Obituary: Frank Wilkinson, 91

     By his death on the second day of the new year, the name and legend of Frank Wilkinson had dimmed to a ten-watt memory. But by the yardstick of historical importance, he was one of the giants of defiance during America’s shameful Red Scare days in the middle of the last century.

Making a Career of Spying

 

     The headlines of today’s newspapers notwithstanding, he may have been the most spied upon American in history. That legacy  became the centerpiece of his long, fruitful life.

     At the federal government’s direction, the FBI was put on his trail because he was suspected of being a Communist.

     Astoundingly, the FBI trailed Mr. Wilkinson for thirty-eight years. By hand, they compiled one hundred and thirty-two thousand pages of surveillance documents.

Mr. Wilkinson did not make this remarkable discovery until 1986. He was seventy-two years old, and a little curious, when he filed a  Freedom of Information Act request. Shocked at the staggering detail the Government-men had sneakily gathered, he had known that he was being followed. But the breadth stunned him. They knew practically everything.

     Stealthily, the FBI came closer to him than the perspiration that their tactics inspired.

     Unfortunately for Mr. Wilkinson, he made his first appearance on the public political stage in 1952, at the height of the Communist witch hunt era spawned by Sen. Joe McCarthy.

     He lost his job as an officer of the Los Angles Housing Authority because he refused to identifying his affiliations under oath. What the probing lawyer wanted to know was whether he was, or ever had been, a Communist.

     At. Sen. McCarthy’s behest, thousands of worthy careers and decent American lives were said to have been destroyed, unapologetically, by the government.

But the government never quite was able to take the measure of Mr. Wilkinson, unless you count the nine months he spent in jail in 1961-62, based on a five-to-four ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on a contempt of Congress citation.

     If thirty-eight years of tailing is deemed cost-efficient when weighed against two hundred and seventy days behind bars, then devoting four decades to one man was meritorious.

 

     The imprisonment was a delayed punishment for having refused to tell the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee in 1958 whether he was, or ever had been, a member of the Communist Party.

     In those days, anyone who did not overtly declare that he was an anti-Communist usually was suspected of being a Communist, or at least a sympathizer, which was just as bad.

     The FBI of J. Edgar Hoover launched a vengeful crusade against a man who merely was dedicating his life to providing decent housing for the impoverished, especially non-whites.

     Mr. Hoover was known from the 1920s to his death in the1970s as the most spiteful, most feared, most intimidating political force in Washington. He operated wide of the White House and anyone else who might have reined him in. He bragged that he always got his man. At least he always chased his man.

With the evidently innocent Mr. Wilkinson proving elusive, the Hoover mandate in the Wilkinson case seemed to escalate from punishment to ruination. Undeniably, they made Mr. Wilkinson’s life miserable.

     Mr. Hoover’s G-men dressed in all manner of disguises to try and trap their suspect. They hid behind trees, under cars, inside of bushes.

     About four years ago, I believe it was the father-in-law of School Board member Dana Russell who arranged to have Mr. Wilkinson address an assembly of students at Culver City High School.

     It probably was his final speaking engagement.

     In straight-ahead language, Mr. Wilkinson, then eighty-seven years old, captured and held the students’ attention with a stirring narration of his lengthy harassment by the FBI.

     This was the ultimate Government vs. Good Guy cat-and-mouse game. The FBI  trailed him into bathrooms, bedrooms and dead ends. Occasionally, he toyed with the G-men, letting them know that he knew who they were and where they were. They may have fooled him. But they couldn’t wear him out. And they never could catch him doing anything wrong. 
     Still, the FBI never relented. Their intended victim didn’t, either.

     Mr. Wilkinson’s troubles had begun when he was testifying in a case involving his longtime employer, the Los Angeles Housing Authority.

In the 1950s, culturally speaking, white was not only the dominant but the monopolistic color in the United States. Since Mr. Wilkinson was an officer in an agency that vigorously worked to provide housing for the poor of non-white races, important persons charged un-American (anti-white) behavior.

     Influential Lois Angeles real estate figures suggested that the Housing Authority was a victim of Communist infiltration, a favorite phrase of the day.

     The Housing Authority was proposing to build public housing in Chavez Ravine, north of downtown, one of the passionate causes of Mr. Wilkinson’s life. Near the end of his testimony, when he was asked to identify organizations he belonged to, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment. Shortly afterward, the city of Los Angeles fired Mr. Wilkinson for refusing to answer.

     He was both despised and feared by Washington, which strikes me as an enviable epitaph.

     An ideologue until the end, he was born into a traditional Methodist-believing family in the Middle West but he grew up to become a fighting liberal. Raised in an economically comfortable home, he graduated from Beverly Hills High School and UCLA (in 1936) before he came face to face with impoverished peoples. Seeing their plight would alter his life. He committed to rescuing poor people from living shabbily.

An Epitaph

 

Since Mr. Wilkinson was sent to prison for three-quarters of a year, it may be argued that he lost his personal war with the FBI.  In a separate sense, he gained the tastiest revenge available to man. He outlived those who spied on him, those he had to hide from, and by more than thirty-three years his chief tormentor, Mr. Hoover.

Outliving the bad guys is almost as good as going undefeated.

According to records, he joined the  Communist Party in 1942. He remained a member until 1975.  

 

In recent years, Mr. Wilkinson, in his favorite wheelchair, was the most prominent non-Jewish guest at our family weddings. For a lifetime, he had been a regular at events hosted by my wife’s family.

Perhaps his final outing was on a balmy Sunday afternoon last June when my step-daughter was married. As I recall, he stayed for the entire day. I promised to telephone him on Monday to arrange for one final interview. I wish that I had.

A memorial service for Mr. Wilkinson will b held Saturday, Jan.28 at 2 p.m. at the Holman United Methodist Church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd.

Contributions in his memory may be made to the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles 90044.