PORTRAIT OF A PIONEER
Book illuminates Reuther, family
“To grow up in Walter Reuther’s world was to witness social change in the making,” wrote Elisabeth Reuther Dickmeyer in the prologue to her book “Putting the World Together.”
“Putting the World Together” is a heartfelt portrait of UAW pioneer Walter Reuther written by his daughter. Much of Reuther’s life as a public figure is known, but his daughter enriches this knowledge with the perspective of what took place within the family during these dramatic public events. Through it all, Reuther’s unrelenting commitment to workers stays at center stage.
While Reuther’s entire life is covered, it is the time from the 1948 assassination attempt on him to his death in a plane crash in 1970 that is most enlightened through Dickmeyer’s eyes. The UAW leader’s forced convalescence from the 1948 shooting while she was a toddler opens the door to their private lives and continues through the travels and struggles that ensued.
Introductory essays by former UAW President Douglas A. Fraser, Victor Reuther, Mildred Jeffrey and David Bonior give Reuther’s life perspective, and the writer adds more on today’s challenges that her father saw developing long ago.
