiliated with the United Church of Christ. In 2014, John resumed formal education, completing a master’s degree in labor studies from the University of Massachusetts in 2014.

A railroad signalman, John served as local chairperson for the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen in south Florida; during his tenure, he helped organize a fight to maintain union protection and benefits as the state – one in which “right-to-work” laws prevail – took over CSX Transportation trackage in South Florida.

After his retirement in 2016, he bicycled in Ireland and Spain; joined political tours to Paraguay, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Cuba; and traveled to China, Hong Kong, and North Korea. His mission was to learn first-hand the conditions for workers and farmers in these regions and exchange ideas with fighters for a better world.

In 2020, John and his companion Yvonne Hayes moved to Albuquerque, NM. The two continued their travels, including a daunting three-and-a-half-month road trip with their two cats to Alaska and western Canada. He continued to immerse himself in the ongoing struggles to defend women’s right to abortion and in opposition to the Israeli government’s war on the Palestinians.

John also loved the opera, Miami Heat basketball, sci-fi and Nordic noir, and to sample the coffee and ice cream of countries all over the globe. He left a desk covered with some 40 books from reference to politics to art to fiction, notes on his travels and Spanish vocabulary, and a nearly finished paper on the transition in China from a state-run economy to capitalism.

John is survived by his partner Yvonne Hayes, brother Charles Gaige, and sister Mary Mantel as well as two nieces, a grandniece, and three grandnephews. A family gathering will be held in southern Michigan in late March and his ashes interred in a family plot in Sylvania, Ohio.

A celebration of John’s life will be held in South Florida in several months.