Krishna devotees ready to move on
July 22, 2006
FREE PRESS RELIGION WRITER
DAVID CRUMM
As two of metro Detroit’s most famous religious pioneers move into retirement, they look a lot more like the pillars of the religious community they became than the exotically attired young couple once accused of promoting a cult.
“In the early days, we would be outside chanting ‘Hare Krishna,’ and sometimes people actually would spit on us,” Bruce Dickmeyer, who just retired as administrator of a Hindu temple and cultural center in Troy, said this week.
“Back when we started, America was a different place, and there were so few people who understood anything about our Krishna Consciousness movement. There were very few vegetarians back then, very few people who practiced yoga and very few who thought about the idea of reincarnation,” he said.
“Now, these are all mainstream ideas shared by a lot of Americans, so I think the truth is that we’ve all come a long way in this country.”
This weekend, hundreds of Krishna devotees from across the United States are returning to Detroit to mark the changes that have swept through their movement in the past 30 years.
The milestone they’re marking is 1976, when Detroiters Elisabeth Reuther, the daughter of labor leader Walter Reuther, and Dickmeyer, who later became her husband, teamed up with Alfred Ford, Henry Ford’s great-grandson, to turn a dilapidated mansion on Detroit’s east side into one of the nation’s top Hindu temples. Reuther and Ford each gave $150,000 to buy the $300,000 site, the former home of one of the auto-magnate Fisher brothers.
Ford, who lives in Florida and will return to Detroit for the reunion, said by phone, “I still remember how our story of a Reuther and a Ford coming together on this project was a big, big news event. Reporters from all over the country showed up to report on it.
“But the accomplishment I’m really proud of in Detroit is that the neighborhood around our property, when we first bought it, had so many problems with crime and boarded-up, burned-out houses. We were part of that neighborhood’s rebirth.”
It’s that broader involvement by Krishna leaders in everything from environmental activism to political lobbying on behalf of poor people that has turned the young devotees into contributors to larger social causes. For example, Elisabeth Reuther’s latest book, “Putting the World Together,” is a passionate, self-published memoir about the legacy of social causes championed by her father, who died in a plane crash in 1970.
“Many of the things that I’m so concerned about now, like a health care system for everyone, are things that my father worked for,” she said. “My father … trained me in a tradition of always trying to take the high road in life.”
Before joining the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in her 20s, her life already was indelibly shaped by her father. From 1946 until his death, Reuther was president of the United Auto Workers and traveled the world promoting social causes.
Elisabeth Reuther recalled that growing up, Eleanor Roosevelt stopped by the house, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called and her father brought home her first strand of Hindu prayer beads, a souvenir of India.
After the reunion this weekend, Reuther, now 59, and her husband, 56, will move from their farmhouse in Lake Orion to northern California to settle near their three adult children. They plan to continue writing, volunteering and pursuing activist causes.
But, like most parents, they simply want to enjoy the next generation of their family. They said they’re happy, though only one of their children still practices their Krishna religious tradition.
“That’s fine with us,” Reuther said. “We just want our children to be happy with the choices they make.”
Contact DAVID CRUMM at 313-223-4526 or dcrumm@freepress.com
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