A Good American Family

by David Maraniss

  On March 14 correspondent William P. Carney: The story of the capture and disappearance of Ralph Neafus drawn from New York Times, Mar. 16–28, 1938; Michigan Daily, March 22, 25, 1938; Neafus File, Bentley Historical Library; Detroit Free Press, Mar. 24, 1938; Miller, Timebends, 317; Confidential U.S. State Department Files, 1938–44, Neafus, Ralph, Military Affairs Personnel—Enlistment, National Archives. Neafus’s sisters kept wanting to believe that he was alive through the following fall and wrote letter after letter to various European embassies and officials at the State Department in Washington seeking more information. On Oct. 6, 1938, seven months after her brother’s disappearance, Helen Neafus Tipton wrote to Secretary Cordell Hull, “My Dear Mr. Hull, I am in receipt of a letter from the Foreign Embassy in Saint Jean de-Luz, France. Mr. Bowers states that he is unable to locate my brother, Ralph Lawrence Neafus, in Franco’s prison at Burgos—though he does not say where else Franco is holding American prisoners—only eighty at Burgos. Is there anything you can do now that the volunteers are being removed from Spain to quickly arrange a complete exchange of all American prisoners? Possibly by doing so all these prison camps can be emptied & my brother found.”

  A sister of Grace Cummins: Michigan Daily, Mar. 30, May 19, 1938.

  The International Brigade was in full retreat and disarray: Bessie, Men in Battle, 93–127; Eby, Comrades and Commissars, 313–46. Eby relates the story of Bob Cummins getting lost and pretending to be a campesino on page 337, but his source notes do not denote whether he heard this from Cummins himself. Eby’s daughters have his papers, but they are unprocessed and not open to research yet.

  Bob and Elman were among the Mac-Paps who regrouped: Bessie, Men in Battle, 131–38; Jackson, At the Margins of Mayhem, 29–50; undated letter from Bob Cummins in Cummins Family Papers. On May 12, 2017, Spanish Civil War guide Alan Warren took my wife and me to Marçà, a hilly village with narrow streets and old stone and cement houses. Warren held up a photograph of Mac-Paps marching down a village street as we looked beyond him to that same street. We also saw the soccer field where the troops played and the old stone theater where they held political meetings. The encampments were on the edge of town, where we saw the Mac-Paps’ command post and the rock-ledged swimming hole where Bob and his comrades cooled down.

  A. A. Cummins sent letters to the Department of State: The letters and replies were among the artifacts Bob Cummins stored in a cardboard box that was passed along to his daughter Eileen Thomas upon his death.

  The coda to White’s story: Carroll, Odyssey, 257. Carroll writes, “One day in the summer of 1945, White did not come to work at the VALB [Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade] office. A colleague found him dead in his bed. ‘The pressure was too much for him,’ said the person who identified his body. He left behind an envelope with cash for the Lincoln brigade and no note. The VALB announced that White died of a heart attack at the age of 42. Most veterans never learned the truth of his death. It was an embarrassment best concealed—a failure of the camaraderie for which the Lincolns were so famous.”

  Lardner . . . had arrived in Spain in the company of Ernest Hemingway: Account of Jim Lardner’s arrival in Spain and friendship with Elman Service drawn from Lardner File, ALBA; Service File, ALBA; Santa Barbara News-Press, July 26, 1987.

  As a runner, Bob carried messages: Letter from Bob Cummins, July 15, 1938, Cummins Family Papers.

  A few days later, Service and Lardner: Wounds suffered by Elman Service and Jim Lardner documented in their ALBA files; Santa Barbara News-Press, July 26, 1987.

  Stan Swinton, now a rising junior: Although it is unclear if they all were published, Swinton wrote several articles on his European tour that summer of 1938, along with letters he wrote home to his parents: Swinton Papers, Bentley Historical Library. Swinton ended one report from France with this telling summation: “Time passes and the world moves on, as the day nears when cognac will be exchanged for coffins and bread for bayonets, Europe prepares.”

  Jim Lardner was out of the hospital by then: Lardner’s death drawn from Lardner File, ALBA; letters from Vincent Sheean and Elman Service to Lardner’s mother, Tamiment Library.

  The logistics of leaving were complicated by the Soviets: Account of withdrawal from Spain by the American soldiers drawn from Michigan Daily; Eby, Comrades and Commissars, 406–19; Carroll, Odyssey, 200–205; Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts, 348–50; Cummins Family Papers; photographs of the men aboard the SS Paris, ALBA photo archives; New York Times, Dec. 16, 1938.

  Three weeks later in Ann Arbor: Michigan Daily, Jan. 6–7, 1939. As my father always told the story, he first saw Bob Cummins’s twin sister, Barbara, at the rally, and asked her to introduce him to her younger sister, Mary.

  Chapter 10: Named

  There was only one witness all day: Account of Bereniece Baldwin’s appearance in Room 740 drawn from Communism in the Detroit Area, Part 1, 2926–58; Jim Maraniss recollection; Detroit Times, Detroit News, Detroit Free-Press, Mar. 1, 1952. In closing the hearings for the week, Chairman Wood said, “In extending these thanks, I wish to compliment the work of the press and radio that have covered these hearings. Their cooperation with the committee, their full and factual coverage of these proceedings, is deeply appreciated by the committee, and, I am sure, by the Michigan public.”

  Chapter 11: Ace and Mary

  Another memorable evening took place at Hagen’s: Swinton letter to Barnes Constable, May 2, 1952, Swinton Papers, Bentley Historical Library.

  The news of Elliott’s ascension: Michigan Daily, May 6, 1939; Detroit Free Press, May 7, 1939; Brooklyn Eagle, May 14, 1939.

  Mary thought Ace had “a certain magic”: She used those words during her brief eulogy for my father at his memorial service in 2004.

  After a day of voting on the 31st: Michigan Daily, Apr. 1, 1939.

  Throughout her early life, Mary: Maraniss Family Papers. At some point late in her life, my mother wrote a twenty-three-page account of her life, focused mostly on her childhood, typed and single-spaced. It wove details of her experiences through psychological ruminations about why she thought and acted as she did.

  An editorial in the Daily: Michigan Daily, Apr. 29, 1937.

  His favorite teacher . . . Fred Cassidy: Elliott Maraniss, “Cassidy Was Professor Who Opened the Minds of Students,” Capital Times, June 24, 2000.

  The first front-page story Ace wrote: Michigan Daily, Nov. 10, 1937. “That’s the trouble with your writers,” Ford told my father. “They only know how to write about their own backyards.” The editorial on Republican presidential candidates ran in the Daily on Nov. 12, and the series on the TVA began on Nov. 20.

  “If Mr. Roosevelt could by some magic”: Michigan Daily, Mar. 13, 1938.

  People tend to see what they want to see: Michigan Daily, Mar. 12, 1938.

  “The Spanish people may be fighting for the same principles”: Michigan Daily, Jan. 7, 1938.

  My father helped organize the letters: Ralph Neafus Alumni File, Bentley Historical Library; Michigan Daily, March 17–30, 1938.

  Between his sophomore and junior years: “War Department, Military Intelligence Service, To: Lt. Col. J. Edgar Hoover, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Subject: Elliott Maraniss, Interview with Mrs. A. C. Miller, landlady, Nov. 6, 1942,” EM FBI file.

  Elliott paid his tuition and room and board: Elliott Maraniss Alumni File, Bentley Historical Library; letters from EM to MM from aboard the Cape Canso on the way to Okinawa, June 22, 1945: “You know of course that in my first three years at Michigan we used to correspond regularly. Perhaps some of her letters are still around, if you look farther in our desk drawer.”

  This was captured first in a long essay: Michigan Daily, July 3, 1938.

  What does it mean to love America?: Elliott Maraniss, “Books: Adamic’s America,” Michigan Daily, July 14, 1938: “With a freshness and directness that are unique, a buoyancy, robustness and exuberance that are like some exhilarating blasts from Whitman, Adamic wades into America,
trying to work out into a coherent organism the unchecked, unorganized, uncharted vitality of the contemporary scene.”

  He saw Wolfe’s hunger as his generation’s hunger: Perspectives: University of Michigan Literary Magazine, Oct. 30, 1938. EM also wrote of Wolfe, “Had Thomas Wolfe written and completed his saga of the search of the American man for the timeless values of democracy, he would probably have become one of our immortals in the same sense that Whitman is immortal.”

  Elliott praised him as a believer in “the living law”: Michigan Daily, Feb. 16, 1939.

  He did break out of the college market once: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 22, 1938.

  Elliott spent another summer in Michigan: EM Alumni File, Bentley Historical Library; Military Intelligence Service memo, Nov. 6, 1942.

  Autumn was his favorite season: EM letter to “Jimmie,” Apr. 14, 1945.

  “Bitter mutual recriminations erupted”: Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts, 364.

  In a front-page editorial Elliott cowrote: Michigan Daily, Sept. 26, 1939.

  The Daily soon started receiving angry letters: Michigan Daily, Sept. 27, 28, 1939.

  “Time has apparently forgotten that the Daily”: Morty Q., “Of All Things!,” Michigan Daily, Oct. 6, 1939.

  In his editorials, Elliott argued that the Soviet goal was to buy time: Michigan Daily, Nov. 10, 17, 1939. The give-and-take between Elliott and graduate student Robert Anderson was published on Dec. 6, 1939.

  Elliott and Mary were married on December 16, 1939: From fragments of EM’s unpublished ode to MM, Maraniss Family Papers; MM psychological history; Marley records, Bentley Historical Library. The Brinnin-inscribed copy of Blake poetry was a prized family possession.

  Mary was a delegate from Michigan: Michigan Daily, Jan. 6, 19, 1940; Joseph P. Lash interview with Robert Cohen, Student Activism in the 30s; Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young, 295–98.

  In February, Elliott hitchhiked to Washington: Michigan Daily, Feb. 18, 1940. He wrote, “The writer of this article was one of those thousands of young people who went to Washington. The Americans he met there were typical youngsters, who were wide-awake, who knew what they wanted, and who knew how to get it.”

  “The best way to indicate the importance of this book”: Michigan Daily, March 8, 1940.

  Something odd happened at the Daily offices: “Morty Q.” column, Michigan Daily, Jan. 5, 1940. In their sign-off that year, the 1940 editors wrote, “With this issue members of the senior staff disappear into the limbo of forgotten editors, and become just names among the thousands who have been associated with the Daily in the course of its 50 years of service to the University community.”

  Chapter 12: Fear and Loathing

  “The House Un-American Activities Committee has left town”: Detroit Free-Press, Mar. 2, 1952.

  But Jim . . . knew what was going on: Recollection of Jim Maraniss. Jim’s full name is James Elliott Maraniss. He named his youngest son Elliott Maraniss, in honor of our father. When Dad was in his final days at a hospital in Milwaukee, Jim sat at his bedside and read him sections of War and Peace.

  There was more to come: Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Detroit Times, March 2–4, 1952. The inside pages of the newspapers were also filled with related stories. Page 4 of the News on March 4 had the headlines “Hunt for Red Suspect Ends: Former Secretary Subpoenaed for Quiz”; “Senators Ask School Red Investigation”; “Union Strikes Spread over Red Suspects”; and “Legion Aids Former Red Who Testified.” That story began, “Detroit American Legionnaires will do their utmost to obtain new employment for Walter S. Dunn, County jail guard who resigned under pressure after revealing himself as a disillusioned ex-Communist and testifying against the party.”

  Barnes Constable, a reporter at Elliott’s collegiate newspaper: Michigan Daily, Mar. 2, 1952. Constable was the student journalist who received a congratulatory note from Stan Swinton upon his appointment as a Daily editor, recalling the night Swinton and Maraniss received their appointments in 1939.

  Radio stations in Potter’s constituency in northern Michigan carried his weekly broadcast: Charles E. Potter Papers, Box 2, Bentley Historical Library.

  On the day the hearings resumed: New York Times, Washington Post, Mar. 11, 1952.

  That night, two women arrived in Detroit: Detroit News, Mar. 12, 1952.

  Joe Gollner was twenty-four when he died: Daily Times (Salisbury, MD), Oct. 20, 1949; USS Essex website; Wicomico Civic Center memorial; USNA Virtual Memorial Hall; John Gollner recollection.

  Chapter 13: Something in the Wind

  Elliott was stationed . . . in the British West Indies: EM documents from National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records; EM letter, June 4, 1942, Maraniss Family Papers.

  “It is a great comfort to know”: EM letter to MM, June 7, 1942, Maraniss Family Papers.

  Elliott sensed that “something was in the wind”: EM letter to MM, June 10, 1942, Maraniss Family Papers; letters from Portner, Wells, and George in EM’s military personnel file, all written in late May 1942.

  The Military Intelligence Division of the War Department: Depiction of investigation drawn from records of the military intelligence investigation of EM that were received in a batch of FBI papers after a Freedom of Information Act request. “REASON FOR INVESTIGATION: Elliott Maraniss, who has been stationed at Hq. Trinidad Center and Base Command, Trinidad, is being considered for employment in confidential work of said headquarters.”

  This document was a lot for me to process: Email correspondence with Morton Mintz, Aug. 15, 2017; interview with Mintz in Washington, DC, Feb. 21, 2018.

  “Soldier is no longer in this command”: The Adjutant General’s Office in the War Department wrote to Trinidad command regarding “Subject: Transfer of Potentially Subversive Personnel,” but EM’s commanding officer in Trinidad, who regarded him highly, merely noted that he was already in OCS school at Camp Lee and was not to be transferred.

  His first assignment . . . was close to home: “Special Orders, No. 257, Headquarters, The Quartermaster School, Camp Lee, Va., Elliott Maraniss 0-1585810—QMC, Air Transport Comd, Romulus, Michigan; Subject: Commendation, To: Lt. Elliott Maraniss, Army Air Base, Romulus, Michigan.”

  Again the military seemed at odds with itself: On Mar. 12, 1943, Col. E. S. Wetzel, Air Corps, Military Personnel Division, wrote the memo seeking to keep EM at Romulus against the wishes of the Adjutant General’s Office, which prevailed and shipped him off to West Texas.

  One of the stops Agent Maranda made: Military intelligence investigation, Residence check, Mr. C. Lang, Gladstone Street, Detroit, EM FBI file.

  Bob had met Susan Goodman: Correspondence with Rachel Cummins, Bob’s oldest daughter.

  It was while Elliott and Mary were still in New York: From Cummins Family Papers, later used in DM, “Uncle Phil’s Brain,” Washington Post Magazine, Oct. 27, 2002.

  Susan and her sister, Peggy, even sent off a telegram to Kenesaw Mountain Landis: BA MSS67, Folder 8, National Baseball Hall of Fame.

  Mary was an outspoken activist in the campaign: Account of MM working in the defense plant and being kept safe during the Detroit race riots drawn from Maraniss Family Papers, recollections of MM and EM, and EM’s unpublished account of MM’s life.

  Langston Hughes captured in verse: Langston Hughes, “Beaumont to Detroit: 1943,” in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, 281. Parts of this poem are etched in marble at an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

  Something was in the wind: EM military personnel records, assignment to Camp Lee to begin training all-black salvage and repair company.

  Chapter 14: Legless

  Charles Edward Potter, the future congressman: Account of Charles E. Potter’s battle experience and wounds suffered during battles in Belgium and France drawn from Charles E. Potter Papers, Boxes 1–3, Potter scrapbook, Bentley Historical Library; Battle of Hürtgen Forest, combat interview with “Lt. Charles E. Potter, lst Bn S-3, S-2
at Hürtgen Forest (The only officer left of the Bn staff),” interviewer, lst Lt. Harry G. Jackson; Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light (New York: Picador, 2014), 254–317; Weaver, Guard Wars, 205. When Potter began his postwar political career, his campaign materials emphasized his war heroism with a brochure titled “Charles E. Potter—Mr. American.”

  Chapter 15: Know Your Men

  First Lt. Elliott Maraniss was working late: EM letter to MM, Feb. 1, 1945, Maraniss Family Papers.

  This discrimination had been reaffirmed: Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops, 76. Ulysses Lee, the black army historian who wrote and edited the illuminating 738-page military history, noted that the White House claimed that this policy followed a meeting with top Negro leaders, but “the men who had attended the White House conference were especially annoyed by the implication that they had endorsed the announced policy.”

  Camp Lee was “the most segregated”: Jesse J. Johnson paper, Camp Lee Museum Archive. Thirty years later, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, Ret., delivered a lecture at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on the contribution and treatment of black soldiers during World War II and received a standing ovation.

  The 4482nd had been activated at Camp Lee six weeks earlier: EM military records, “Efficiency Report, 2 Jan 45, Official Status of Officer, Salvage Officer, 4482nd, Officer joined unit 16 Dec. 44.”

  At night he spent several hours in the orderly room: EM letters to MM, Jan. 4, 10, 11, 15, 1945. From that last letter: “The fellow in the room next to mine has his radio on pretty loud, and so right now I am listening to Bob Trout’s summary of the news: and very interesting news it is, too, what with the tremendous four-front offensive of the Soviet armies, the steady, southward advance of the Sixth Army from the Lingayen beachhead to Manila, and the squeezing of the Nazi bulge in Belgium.”

  Tuesday nights were reserved for cadre school: EM letter to MM, Jan. 19, 1945. “As you probably could imagine, one of the most important qualities of a non-com in a company like ours—with a technical mission in a military setting—is the ability to teach and instruct his men, by example, by demonstration, by conferences, lectures and every other way.”