Samuel L. Reddic

Samuel Lee Reddic was born in Meckenburg, South Carolina, on October 27, 1943, and has a twin sister. He moved to Harlem, New York, in the 1950s, and graduated from Commerce High School in the Bronx in 1961. 

Mr. Reddic began his career in the mailroom at Grey Advertising on Park Avenue in New York City. He saw an ad and applied to become a plumber. It was the height of the fight for civil rights in this country, and he fought hard to become one of the first black plumber’s apprentices in the local plumbers’ union. His work took him from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to nuclear plants in New Jersey and Illinois. In the fourth year of his plumber’s apprenticeship, on June 10, 1965, Samuel Reddic was drafted into the U.S. Army. After basic training, he was stationed in Germany with the Third Infantry Division, and continued his training, becoming a sharpshooter and earning a National Defense Service Medal. He was honorably discharged in 1971 with the rank of Specialist 5.

Mr. Reddic finished the final year of his plumber’s apprenticeship when he came back to New York. But, while driving home in 1981, he was shot six times during a robbery attempt. He still carries two bullets lodged against his spine. As a plumber, he worked for the New York City Board of Education until he retired in 2000. He endured at times extreme prejudice on the job; still, he will tell you with pride that he has been a member of the Plumbers’ Local for 50 years. In 1979, Mr. Reddic moved to Yonkers. His wife Millicent is a nurse. One of his two daughters, Melissa Denise Reddic, also served in the U.S. Army, completing three tours in Iraq.

When a friend in the neighborhood urged Mr. Reddic to get involved with the local post, before long, the now 73-year-old became Commander of the Samuel H. Dow Post in Yonkers. Mr. Reddic works hard to help his local veterans and recruit new, younger servicemen and women to join the post. He served on the executive board of HRCA, and the Hudson River Community Association, and attended Messiah Baptist Church.