“SHE IS JUST AWAY”

The greatest fear of any parent is to lose a child, to bring her into the world and send her out. To see her life as a finite set of books on a shelf, from beginning to end, a mere subset of her parent’s. But in 1966, that was exactly the sad fate that befell Reuben Soderstrom.

By this point our protagonist had buried both parents, three brothers, an infant son, and most recently his wife. Still, through all that pain and bereavement he swallowed the hurt, tucked his chin, and pushed on. He was a fighter, a survivor focused on the future.

But the passing of his daughter Jeanne was different. Perhaps it was because her death was so sudden. She was otherwise healthy and only in her early 50s; no one could have anticipated the unexpectedly severe asthma attack that took her on that cold February morning. Perhaps it was the guilt he felt at being gone, toiling away in Springfield on the day she died. Most likely, however, it was the fact that, out of all the people in Reuben’s long life, none had been closer to him than his daughter. After his wife’s death, it was “Jeannie” who cared for him, sharing his life and home for fifteen years even as she worked at the local Streator High School, first as a teacher and then as a counselor, foregoing a path as wife and mother. She was pursuing her Master’s degree, completing her coursework shortly before her death (she was awarded her degree posthumously that May).[1] For a man to whom family meant everything, nothing could cut deeper than the death of the one member who’d always been there for him, his pride and joy. “He never recovered from her death,” his sister Olga recounted years later. “He found it most difficult to accept.”[2]

The depth of Reuben’s loss is most powerfully expressed in his eulogy for her, a beautiful piece of writing that truly stands alone and above all the other obituaries he had written before. In all of those, Reuben had maintained a certain distance. They were written in third person, short and sincere. Reub’s tribute to Jeanne, in contrast, was a raw first-person display of sorrow:

On Wednesday, February 16, 1966, my precious and only daughter, Jeanne Soderstrom, joined her sainted mother in the great beyond. Even the comforting Christmas greetings of today and the melodies sung by the Angels of Bethlehem in that sweet long ago seemed to be matched by the mutual understanding and the kind words of condolence which I have received from my co-workers in labor’s great cause during this hour of terrible sadness.

At times these glowing comments seemed to vaguely mingle with wonderful memories. Amidst my grief and sorrow I seemingly envisioned her name, flashed on the skyline of eternity, which left me with a proud, warm, comfortable feeling that she really was what my kind friends and neighbors inferred, a credit to her quality!

This heart-warming friendliness of touched co-workers strengthened my belief that at the end of this existence it is the beginning of something else, something finer, something better. Our Heavenly Father had other plans for my gracious and beloved Jeanne and she seemingly was needed more in that land beyond the grave than in the interesting and important earthly educational world in which she served so well.

Like all other people, a labor official is permitted to convey to friends his appreciation of the sympathy that hearts can feel, but somehow words can never say. This I have now done. While words seem to be inadequate, the Hand of the Almighty rules and He knows, and I believe that my friends understand, how much I have lost. I pray for God’s help in this ordeal, this sorrowful agony, and I do find some buoyancy of the spirit in the proud thought that my daughter did not struggle or teach in vain, that the lives of many men, women and children were made happier because she lived.

Loving poetry as I do, it seems fitting I should conclude my farewell tribute to a dedicated and wonderful daughter by joining James Whitcomb Riley in the sentimental departure scene portrayed in his beautiful poem, “She is Just Away” which follows:

I cannot say, and I will not say
That she is dead—she is just away!
With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
She has wandered into an unknown land,
And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since she lingers there.
And you—O you, who the wildest yearn
For the old time step and glad return,
Think of her faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of Here;
Think of her still as the same I say:
She is not dead—she is just away![3]

Months later, Reuben was still struggling with Jeanne’s death when he learned that fellow Illinoisan and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Chuck Percy lost his own daughter (also named Jeanne) that September. His message of consolation provides a valuable window on the depth of the loss he still so clearly felt:

It is with a heavy heart that I extend the sincere sympathy of all branches of labor to you and your family in this your sad hour of devastating grief caused by the shocking death of your sainted daughter Valerie Jeanne. I can understand grief and how much you have lost because my only daughter who also bore the name Jeanne passed away last February. I know how sad and terribly frustrating bereavement can be to you and those who mourn.[4]

REUBEN STUMPS FOR SENATOR DOUGLAS

Labor’s Agenda and the Vietnam War

Reuben’s letter to Chuck Percy is notable not only for its emotion but for the human and gentlemanly role it played in an otherwise fiercely contested campaign for the U.S. Senate, which saw Percy challenging Reuben’s longtime friend, Senator Paul Douglas. A lot was on the line: 1966 was shaping up to be a rough year for labor, which was becoming increasingly divided over the U.S. role in Vietnam. The AFL-CIO leadership was primarily focused on a domestic agenda that included a rigorous defense of Johnson’s Great Society. Of all the President’s programs, Medicare—the national health care program for citizens over 65 which had just been passed—was of paramount importance. While some viewed the expansive national program as an infringement on state and local governance, most progressives considered it vitally important. Soderstrom was no exception; as he wrote in the CFL’s Federationist that year:

Medical care as a part of the Social Security Act was first recommended by the labor movement in 1935. The labor movement can be proud of the expansion of the Social Security Act to include Medicare for those over sixty-five. For the senior citizen it can be the difference between suffering alone to the end, or being able to seek the services of a nurse or a doctor. Under the leadership of the president of the United States, Medicare was placed on the statute books after thirty years of effort by labor officials, senior citizens, health officers, social workers and hundreds of others.[5]

Labor leadership also trained its legislative sights on the repeal of Taft-Hartley provision 14b, which allowed states to implement “right to work” laws outlawing union shops. For years, they had been building support among lawmakers and politicians for the provision’s removal, support that now, saliently, included the Johnson administration. As Vice President Hubert Humphrey told the National AFL-CIO at the 1964 Convention that December, “This administration is determined to fight, and this administration and its leadership from the President down is determined to fight win—I repeat, to fight and win—the repeal of Section 14b of the Taft Hartley Law.”[6] Labor now had a majority of the vote in Washington; however, a coalition of conservative legislators led by Illinois Senator Dirksen was blocking a vote on the measure through filibuster.

To defeat the Dirksen camp, labor needed every vote it could get in the Senate. A conservative rout at the ballot boxes could mean not only an end to reform but a reversal of so many nascent victories. In a Chicago speech that year, AFL-CIO Secretary William Schnitzler put the race in stark terms, warning the audience that recent reforms like Medicare and the Civil Rights Act “are in real danger…The labor movement insists that the new programs we helped initiate in this most affluent period of our nation’s history cannot be shelved or dismantled because of the fears of a few who did not want the programs to begin at all.”[7]

In Illinois, the pro-labor political fight centered on the re-election campaign of Reuben’s old pal Paul Douglas, a senior pro-labor U.S. Senator. Reuben and Douglas quickly became friends when Douglas, then a University of Chicago economics professor, served as a progressive on the Chicago City Council. After joining the Marines as a private at age 50 so he could fight in World War II, Douglas returned to Illinois to run and win a U.S. Senate seat as a progressive Democrat. At age 74, he was running for a fourth term as the incumbent against Republican businessman Charles Percy. Working for Douglas campaign that year was a young college student, Richard Durbin.

Reuben and the AFL-CIO stumped hard for Douglas, who was a staunch supporter of Lyndon Johnson. Reuben became especially involved in his friend’s campaign, serving as a Vice Chairman of the Senator’s Citizens Committee, and regional manager in La Salle County.[8] That September, the Illinois AFL-CIOO gave its ringing endorsement of Douglas at its annual convention with a vote of support Reuben characterized as unanimous.[9]

But the endorsement was complicated by Douglas’s continued support of military action in Vietnam. While all of labor favored Douglas’s domestic agenda, a growing number of rank and file members began to protest the Senator over his support of the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Many of the delegates opposed the endorsement. “I feel that Sen. Douglas is undoubtedly representative of this convention,” said UAW delegate Mark Clark after the pro-Douglas resolution passed. “But maybe we should not give our unqualified support. We may not want to back him at all because he is very much like Sen. Goldwater [regarding Vietnam].”[10] “I’m in support of the stand Sen. Douglas takes on all the labor and on all the domestic issues,” shared Jack Spiegel, another convention delegate. “But we see certain dangers…we are concerned…when he starts lining up with the most hard-lined of pro-war reactionary forces. If we cannot tell our friend he is going to lose votes, who’s going to tell him? His enemies?”[11]

Comparing the fight in Vietnam to the struggle against fascism during World War II, the senator responded, “I understand the emotions in this situation. Life is sweet to the young folks, and to their parents, and South Viet Nam seems far off. But we’re not fighting for South Viet Nam. It just happens to be the place where the struggle is occurring.”[12] Reuben dismissed such dissent, asserting “the hue and cry raised by reactionary elements that the people cannot have both ‘guns and butter’ has died down. Assurances from the Washington Administration, followed by statements of state officials, indicate that labor’s gains will not become a Viet Nam war casualty.”[13]

Such overconfidence would prove costly, both to the senator and to organized labor. Douglas was one of two sitting Democratic senators to lose their seats in that year’s general election. Another two—both in the south—lost their seats in the primaries. The results were a mixed bag for labor; the Democrats retained their majority in the Senate, ensuring the safety of Johnson’s Great Society. However, the lackluster performance put liberal politicians on the defensive, leaving them with little appetite to take on potentially costly issues like the repeal of Taft-Hartley. More importantly, the split within labor and the Democratic Party over Vietnam showcased in 1966 was just a taste of the chaos and turmoil to come—a chaos that would soon fully envelop the Illinois AFL-CIO and its 78-year-old leader.

CARL SODERSTROM ON THE HOTSEAT IN AN AT-LARGE ELECTION

Reuben’s active support of Douglas also carried costs for another of the Soderstrom clan. Carl Soderstrom, Reuben’s son and a Republican State Representative, faced a rough primary challenge in 1966. As the Chicago Tribune reported that June:

Rep. Carl W. Soderstrom (R, Streator), son of Reuben G. Soderstrom, president of the Illinois state AFL-CIO, has a 50-50 chance of surviving the June 14 primary…Populous La Salle County is divided between Soderstrom, an attorney who has been in the House 16 years, and Clayton C. Harbeck of Utica, a motel owner who twice has been sheriff and formally served eight years in the House. Harbeck has been one of La Salle County’s best vote getters and has been campaigning also in the district’s two smaller counties—Marshall and Putnam.[14]

Harbeck’s principle weapon in his fight against Carl was his father’s support. The Chicago Tribune wrote Reuben was “his son’s chief supporter and biggest handicap in the campaign. The four-county district is traditionally Republican, but the labor leader is La Salle county manager for Sen. Douglas, the No. 1 Democratic candidate.[15]” Reuben’s message on his son’s behalf for the 1964 election—which, due to the General Assembly’s failure to craft fairly apportioned districts, required citizens to vote for all state representatives on an at-large basis—proved particularly damaging. That April Harbeck’s supporters circulated a letter Reub sent during that campaign recommending voters cast ballots for all 118 Democratic candidates but only one Republican—his son. The letter ended with Reuben warning that “(Carl’s) defeat would be a tragic blow to liberal legislative support in Illinois as well as to me personally.”[16] It was a revealing window into the modern realities of labor; the Democrats were pro-labor and Republicans were not, save for the unique outlier in LaSalle County, Carl W. Soderstrom, who every two years scrapped and fought and clung to his seat through the primaries by convincing weary Republicans he would adequately represent them. There is no mystery in why he sometimes considered running as an Independent, should he lose the primary.

It never came to that. Carl again won his scrappy primary fight, defeating the wily Harbeck and holding on to his seat. However, the incident left a bitter taste in Reub’s mouth. Long an advocate of the Samuel Gompers edict to “elect your friends and defeat your enemies” regardless of a candidate’s political party affiliation, Reuben finally came to the realization that, in an era of hyper-partisanship, such a rule might no longer apply. What party politicians belonged to had increasingly become a predictor of how they would vote on labor issues.

REUBEN DEFENDS JOHNSON’S GREAT SOCIETY

Welcomes Federal Support of Labor

Partisanship wasn’t the only issue Reuben would radically re-evaluate that year. The role and relevance of state government was a topic Soderstrom took head-on at the start of 1966. Many opponents of Johnson’s social policies, which Reuben viewed as pro-labor, argued against them on the grounds of state’s rights. They attacked programs like Medicare as government overreach, an encroachment on what should be decided by local legislatures. Reuben forcefully countered that, by failing to enact meaningful reform, states like Illinois had abdicated their right to local rule. In an essay for the Weekly Newsletter titled “Is Centralized Control Bad?” Soderstrom drew upon a lifetime of experience:

Sincere attempts on the part of official labor to secure needed legislation on the State level have frequently resulted in flat failure. Either the State Legislature wouldn’t do anything or could not do anything to remedy the situation complained of, with the result that the union people in their disappointment and frustration during the past two decades have turned to the Federal Government for relief.

Although Organized Labor is inclined to support and believe in the principle of local self-government, the repeated rebuffs to their State level legislative projects forced them many times to turn their attention to securing needed enactments in the national field.

In the belief that the employers were opposed to centralized national control, labor spokesmen frequently pointed out to those who represented management that unless favorable action for needed legislation was enacted by the State, the Labor movement, whipped by necessity, would appeal to the Congress of the United States.[17]

Reuben then went on to list a series of issues—including lie detector bans, minimum wage, infrastructure, education spending—in which the federal government had stepped in to fill the governance gap left by the Illinois General Assembly. At this rate, Reuben said:

It may well be that another twenty years will see some State Legislatures fold up. It could be Illinois! Many lawmakers dread roll calls on controversial bills and the point of ‘no quorum’ is frequently raised in committees to keep needed social legislation from advancing out of the hearing stage…the practice of vacating a committee room of committee members, and then raising a point of ‘no quorum’ is rather crude, especially if the legislation has passed the House and this kind of opposition repeatedly occurs in the other. This is what happened to much of our social legislation in the 1965 session. A favorable functioning State Legislature is worth retaining. Any other kind might be heading for oblivion.[18]

In the great 1960s debate of federal versus state power, Soderstrom had no doubt concerning the necessity of a strong national government empowered to overcome state-level resistance. After decades of endless wrangling in the hot and humid Illinois statehouse over progressive legislation, he must have been relieved and triumphant to feel the power of the federal government at his back.

In Illinois, the problem lay with the Democratic governor’s office as well as the General Assembly. The previous year, Otto Kerner had personally interceded to stop pro-labor legislation giving public employees the express right to unionize. The move had earned Reub’s ire, and he had written to Kerner demanding he make things right. Kerner originally answered in a conciliatory tone, writing to Reub in January of 1966 that his office was “currently studying the broad question of effective legislation with regard to collective bargaining for government employees,” and promised to find a solution that would meet with Reub’s satisfaction. He even invited Soderstrom to help his administration write the bill.[19] When the legislature proved unable to act, however, the wily governor refused to intervene. Soderstrom implored Kerner to conduct negotiations regarding the pay, hours, and working conditions of employees, but the governor demurred. “As you know,” he wrote, “we have discussed this possibility on numerous occasions, and I do not see how it would be possible through the Executive Order procedure that we had discussed in the past. The subject matter was one of public policy, and in my opinion would require legislation.”[20] Kerner’s position left public employees without the legislative protection to unionize that they enjoyed almost everywhere else in the industrial north.

One good thing came out of these discussions, however. Although Kerner refused to budge on the issue of public employees, he did seek to put together a “Labor Committee Task Force” to discuss economic problems, giving Reuben his choice of appointees (Reub selected six labor heads, himself, and the Illinois State Director of Labor).[21]

The Lincoln Academy Appoints Reuben

Soderstrom soon received an even higher accolade when Michael Butler, Chancellor of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois, wrote to Reuben in November that year with some very special news. “It is my pleasure and privilege to inform you that you have been appointed to the Faculty of Labor of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois,” the Chancellor declared, noting that he would serve with Dr. Carroll Dougherty, Dean George Schultz, and Professor Martin Wagner of Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois, respectively, on the non-profit, non-partisan body.[22] Reuben excitedly replied that the invitation to serve on the Lincoln Academy Labor Faculty was “a source of delight,” accepting the appointment with pleasure.[23]

Perhaps the greatest and most unexpected of the honors Reuben received that year, however, came in the form of an interview with columnist Robert Lewin, a labor writer for the Chicago Daily News. The piece, which celebrated Reuben’s 36-year presidency, gave a full profile of the prolific leader, from his humble origins on the farming fields of Minnesota to his youth as a bottle-boy in Streator’s glass factories on through to his training in the printing trade and entrance into the world of organized labor. As Lewin described:

There’s never been anyone else in the labor movement quite like Reuben George Soderstrom. For 36 years, he had been president of the Illinois State Federation of Labor and its merged successor—Illinois State Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. In the 80 years since the old American Federation of Labor was organized, no other union chief anywhere has led a state federation so long.

No one ever has run against Soderstrom, either.

He is the full, rolling resonant, needs-no-microphone voice of the 1,300,000 Illinois workers who belong to 3,900 AFL-CIO unions and city and county central labor organizations…

Soderstrom is a 5-foot-9-inch man who, by not eating between meals for four years, has slimmed from 217 to 176 pounds. His gray eyes sparkle behind spectacles that have a thin silver edge on top. His long and unruly gray hair gives him the appearance of an old-time orator, which he is when he gets going. He hands out mimeographed texts of his speeches to newsmen and then talks from memory, with virtually no change in words.[24]

Lewin detailed Reub’s long list of victories, from his injunction limitation act to securing state financial aid for the blind and widowed mothers to the $83,000,000 in federal funding for low-rent housing he helped secure. It covered his time as a state representative and labor president, without failing to mention that through all these works and accomplishments Reuben remained true to his hometown, living there his entire adult life.

The praise continued at that year’s Illinois AFL-CIO convention. Special Counsel Irving Greenfield cheered Soderstrom for the improvements to workman’s compensation and occupational disease, noting that the pioneering Agreed Bill process that secured those gains was “originally the brainchild of your great President, Reuben Soderstrom, and it grew into maturity under his wise and dedicated guidance.”[25] State Senator Paul Simon joked during his speech to the delegates, “Reub doesn’t age a bit does he? And in twelve years in the general assembly, he looks exactly like the day he walked into the general assembly. Whatever you are drinking there, Reub, I want to get some of it too.”[26] State Senator Fred Smith, then the only African-American member of the Illinois Senate, gave Soderstrom high praise during his remarks, noting:

For many years, my friends, I have known your President, Brother Soderstrom. And I need to say you have ability, you have competency, you have character of and for which you may well be proud. Yours has been a struggle to free the working man and the working woman from the tyrannical and impoverished conditions… and God be thanked, you have not faltered, you have not hesitated, you have not quit nor given up.[27]

Perhaps the sweetest tribute came from guest speaker Carl Muller, former president of the Indiana State Federation of Labor, who visited the Illinois convention and confessed:

Reub Soderstrom does not know it, but I have been one of his students for many, many years, and in the national conventions, not only the conventions in Illinois and the activities in Illinois, but at the national conventions where he was actually writing the national program, I was sitting someplace close to him in the hopes I might glean some knowledge from Reub’s ability so I might again go back home and carry on in the interest of the labor movement in my state.[28]

The 78-year-old Reuben had reached the seeming apex of his career, a point where most men would retire to reflect on their accomplishments and relish in the praise and accolades of admirers. Reuben, however, was not most men, and he wasn’t about to relinquish the reins, especially at such a dynamic time. He was too stubborn, too smart, and too controlling to retire. And perhaps most important, he loved what he did. This decision would ruffle feathers, draw retaliation, and even generate mutiny in the years to come. But there was no sign that he regretted the choice, even for a minute. Reuben felt at home in the eye of the storm, and he wasn’t about to surrender when he knew challenging days lay ahead.

* * *