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Walter Reuther
1907–1970 · 63 years Tier II
A shotgun through the kitchen window, and back at work
His father ran a debating society at the kitchen table in Wheeling and once took his sons to a jail to meet Eugene Debs, who was serving time for opposing the war. His mother sewed the boys' underwear out of used flour sacks. When an exploding bottle partly blinded Valentine Reuther, nine-year-old Walter went out for odd jobs, and he left high school in his junior year for a factory. At 19 he went to Detroit, where Ford put him into a tool and die job normally reserved for men with 25 years behind them, because he could read blueprints and dies. He finished high school at night, enrolled at Detroit City College, and in 1932 was fired for organizing a rally for the Socialist candidate for president.
He and his brother Victor then spent almost three years abroad, two of them at the Gorky auto plant in the Soviet Union, where the unheated shops ran 30 to 40 degrees below zero and Reuther wrote letters to the Moscow Daily News complaining about how badly the place was run. Back in Detroit he took over Local 174, led the first successful strike against the automakers at Kelsey Hayes in December 1936, and on May 26, 1937 was beaten down a flight of stairs at Ford's River Rouge overpass while press photographers worked. He won the UAW presidency in 1946 by 124 votes out of nearly 9,000. The five-year contract he signed with General Motors in 1950 traded labor peace for wages, pensions and health coverage, and set the shape of the American middle class.
On the night of April 20, 1948, a shotgun fired through his kitchen window while he was fixing a late snack. He had turned toward his wife, so it took his right arm instead of his chest — four slugs shattered the arm into 150 pieces of bone, and another went through his back. He picked up malaria and hepatitis from the transfusions, taught himself to write and shake hands left-handed, and rebuilt the arm by squeezing a hard rubber ball and enlarging his own house by hand. Thirteen months later a shotgun fired through Victor Reuther's living room window and took his eye. Neither case was ever solved and J. Edgar Hoover would not investigate. The Reuther who had worked closely with Communists in the 1930s then spent years driving them out of the UAW and the CIO.
The chartered Learjet came down in flames near Pellston, Michigan, on the night of May 9, 1970, in rain and fog on final approach, killing Reuther, his wife May, the architect Oscar Stonorov, his bodyguard and both pilots. They were flying to the union's Black Lake center. Investigators found the plane's altimeter missing parts, fitted with wrong ones, and one component installed upside down, which is why the suspicion of murder has never fully gone away. Seventeen days earlier he had put up the first money for the first Earth Day. Bill Clinton gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995. North America's largest labor archive carries his name at Wayne State.
Lifespan
Walter Reuther's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
UAW Local 174
company
The west side Detroit local he built and led into the Kelsey Hayes strike 1936 -
The Reuther Plan
other
A proposal to build 500 planes a day on idle auto tooling, broadcast December 28, 1940 1940 -
The 1950 General Motors agreement
other
Five years of labor peace for wages, pensions and health coverage 1950 -
AFL-CIO
company
Cofounded with George Meany out of the merger of the two federations 1955 -
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
other
Co-organizer — he paid 19,000 dollars for the sound system and bused in 5,000 members 1963 -
UAW Black Lake center
building
The union education campus he was flying to on the night he died 1970
Life in brief
with age at each point- September 1, 1907 aged 0 Born in Wheeling to a German immigrant brewery driver and Socialist organizer
- 1927 aged ~20 Hired at Ford in Detroit at 19 as a tool and die maker He could read blueprints and dies, which normally took decades to learn.
- 1933 aged ~26 Works two years at the Gorky auto plant in the Soviet Union The unheated shops ran 30 to 40 degrees below zero.
- December 1936 aged 29 Leads the Kelsey Hayes strike, the first won against the automakers
- May 26, 1937 aged 29 Beaten by Ford security at the River Rouge overpass Photographers recorded it, and public opinion turned against Henry Ford.
- March 27, 1946 aged 38 Elected president of the UAW by 124 votes
- April 20, 1948 aged 40 Shot through his kitchen window at 9:48 in the evening Four slugs broke his right arm into 150 pieces of bone. The case was never solved.
- 1950 aged ~43 Signs the five-year General Motors contract Wages, pensions and health coverage in exchange for labor peace.
- August 28, 1963 aged 55 Helps organize the March on Washington and speaks from the Lincoln Memorial
- May 9, 1970 aged 62 Dies with his wife when their Learjet crashes near Pellston, Michigan
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