Edward F. Worley, 76, longshoreman and horseman

Edward F. Worley, 76, a Philadelphia longshoreman and a Fairmount Park horseman, died of heart failure Saturday, Feb. 5, at Willow Terrace, a nursing home in Germantown.

Until he was injured in a 1985 workplace accident, Mr. Worley was an active member of the African American riding group known as the Western Wranglers.

The group housed its animals in stables, since burned down, in the former Hancock Paper Co. building on Master Street between 31st and 32d Streets in Brewerytown.

"They do a last ride for the person who has passed away," Mr. Worley's daughter, Leah Harris, said in an interview. "They tie his boots onto a horse" and lead it to the funeral gathering.

"When I see that," she said, "I'm going to cry."

A 1993 photo essay in Inquirer Magazine - 15 photos of the riders and their steeds - recounted that "up through the '70s there were rival factions of cowboys from West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and Germantown who'd get together for competitive riding and then 'sit around and tell horse lies.' "

Mr. Worley's daughter said that when he was growing up at the Richard Allen Homes, the public housing high-rises, there were stables nearby.

Even as a 10-year-old, she said, "he used to slip off from his sisters, who were babysitting him, to work as a stablehand."

The attraction deepened when he and a brother spent summers with his mother on her farm in Delaware.

"There," she said, "he would ride her horses and help take care of her farm."

For about 20 years, she said, he owned one horse at a time, one after another, at the Master Street stables.

As far as she knew, he didn't ride competitively, but "mainly for leisure" on trails in Fairmount Park.

But then, she said, "it was a men's club and he didn't talk about what the men did."

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Worley learned woodworking skills at what is now Bok Vocational High School.

"He and I, when I was a little girl, we fashioned a coffee table out of an old gangplank that was being discarded" from his workplace on the docks, she said. "And we have it to this day."

In the 1950s, Mr. Worley spent most of his four years of military obligation working in Air Force motor pools.

His career as a longshoreman, mostly in Philadelphia but also on the Camden waterfront, spanned more than 40 years, beginning in 1962, when he became a member of both International Longshoremen's Association Local 1291 and the Philadelphia Marine Trade Association.

At the Girard Point Piers, below the I-95 bridge over the Schuylkill in South Philadelphia, Mr. Worley was foreman of his own work gang for much of his career.

"He was a very strong man," his daughter said. "His nickname was 'Soup,' short for Superman."

Besides his daughter, Mr. Worley is survived by sons Edward and Kenneth, a brother, four sisters, eight grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandsons. His wife, Viola, died in 2002.

A viewing was set for 9 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 12, at Fountain Funeral Home, 3100 N. 22d St., before an 11 a.m. funeral service there. Burial is to be private.