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By Root 880 0

had always been a troubled child. Born in 1931, he was a teenager during the war and had lived in Detroit with Genora and his younger brother, Jody, during most of the conflict. Denny was difficult to discipline, getting into trouble with teachers at school and with the law. In 1949, at the age of nineteen, he was able to conceal his prior illnesses and disciplinary problems from recruiters and joined the United States Army. He was constantly AWOL, which resulted in frequent searches for him not only by military police but also by Genora, Sol, Kermit, and other friends and family members. Finally, Denny was judged to be seriously ill and was discharged from the military and sent home to Genora. Because his illness was not related to any part of his military service, he was ineligible for treatment at any Veterans’ Administration hospitals. After numerous trips to civilian physicians and hospitals, doctors diagnosed Denny as suffering from multiple sclerosis, intensified, some health providers claimed, by Jody’s death a few years before: Denny had been piloting the bike in the accident that took his brother’s life. Genora and Sol could not afford private treatment for Denny. “It was a disheartening development,” Sol recalls. “No author of a Greek tragedy could have conceived of a plot that could rival this real-life drama.”18

The only hospital where Sol and Genora could take Denny was the Pontiac State Hospital, a facility primarily treating mentally ill individuals. They had no choice: it was either this hospital or none at all. Genora hitchhiked (although she worked for an auto factory, she didn’t own a car) from Flint to Pontiac every weekend to see her firstborn but finally concluded that Denny’s hospitalization had come to naught. He showed no improvement. In fact, Genora saw further deterioration each time she visited. She finally brought him home because she knew he was near death. When Denny passed away on December 26, 1950, Genora had now lost two sons, her mother, and her father within four years. Those who saw her in public and listened to her speeches had no idea of the inner turmoil she suffered. Her depression after Denny’s loss took months of agonizing soul searching to conquer. As with her father’s death, Genora lashed out at those events and institutions that she thought caused Denny’s demise. She wrote angrily in The Militant that “this 19 year old boy didn’t have half a chance under a decaying capitalistic system of wars and [economic and mental] depression and so fell its helpless victim just as thousands of his generation are now daily falling”19 (this last reference was to the commitment of U.S. troops to South Korea). She and her friends began to view Denny as much a victim of World War II as any battlefield soldier. Sol wrote to Genora that her article on Denny in The Militant sounded bitter. It was as bitter, Genora wrote back, “as life has been to me and other working class fighters.”20

She received numerous letters of condolence. One woman wrote that she was “sorry about Denny” and hoped her own son would “have a chance to live a full life, free of the privation and problems that faced Denny.” Several survivors of the Holocaust who lived in Michigan sent Genora little red flags to put on Denny’s grave, along with a quote from Rosa Luxembourg: “In spite of all.” They also sent a dozen red roses to be placed on Denny’s grave, with a note that read, “Goodbye to Dennis Robert.”21 She wrote to Sol that there had been “too many changes all at once—my job, my son, my husband, and I just can’t put out the fire in the little house and let it get cold and dead too.”22 Nevertheless, always dedicated to labor and feminist causes, Genora went about her business. She gave a rousing speech to Local 659 in the middle of January 1951. Many present-day union members, she asserted, had no idea of the role women played in initially organizing the UAW. The GM corporation, particularly Chevrolet, of which Local 659 was a unit, “has never hired more than a handful of women and they think and speak only in terms of men,