About Joseph Curran Joseph Curran (March 1, 1906 - August 14,
1981) was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. He was
founding president of the National Maritime Union (or NMU, now
part of the Seafarers International Union of North America) from
1937 to 1973, and a vice president of the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO). Curran was born on Manhattan's Lower East
Side. His father died when he was two years old, and his mother
boarded with another family. He attended parochial school, but
when he was 14 he was expelled during the seventh grade for
truancy. He worked as a caddy and factory worker before finding
employment in 1922 in the United States Merchant Marine. He
worked as an able seaman and boatswain, washing dishes in
restaurants when not at sea and sleeping on a Battery Park bench
at night. It was during this time that he received his lifelong
nickname "Big Joe." Curran joined the International Seamen's
Union (or ISU; the remnants of which would become the Seafarers
International Unio