Bloodied for the Cause: One Man's Personal History of Auto Union Politics Since 1969

By William Bisbing

The book reveals the inner workings of a large union taken from newspaper and union officials accounts.

The story involves several union officers, how they related to each other in their rise in union power, and how they shared and honed their respective skills over the years to the rank and file, which they all had represented in their early days. Only to find after years of elective office and elevated movement to the top within that union, community and state. How some selected a path of corruption, lies, and deceit to that same membership years later. Never wanting to give up that sweet taste of power and would do anything in order to keep it, including cover-ups and murder!

The clash that followed takes us down a road that leads to men losing their lives for what was right and what they believed in.

The story reveals some of the inner workings of that powerful union and those who ran said union for that period of time. The story looks into the lives of the men who dedicated their lives to those who are just in it for their own self interests. The individuals who are not going to let anyone upset their power drunkenness and whatever it took to stay on that elected throne.

The book goes on to tell of the men who were and are determined to expose and weed them out. At times causing great risk to themselves for their courage to taking a stand and holding it no matter what the price they had to pay.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648010873

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Bloodied for the Cause

One Man's Personal History of Auto Union Politics Since 1969

William Bisbing

Copyright © 2020 William Bisbing

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead,

or actual events is purely coincidental.

Inspired by a true story.

ISBN 978-1-64801-086-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64801-101-6 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64801-087-3 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Assassin: A murderer

My Roots and Character Forming Years

Getting Schooled the Union Way

My Acceptance

Camelot Unravels

Power

The Fires of Unrest

The Rebellion Brews

Day of Infamy

The Aftermath

The Trial Preparation and Trial

Getting Back

Taking the Bull by the Horns

The Face-to-Face

The Real Murderers Trial

The Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways

Reflections

The book is dedicated to Big John Roeper and Bill Wild Bill Michaels and their families—and to my own family and their never-ending support and love.

Preface

This book denotes the life and times of James T. Books. He along with fellow unionists risked and gave their lives so that their union could become the great institution that its membership so richly have come to expect and deserve. The events in this book depict actual events from his life as a unionist and interviews of fellow unionists along with fictitious accounts of the union, related through secondary interviews that make up this book’s story content.

The following is based on an interview of James Tecumseh Books. The Unions of this country symbolize all that is good for the average working man or woman. These men and women are the backbone of the U.S. economy. They consist of some of the finest Americans in this country and produce some of the best made products ever made.

My feeling in the early 1970s was that there wasn’t any finer organization that a man could belong to then that of the union. I was proud to join this hard-working group of Americans called the membership and to belong to its rank and file. The union, which I joined, was the Car Producers Association Union of America, or the CPA as it was known throughout the United States and the world. And at the top of this great organization were the men and women who ran this union, the true union, the unionist. These people were the cream of the crop, with all of the guts that it took to stand up to companies in whose factories the membership toiled and produced their products. These were the people in charge of seeing to it that a fair day’s pay was given for a fair days’ work and making sure that it happened.

Little did I know at the time that in the years to come, I would learn about the inner workings of this union and how a small group of so-called unionists would put the memberships’ interests behind their own political agendas for power and downright greed. How these so-called unionists would use any means at their disposal, which would include corruption, ballot fixing, and murder to achieve their goals.

I would also find out the price for exposing these individuals for what they really stood for and for who they really were by taking a bullet from a union assassin, while the men who helped me take the union back from these corrupt unionists and giving it back to the rank and file where it belonged, would pay with the loss of their lives.

There are many who warned me not to write this book and just move quietly into retirement. To them, all I can say is thank you for your concern, but I can’t do that because what is right, is right, and the membership deserves to know and questions its leadership constantly. If they find that they have been lied to or deceived in any way, the membership must react and ensure that these type of leaderships are immediately removed—cutting them out like the cancerous growths that they are.

I hope to show that by writing this book to delineate the reasons behind the steady decline in union membership and power in the last several decades and to suggest some ideas as to what is needed to bring the Unions back to positions of pre-eminence, power, and popularity, which they had enjoyed in the fifties and sixties. I will also talk about the membership and how it has changed over the years as has the auto industry as a whole.

I would like to instill in people’s minds the fact that the union is structured 180 degrees differently from the Company. By this, I mean that the company has a chain of command, which is pyramid like in structure with the CEO and its ruling board at the top. However, a true union is just the opposite—its structure is that of an inverted pyramid with the president of the CPA being on the bottom rung, serving all those on the ladder above him with his sole purpose—and his only purpose—to serve the needs and expectations of the real boss-the rank and file.

My personal opinion is that the Unions in this country have some honest and hardworking Unionists—which for the most part—is the case. However, as in any large organization, a few rotten apples spoil the barrel and Unions have had more than their share of rotten apples in recent years. Such rotten union apples act and think normal rules and laws of ethics and conduct don’t apply to them. When that type of union leadership manifests itself, someone must stand up and at grave risk to himself—must fight those rotten unionists to reclaim that union from those who would misrepresent it and betray the interests of those they have sworn to serve.

Cast of Characters

Big John Roeper—Gentle Giant. Six feet ten inches tall. Extremely hardworking and very popular with his union membership. Uncovered deception by O’Brien thus leading to his murder.

Thomas O’Brien—Power hungry union leader who had a knack of using people and contract language in a deceptive way. Irish in heritage. Used African Americans and the race card for his own political purpose.

Stewart Stu Fem—Weak front man who was manipulated by O’Brien and carried out his coverup.

David Ratke—A personal lackey of Thomas O’Brien. He did O’Brien’s bidding with the hope that O’Brien would protect him and elevate him to a position of power. Lacked the ability to make a decision. Nicknamed Cheese.

Ferlin Carpo—African American who was used by O’Brien to carry out his bidding and the murders with the promise of a rise in power in the CPA.

Bob Biggers—Self-appointed union authority who never made a mistake in his life according to him. Nicknamed B.B.

William Wild Bill Michaels—A very strong man. Six feet five and a veteran of over 100 barroom fights. Was a strong opponent of racism and wrote vigorously against it in his newsletter, The Doomsday Alert.

James Tecumseh Books—Strong minded unionist who set the course for the coup, which would bring down one of the largest union governing units in the Carmakers Producers Association.

Donald Hudson—Newly elected union official who had a long history of union involvement and an extremely loyal and devoted unionist. Nicknamed Major Don.

Nat Reynolds—Supported the new president whoever he might be. He fawned on the winner and denigrated the loser. He was obsequious and survived by kissing up to those in power. Nicknamed the Insect.

Hebert Longfellow—Quick witted and intelligent but maybe not as smart as his opposition. Found out that it is easier to throw stones at glass houses then it is to live in them. Nicknamed Herbie.

Leonard the Lion Watson—A strong willed African American who was called a White Man’s Lackey by Carpo’s defense attorney. He replied, says who?

John Lowtower—An individual who used his position that was given to him for his own advancement and never won an election in his life.

Peter Sturgis—A small man in size. Author of the other opposition newsletter, The Rebel Rouser.

Assassin: A murderer—especially one who murders a politically important person or persons either for fanatical motives or for hire.

Assassinate: To murder a prominent person or persons by secret or sudden attack.

The door opened, and a lone assassin stood in its arch with his gun poised in his hand or was he alone. What was his reason for this act? What was he promised? What reward was he given or promised?

Three shots were fired at point blank range. When he exited, three men lay on the floor, and the assassin exited feeling sure that all were dead. Two men on the floor copiously bled from head wounds while the other lay on the floor with a steady stream of blood pouring from his chest. I was one of those men!

Chapter 1

My Roots and Character Forming Years

I was born or almost not born on June 30, 1949, in Wheeling, West Virginia. I was born in a dining room of a home located on Jefferson Avenue, and since the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, I had turned blue in color because the cord at birth had almost strangled me. The doctor tried to get me to respond but I did not. The doctor spanked me several times, and then I was laid down and washed with water to remove the mucous and afterbirth etc., but I still did not respond. The doctor pronounced me dead and started to write out on the birth certificate, Born dead, at such and such a time.

My grandparents, who were in attendance along with my father, did not accept the doctor’s verdict and placed me in a basin of water several times but I still did not start breathing. Finally, after the third dunking in the basin of cold water and then spanked me did I begin breathing. My grandfather never had a son, and he wasn’t about to lose his first and only grandson, nor was my father prepared to lose his firstborn son. After the assassination attempt, my grandmother would later remark that this was the second time that I had come back from the dead.

We moved to the state of Ohio when I was about two years old. My grandfather had first come to Cleveland looking for work. My father followed him to the Cleveland area looking for work. According to my father, work was easy to find, and in fact, he later related to me one time that while he was on a job one day having lunch. He believed that he had his fill of his current job and thought he could make more money on another job, and so he went and applied for another one at lunch time and was working that afternoon. This was in 1953, and we moved to the suburb of Rochdale. When I was about four, we moved to the suburb of Parma, which was to become one of Cleveland’s largest suburbs as my dad took a job with another company.

Now my grandfather’s name was James Washington Billings and my grandmother’s is Jenny Lynn Billings, and they came from strong Polish and Italian backgrounds—both very volatile nationalities. My grandfather was a coal miner who moved from city to city in West Virginia. As the coal petered out in one area, he would then relocate to another where there was still coal. He never drove a car in his life and walked everywhere.

At his funeral in 1978, a fellow coal miner from a sister city in West Virginia came up to me and introduced himself as a friend of my grandfather. He went on to say that around 1935 or so, he had fought my grandfather for the title of King of the Mountain. Being curious, I asked him what that was all about.

He stated that the miners didn’t have much to do for entertainment except to drink and to fight so the practice was that on any given Saturday night one tough miner would go over to the neighboring town, walk into the local bar or beer garden as they were called at the time, and challenge the toughest guy in the place to a fight. The toughest guy held the title of King of the Mountain. (I believe that the name came from the fact that in the mining areas, you had to cross a mountain to get to the next town.) He told me then that my grandfather claimed the title in 1935, but then added with a quizzical smile and a twinkle in his eye, that he held the title in 1936.

My father’s name is James, and I was named after him and my mother’s name is Jane. My father is an extremely hard worker, and he possessed a lot of tenacity and general sticktooitiveness along with a general reticence and I guess stoicism in regard to demonstrating emotions—all traits, which I believe that he passed on to me.

My mother, on the other hand, is very optimistic and always looks for the sunshine rather than the darkness in life, and possesses in general, a very pleasant disposition. This optimism that she has, I believe, was passed on to me. However, when genuinely angered, she could explode with an emotional fury that was frightening. I figure that my temper also therefore was inherited from my mother.

An example of that temper surfaced very early in my life. My first day in kindergarten, there was a bully in the playground who ran my face into a chain link fence, and I had a black eye as a result. Subsequently, I would pick a fight with him each day and receive black eyes and bruises as a result. Every day, this would happen until eventually the bully gave up, and we became friends. However, when I was in the second grade, I still remembered the bully boy, Joe Thomas, and his previous behavior. By that time, I had grown in stature and put on weight, so I beat him up once as sort of retribution and payback for all the times that he had knocked me around.

In 1965, we moved to Carnegie Woods, another suburb of Cleveland. At that time, it was one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. I enjoyed sports but did not excel academically. I was enrolled in the co-op program at Carnegie Woods High School and worked at Ohio Farmer’s Bank in downtown Cleveland. I went to school a half a day and then went to work in the afternoon. The banking business I soon found, interested me a great deal.

I had a couple of buddies in high school who were originally from Tennessee. We used to go hunting together and generally did the things that young men do in high school at that age such as cruise in cars and chase girls. Of course, at that time, you didn’t have the sprawl of all the suburbs so you could go out a couple of miles and then be in open country. We’d hunt rabbits, pheasants, and other small animals. I hunted with a .22 caliber rifle given to me by my grandfather when I was thirteen. Later on, I would use a shotgun. This was my first exposure to the use of firearms.

I graduated from high school in 1967 and went to John Carroll University for a short period of time. When my buddy, Ralph, who had quit school to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps and came back from boot camp (it was then I decided to enlist in the Corps), I was impressed with his size and the good physical shape he was in as was my friend, Bruno, who was nicknamed the beast since he stood six-foot-five and weighed just over 230 pounds with very little fat as he was into weight training in a big way. Bruno also enlisted several days later. With both of my best friends now in the Marine Corps and being disenchanted with college—coupled with the idea of adventure and excitement as well as a genuine patriotic feeling—I was motivated to join my buddies in the Marine Corps. I wanted the toughest and best outfit, and since my buddies were already Marines, I got engaged then to my girlfriend, signed up for boot camp, and then headed off to Marine training and Vietnam. The engagement didn’t last, but the enlistment in the Marine Corps did.

Early Years at Reynolds Motors

I got out after two tours of duty in the fall of 1969, and a week later, I was working for Reynolds Motors. My uncle, Rick Slade (nicknamed Swat as in Swat team), got me an application, and I filled it out. Five days later, I was reporting for work at a Reynolds Motors Stamping Plant.

As I stated previously, I worked on a production line of the Reynolds Motors Plant helping to make fenders. This was my first job with Reynolds. My foreman’s name was Byron Tims, and he was about in his early thirties, an easy-going guy to whom I took a liking to.

They had a production line called a No. 54, which contained a draw die. You climb up on a little ladder to pick out this big piece of metal from which two fenders are stamped from this and this would set the pace for the line. Then it would go down the line, being sheered, pierced, and stamped, etc., until it became two fenders. These pieces were huge—about three or four feet in size.

Within about thirty days, Byron Tims, who was a production supervisor, advised me to get into the skilled trades—like his dad—and take the apprenticeship test and told me that’s what he was going to do. (Ironically, Byron never did and quit Reynolds some years later.) I had developed a relationship with him, and he was pretty friendly to me.

It was hard work—like picking up sixty-pound fenders and hanging them on hooks—and several other guys who were from the South only lasted one day and then quit because of the arduous nature of the job. (Two guys from Alabama stick out in mind. They didn’t last a day and told their supervisors to keep the goddamn paycheck.) I was young—twenty years old—and happy to have a job so I stuck with it. And the money was good!

About sixty days into the job—ninety days gave you seniority and you enter the union—I was getting pretty cocky, thinking I had the job done pretty well. As I described it previously, you are on this platform or pedestal, you dropped this sheet of steel down into a die, you press this foot pedal, and the huge press comes down and stamps out two quarter panels. Then a steel hand picks it up and places it on a conveyor belt. Because of the monotonous nature of the work, you lose your concentration and focus because the work is so repetitive. At Reynolds, the company required you to watch a film on how to hum a tune while you were working. It reminded me of basic training where you had to watch films about sexually transmitted disease. Actually, I did hum while on the line to keep the line flowing.

However, I did lose my concentration one day and put in too many pieces of steel, and the iron hand malfunctioned and did not seize the steel parts as it should because the thickness was too much of the steel that had been picked up. What happened then was that I put in another couple pieces of steel, and the press came down and there were too many steel pieces and the press broke the die. I later was told the die was worth about $150,000. Everything stopped, and I couldn’t get the press to recycle.

My foreman, Byron Tims, came up and appraised the situation and immediately knew what happened. Hell, at that time, I didn’t even know what a die was, and I had been working on one for two months, but I didn’t even know what they were called. He told me to go on break. At that time, we were allotted an eighteen-minute break before lunch, an eighteen-minute break after lunch, and a half hour unpaid lunch period. I thought it was a little early for a break—I really didn’t know what happened. Almost immediately, the relief man came up to me and began screaming at me that I had broken the die. This meant that we would have to move to another line and that meant he would no longer be a relief man, which was a pretty cushy job since you could move to various jobs and do different tasks.

He started to come up the ladder and screamed motherfucker at me. I promptly hit him in the face and cold cocked him. He tumbled down the ladder and lay motionless on the ground. I left him lying there and went to take my break. This was pretty stupid on my part since it was right in a traffic aisle, and he could have been run over by somebody. This aisle supplied stock to the lines and had hi-los dashing to and fro since the line suppliers only have so much time to operate in as the lines would stop if not re-supplied. The guy could have been run over by one of the hi-los since the floor was covered with oil and grease, and the hi-los had smooth tires. Even if a hi-lo driver saw the guy lying there, he probably could not have stopped in time and the guy would have been seriously killed. I was sorry in retrospect for leaving him lying there, and I just was lucky he wasn’t run over.

Anyway, when I came back from my eighteen-minute break, Byron came over to me and told me to go over to labor relations. I didn’t know exactly what labor relations was, but I found out where it was and went over there and took a seat.

There was an older gentleman, sitting there, and he had a sign on his desk, which said, Here, you get judged, or something like that. While I was sitting there, a guy came running up to me, yelling that I was terminated. He screamed terminated at me three times in a very agitated manner and in a squeaky high-pitched voice while sticking his finger in my face. Hell, at that time, I didn’t even know what terminated meant. I knew it meant something bad, but I just wasn’t sure of the precise definition of the word.

I decided that I was going to take a whack at him, but I restrained myself and it’s a good thing because he was on the Reynolds Motors labor relations staff. In fact, he was second in charge and had received the call about me and was getting set to fire me.

About that time, this older gentleman—I later found out that he was the head of labor relations at the plant—came out of his office. He asked me my name, and I told him. Then he told me to sit down. At that time, there were probably close to six thousand people who worked at that plant.

About fifteen minutes later, I hear these two labor reps, and they were talking about getting security over here. (At that time, the practice was that if you were peremptorily fired, they would escort you out of the plant, so you wouldn’t take reprisals or whatever.) Security would watch you clean out your locker and take your safety equipment and badge away from you. Then they would drive you to the parking lot, to your car, and watch you drive away.

It was my luck that they couldn’t get security over there, so the head of labor relations told me to go home and report back to his office tomorrow at the beginning of my shift. So I went home. I was to come back the next day to get fired, which is sort of ridiculous when you stop to think about it. I didn’t know exactly if I was in trouble, so I went down to see my uncle and told him I was being sent home.

I went home, and later on, I got a call from Swat, my uncle, and he told me to go over to his house and wait for him to get home. I was worried because I knew that I shouldn’t have smacked the