Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 14

2-18 Monday, May 11, 70 DETROIT FREE PRESS '45 Shooting, Still Unsolved, Sent Family into Seclusion mWA 1 BV ANDREW MOLLISON Free Presi StH Writer At 9:45 on an April evening in 1948, a shotgun blasted through the kitchen window of Walter Reuther's home at 20101 Appoline on Detroit's west side. It was not the first attempt on Reuther's life, but it was the most dramatic, and it inspired the longest continuing investigation of attempted murder in the history of Detroit law enforcement. The assassination effort also marked the point at which Reuther, who always Jreasured privacy, became less accessible to strangers and to acquaintances who had not known him "in the early days." Reuther attended a seven-hour meeting of the international executive board of the United Auto Workers April 20. He went to his famous office "in shadow of the GM building" around 9 p.m., and called his wife to tell her that he hadn't eaten. When he arrived home around 9:30, May Reuther had heated up a plate of stew.

"I WENT TO THE icebox to get a bowl of fruit salad," said Reuther afterward. "My wife was just a foot from me. "I had just made that step and the dish in my hand just flew into a thousand pieces. "In fact, the impact of the thing knocked me down on the floor, and I tried to get up and I got my arm tangled up as though it had just been torn off. "I couldn't get up, and I lay there flat on my back for a second or two.

"They shot through both the regular window and the storm window In the kitchen, and I just lay there on the floor until they came and took me to the hospital." Doctors at New Grace Hospital worked to save his life and his arm, while detectives, newsmen and hundreds of curious swarmed through the neighborhood. Three heel prints were found in the soft earth outside the kitchen window, along with a few remnants of shotgun-shell wadding. A hoy playing down the street reported seeing a red Ford right after hear- ing the shot. A statewide alert went out, and Detroit police opened a case file hat has never been officially closed. REUTHER SPECULATED that the shots might have been fired by an agent of communist or fascist dissidents within the union or "a screwball." Other theories, bolstered by more than $180,000 in reward money, sprang up like mushrooms after a soft summer rain.

Perhaps, said some, gangsters were upset because the UAW did not cooperate with numbers racketeers who worked the Detroit auto plants. Perhaps, said others, the management of one of the firms dealing with the UAW had planned the attack. They recalled that on a spring night 10 years previously, the Reuthers' apartment had been raided by two men. They planned to take Reuther on a one-way ride, he was told. Reuther, Who wrested a blackjack from the grasp of one of his assailants, was sure they were company thugs.

The investigation of the 1948 attempt on Reuther's life intensified 13 months later, when someone tried to kill his brother Victor. The attacks on 'the brothers were similar. Both were by hidden assailants who stood behind house-side bushes and fired a shotgun through window. Victor lost an eye. REWARDS offered by UAW locals, other unions, and the Detroit Common Council and the Wayne County Audi UPI Photo Mrs.

Reuthei with the labor leader after he was shot in 1948 PRESIDENTS CALLED WALTER REUTHER ID unch Political 'Redhead' Packed a tors soared to $225,000. In 1950 a former UAW official went on trial for Walter's assault, but was acquitted. In 1953 a Windsor drifter said he knew the assassin. He led UAW investigators and Detroit police through a tortuous maze of clues, collecting a down payment on the reward money, before he fled to Canada and repudiated his tale. In 1954 the Legislature kept the investigation alive by passing a special act which extended the statue of limitations in Reuther's case from six years to 10.

In 1958, as the extension was about to expire, Prosecutor Samuel Olsen obtained six John Doe warrants from Recorder's Court Judge Joseph with liberal Republicans on the national scene. Aides say Reuther worked with Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon in opposition to the ABM, Reuther endorsed Republican New York Mayor John Lindsay running as a Liberal-Independent in his successful re-election campaign last year and breakfasted only days ago with Republican Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois. At the UAW convention in Atlantic City last month, he met with Josh Lee Auspitz, head of the liberal Republican Ripon Society, which Attorney General John Mitchell recently described as a group of "juvenile delinquents." When Austin lost a close election to Roman Grlbbs, Reuther sent the defeated candidate a warm personal letter urging him to stay involved in public affairs.

During tftie 1968 presidential election, when Alabama segregationist George Wallace appeared to be winning the sympathies of many white auto workers, Reuther plodded his political organizers in Michigan into a major effort that helped former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey carry the state. ALTHOUGH THE UAW Is bound to the Democratic Party in Michigan and Reuther himself almost always voted for Democrats, he had formed a number of friendships "Walter had a profound in--terest in progressive coalitions in both parties," said an aide. "He was issue oriented, not party oriented." Reuther's activism In civil rights, housing, health care, the war on pollution and other causes- was not always well received by others in the UAW more concerned about bread-and-butter union issues. At the same time, Reuther had come in for increasing criticism from the New Left, which often viewed him as hopelessly Old Politics. But, he said in an interview last year: "The test of a leader is whether he tries to change and to change things." Reuther clearly believed he passed the test.

BY CLARK IIOYT Free Presi Politics Writer i Walter Reuther was once i accused by an Indiana state official of trying to become i the czar of American politics, 'i But "the Redhead," as i friends and enemies alike used i to call him, often complained -1 jokingly to aides that he i couldn't even control the vote of his wife May. i Yet, under Reuther's tough, dominant leadership, the UAW grew Into the largest, most disciplined force In Michigan's highly factionalized Democratic Party. himself, preoccupied by the administration of his union and his role on the i national political stage, often seemed an aloof figure in re- cent years in state politics. He never attended euch traditional Democratic gatherings as the annual Jefferson-Jack-i Day dinners. His union's i endorsements of state candi- dates were seldom accompan-.

ied by public personal en-. dorsements from Reuther him- self. "AFTER ALL," explained called Walter. He was a national political leader, not a A man with a great eapac- ity for detail, however, Reuth- er, during a campaign for gov- ernor in the early 1960s, once toured local campaign offices in Detroit to make sure his troops were hard at work. Just before he arrived at each headquarters, the telephone rang and a voice warned, "Get on the ball.

The Redhead's coming." As a national political loader, Reuiher used his post as president of the 1.8 million-member UAW to become a vigorous spokesman for social reform. He was against militarism and the anti-ballistic missile; he said the political system should be opened up to include the young, the black and the poor; he fought for better housing and a national health Insurance program. Although he came late to the issue, having endorsed Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policies in 1965, Reuther evolved into an outspoken critic of the war. He ercise significant control in the campaigns it supports. In what was perhaps his last jdfccial act before his death, Reuther Thursday sent President Nixort a strongly worded letter expressing "deep wide candidate in Michigan.

Union aides mount massive voter registration drives, hand out campaign literature paid for by the UAW and conduct door-to-door canvasses. The UAW also has been known to commission polls for the state Democratic Party, and candidates it is backing. "THEY HAVE BEEN very influential, but it is easy to overestimate that," says one Michigan Democrat. hey never write big checks for people." But, by providing services rather than large amounts of campaign cash, observers say, the UAW is often able to ex-When Reuther believed the issues were important enough, he did not hesitate to depart from his normal aloofness and involve himself in a Michigan campaign. In alarmed nt what he perceived as a swing lo the right in mayoral elections across the country, he came actively to the aid of Richard Austin, running as the first black candidate for mayor of Detroit.

Only days before the November election, the union mailed out 180,000 copies of a Reuther letter urging UAW members to vote for Austin. widening of the war to Cambodia. Reuther told Mr. "You pledged to bring America together, yet by your action, you have dangerously alienated millions of young Americans." Aides say Reuther agonized for long hours at home and in his office over the precise language of the letter. His younger brother, Victor, sent copies of it to each of the 100 U.S.

Senators. The letters will arrive in Monday morning's mail. Even as Reuther departed for Black Lake on the flight that would end in his death, aides were busily contacting civic leaders in Detroit to urge them to join Reuther in a news conference next week to condemn the Indochina war. Reuther, UAW officials say, usually gave wide political latitude to regional union leaders in Michigan and other states. But, one Michigan Democrat says, "I always had the feeling they didn't do anything he didn't want." UNIQUE AMONG unions, the UAW supplies more than its paper endorsement when it embraces a major state- Michigan political an associate, "presidents i concern and distress'? over the Reuther Changed the World For the Average Auto Worker ther thought repressive.

Workers raised their hands If they needed to visit the bathroom and hoped a foreman would find a replacement on the line for them. When production was doubled without extra manpower or pay, those on the line either worked twice as fast or risked being A. Gillis "to keep the cases alive." No new information a turned up in the last 12 years. After the 1948 assassination attempt, Detroit newsmen agreed informally never to mention Reuther's exact address. "In Oakland County" was the usual description of the new Reuther home on a four-acre tract in Rochester.

There Reuther turned small rustic cottage into a cabinet-maker's dream. "I remember the first time he picked up a hammer after the assassinaton attempt," an old friend recalled Sunday. "He cried." But, partly as therapy for his right arm, and partly to prove that he could handle anything that came along, the peppery redhead kept working for hours with hand tools. Although his right arm and fingers always remained stiff, he eventually was able to use them for cabinet work and writing. The Reuthers had few drop- in visitors at their new home, although they often invited guests to come and enjoy the low, rambling redwood house with its trout stream and the bridges Reuther built.

The Reuthers were also fixing up a retirement home in Florida. Reuther worked on the paneling in his basement workshop in Michigan artd hauled it south in a trailfr hitched to the back of his car. The two secluded homes, and the switch of his office to the well-fenced and guarded Solidarity House in 1952, made it possible tr Reuther to go days without seeing strangers. Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People drew widespread agreement when he said that Reuther "is the most inaccessible man in the United States." Reuther's withdrawal fom those who were neither guards nor old friends can partly be ascribed to his strong desire for privacy, but it was also caused by his union colleagues' fear that he would be hurt. worker is paid $4.03 an hour.

And, under Walter Reuther's leadership of the 1.8 million member UAW, the array of fringe benefits available to workers Is awesomely long. IT WAS NOT that way in 1935. Then, the average auto worker worried mainly about keeping his job and toeing the line under company rules that young labor leaders like Reu- BY GEORGE CANTOR Free Press Staff Writer When Walter Reuther joined the United Auto Workers in 1935, wages were low, hours were long and working conditions were described as grinding. The average auto worker made 48 cents an hour and most felt lucky to get it. The Depression was in full swing.

Today, the average auto Severance pay now goes up to one full year for an employe of 30 years seniority. All assembly line workers have 46 minutes a day of paid relief time. The company pays for life Insurance up to $13,000 and accidental death insurance up to $19,500. Sickness and accident insurance covers up to $140 a week for 52 weeks with extended disability benefits up to $525 a month. Hospital, medical and surgical insurance is fully paid by auto companies and covers the entire family of the worker.

Going to night school to obtain a high school or college degree was a good way to get yourself fired in 1936. Now there are tuition refunds of up to $350 a year. And there is a guarantee of no discrimination based on race, color, sex, age or national AX OLD HAND at picketing, Walter Reuther joined striking grape pickers demonstrating at Delano, in 1965. At left is strike organizer Cesar Chavez. TUMULTUOUS EPOCH Reuther Left Labor Milestones fired.

When an auto worker reported for work and found none, he was not paid. Women worked on the lines for less pay than men. There was no seniority system. A man laid off who returned to work was paid beginner's rates. The union was not recognized in the plants.

UAW membership was grounds for immediate dismissal. There were no paid holidays, no overtime pay, no extra pay for night work. All of that has changed. And, as the UAW grew in strength and influence under Reuther, industry's attitude has changed. IN 193G, IN its first contract signed with General Motors, the union won recognition and an official sanction against harassment of union men.

In 3939, auto workers began getting paid holidays. Now there are 11 a year. Overtime pay followed and a night differential in 1940. Now, workers on late shifts receive 10 percent more salary. But the biggest change has come in the fringe benefits available now to UAW members, most of them innovated by Reuther after he took full command of the union in 1946.

The UAW was the first union to get a major funded pension benefit program financed by industry. Now, a UAW worker 'retiring at 60 can make 15400 a month. There now is an annual Improvement factor in wage increases to take advantage of improved technology and a cost-of-living clause to project wages against inflation. Supplemental unemployment benefits provide most laid-off workers with 95 percent of their pay after taxes. On time lost through short work weeks, they receive 80 percent of gross pay.

A Labor Union Mourns Its Own Convened at Solidarity House Sunday, the international executive board of the United Auto Workers issued the following statement: "We cannot at this moment adequately express in words our grief at the loss of Walter P. Reuther. The shock is too sudden and too overhwelming. "He was an inspired leader of our union; he symbolized its conscience, its heartbeat, its soul. But he was also a teacher, an educator, a man of deep wisdom who sought greater wisdom for himself and all who came in contact with him.

We grieve for him and his family, for ourselves and for every man and woman of the UAW and their familes. "We grieve, too, for men and women outside the ranks of this union because Walter P. Reuther belonged to every man of good will. He belonged to the poor, the deprived, the oppressed of this world and today they are poorer, as are we. "HE BELONGED to our older citizens because he brought them dignity and a greater measure of security.

"He belonged to the young because he demanded that they be heard. "He belonged to millions across the seas because of his devotion to the cause of peace and to the cause of improving the quality of life for all the world's people. "He was deeply and constantly committed to the cause of social and economic justice throughout the world. He measured goodness and righteousness only in terms of human beings and their dreams for a better world, and we measure him by his unselfish devotion to the cause of people. "We grieve, too, for his life's companion, May Reuther, his wife of 34 years, and share our grief with their daughters, Linda and Lisa.

"Walter P. Reuther was a great American, a great world leader for justice and peace. To us he was also a warm, generous human being, our close personal friend, our brother. "We call upon all our UAW brothers and sisters to observe with us a week of mourning in his memory." The rise of Walter P. Reuther from a factory tool bench to a prominence that made his name synonymous with trade unionism was marked indelibly in labor history.

In a tumultuous epoch, fighting enemies from within and without, the 62-year-old president of the United Auto Workers union left behind these memorable milestones. 1936: The sitdowri strikes In Flint and Detroit The beginning of the drive that organized the automobile industry. A key demand In the sitdowns, won later, was corporation-wide contracts. 1937: The Battle of the Overpass-Ford tougiw beat Reuther atid other UAW leaders on the Miller Rd. overpass.

National publicity of the lhcldent made Reuther a near martyr for trade unionism. Ths uneven struggle with Harry Bennett's "Service Department" led ultimately to victory for the UAW and complete unionization of the Ford empire. 19-18: Kidnap Attempt Armed thugs, claimed by the UAW to be hired by Ford, invaded Reuther's apartment and tried to kidnap him. Reuther, his brother Victor, and friends gathered window of Reuther's home felled Reuther with a chest wound and a nearly severed right arm. 1949: Pension plan Reuther won an employer-financed pension plan in bargaining with Ford.

1952: CIO presidency Reuther elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to succeed Phil Murray. 1955: SUB and AFL-CIO merger Reuther won the Supplemental Unemployment Benefit (SU'B) plan, a forerunner of his guaranteed annual wage. That same year he helped merge the AFL and the CIO. 1058: A setback at the bargaining table Caught in a recession year, Reuther suffered one of his few setbacks at the bargaining table when he was forced to settle for modest wage increases and nominal improvements in the Sl'B plan. 1968: Reuther leaves the AFL-CIO Irked by failure of the AFL-CIO to act on social issues, Reuther pulled- his union out.

196S: The ALA The UAW joined the Teamsters to form the Alliance for Labor Action. for a party, disarmed and routed the invaders. 1939: The GM tool and die strike Quarterbacked by Reuther, the so-called "strategy strike" aimed at 12 key GM parts plants as they started retooling for the 1940 models, entrenched the UAW as bargaining agent for GM hourly rated workers. 1945: The GM strike Reuther struck the giant corporation for 113 long, hungry, dreary, -days. GM dictated the strike settlement.

3946: Reuther elected UAW president In a stormy convention climaxed by fist fights and brawling, Reuther edged R. J. Thomaa by 124 votes. 1947: Reuther ousts communists, Climaxing a 19-month fight with an executive board that outvoted him, Reuther campaigned in the union's precincts and won a crushing defeat of the, communists. 1948: ReuUier wins the cost-of-living clause Pressured by the UAW, GM President Charles E.

Wilson proposed the cost-of-living escalator clause in the national contract. Reuther snapped it up. 1948: Assassination attempt A shotgun blast fired through the kitchen REUTHER'S movements were seldom announced in advance, and he was always flanked by bodyguards in his public appearances. He chafed at security restrictions, such as the armored Packard that the UAW international board once bought him. Reuther refused to use the car, but the board passed a motion ordering him to ue it.

He did so, but he expressed great relief when the car was abandoned after less than six months because it kept having engine trouble. Reuther told friends on several occasions that one of the most enjoyable nights in his life came during a visit to Venice, Italy. Late at night, Reuther said, he realized that his body'-guards and friends were ail asleep. "I walked for three or four i hours, all alone, through the streets," said Reuther. found it refreshing.".