Voice of cabbies falls silent

Bob Shemeligian

Friday, May 30, 1997 | 11:44 a.m.

Dick Kawadler, known as the voice of local cab drivers, died Wednesday in his hometown of Boston after a brief illness. He was 58.

For the past decade, Kawadler was owner and editor of Trip Sheet magazine, the monthly trade publication for Las Vegas cab drivers.

In his monthly column, "A Cabby's Stand," Kawadler addressed various issues such as driver safety and whether drivers receive proper representation before the Taxicab Authority.

Kawadler always spoke for the drivers.

"Why should the drivers suffer because the TA couldn't keep their own house in order?" Kawadler asked in a recent issue.

Two years ago, at a public meeting conducted in the wake of a rash of attacks on cab drivers, Kawadler urged that video cameras and barriers be installed in cabs.

"I'm incensed," Kawadler said. "There's no reason why anybody should have to fear for his life trying to earn a living."

Several in the taxicab industry praised Kawadler as a crusader for local drivers.

"None of us in the Taxicab Authority has a negative thing to say about Dick," said Bob Flaven, TA chief investigator. "He was a voice for the cab drivers, and all of us on the authority are deeply saddened that he has passed away."

"I'm devastated. This has totally destroyed me," said Ruthie Jones, vice present of the local branch of the Maritime Union, which represents many local drivers.

"Dick was like a brother to me," Jones said. "There were many times when I was working late and he would call me because he couldn't sleep, and we would talk for hours."

One woman Kawadler often joked with was Sandra Avants, former TA administrator.

Although Kawadler and Avants often clashed over sanctions against drivers and the number of taxicab medallions allotted to each company, the two always maintained cordial relations.

"Everything that Dick did was from his heart, and it was for the drivers and he never lost sight of them," Avants said. "Even when he became a supervisor with Yellow Checker Star, he still kept the drivers' interests uppermost. He was one of a kind."

Before he was hired as a dispatcher for Yellow Checker Star Cab Companies, Kawadler worked as chief steward for the local branch of the Maritime Union.

He was still working at Yellow Checker Star when he died.

Kawadler and his wife, Linda, had just returned to the Boston area from a vacation in Europe when he fell ill. A week later, he died at Brockton Hospital.

Kawadler was born in Randolph, a small city southwest of Boston, June 25, 1938.

After graduating with a degree in animal husbandry from the University of Massachusetts, he worked as a poultry inspector in Delaware for several years before moving to Las Vegas in the early 1980s.

"We used to help my father work at his poultry store in Malden (Mass.) when we were kids, and I guess Dick was starting to get tired of looking at chickens," said his older brother Marvin Kawadler who lives in Randolph.

"Dick was just looking when he first came out to Las Vegas, and he never wanted to leave," Marvin Kawadler said. "First, he sold real estate, and then he got into the taxi business, and he took over the magazine at first just to keep busy, but he really developed it into something. It would be a shame to let it go."

Kawadler co-founded Trip Sheet along with Isaac Dahan, a local driver, but after a few years, Kawadler bought his partner out.

The fate of the taxicab trade publication is not known, but Kawadler's friends and family members pledged to help keep it going.

"We owe that to him," Marvin Kawadler said. "His spirit is the type that will never die."

Neither will his sense of humor.

"He was always good for a joke or a story," Jones said. "He had a great sense of humor."

Once, when a reporter asked Kawadler to describe his wedding to his wife, Linda, he said, "It was Memorial Day. I know it's my anniversary when I see the flags at half-staff."

Marvin Kawadler said his brother always was a joker.

When he was a child, his mother once hid from Kawadler's sweet tooth a plate of brownies she had prepared for a bridge party.

Dick's mother hid the sweets deep in the bottom of a freezer, and two days later when she went to retrieve them, she found a note that read, "You hid them from me. Now you find them."

Besides his wife, Linda, and his brother Marvin, Kawadler is survived by his mother, Sophia Kawadler-Karp; one son, Bruce Kawadler of Berkley, Mass.; two daughters, Ellen Walkama of Plymouth and Susan Marriott of Wareham.

A memorial service was to be conducted in Boston today.

The family asks that donations be made to the Wayne Newton Taxi Driver's Relief Fund or the Binion's Horseshoe Taxi Driver's Relief Fund, 2413 S. Eastern Ave., 230, Las Vegas, Nv., 89104.

Arrangements are by Levine-Briss Funeral Home in Randolph.