National Affairs: Personal Loss

At the White House before breakfast one morning last week a telephone call was put through to Mrs. Roosevelt. “My heart sank,” said she in her syndicated diary, “for I knew that only something serious would make my rather careful husband telephone from that distance.” A few moments later she heard Franklin Roosevelt, speaking from Buenos Aires, break the news that his personal bodyguard, Gus Gennerich, had dropped dead of heart disease.

Official Washington first became aware of Gus Gennerich one night in the tense days before the 1933 inauguration when Messrs. Garner, Rainey, Robinson, Harrison, Byrns and others came to confer at the house of the President-elect on East 65th Street, Manhattan. Their deliberations were interrupted by a terrible crash on the floor below, the sound of falling furniture, of breaking glass. Several conferees anxiously rushed down, found young John Roosevelt flat on the dining room floor amid several shattered family relics, found Gus grinning, dusting off his clothes, muttering, “Now, darn your little hide, I guess you’ll quit prepping with [kidding] me.”

The career of August Adolph Gennerich, born in 1886 in Yorkville, Manhattan’s German district, had not up to that time been entirely undistinguished. At the early age of 22 he had found an occupation that admirably suited him, a job as a New York City policeman. On the force he was by turns athlete, motorcycle patrolman, hero. He was cited three times for bravery, once for capturing a earful of bandits who peppered him for a mile and a half with a machine gun until their car overturned. He was also a member of the bomb squad.

He first entered Franklin Roosevelt’s life in 1929 when he was assigned to act as bodyguard whenever New York’s new Governor was in the city. So great a hit did Gus’s good nature and love of horseplay make with all the Roosevelts that he soon was attached to Albany, went everywhere with the Governor. In the winter of 1933 when the Roosevelts moved to Washington they got Gus a 60-day leave of absence so that he could technically complete 25 years on the force, retire on a $1,500-a-year pension. These qualifications satisfied, Pensioner Gus promptly joined the Secret Service.

In Washington Gus went to live at the White House. One day the well-trained White House servants heard a burst of jangled melody from the East Room, hurried in and found Gus, who had taught himself to play the piano by a mail-order system, pounding out jazz on the famous gilt piano. Thereafter he moved to the Mayflower Hotel, but he remained popular with the Roosevelts, their official friends, and particularly the children at Warm Springs, for whom he once did a hula dance.

Around the White House he moved at a lope when not lounging in the lobby of the executive offices. He referred to the President as “the boss,” called others, including Cabinet members, by their first names and chatted in equally friendly fashion with Ambassadors and messenger boys. Although he had a dinner suit to wear on dress occasions he incorrigibly chewed gum no matter how elegant his surroundings.

Gus did not mean ever to be parted from the Roosevelts. His celebrated remark about the President was “he’s a good guy,” to which in a sentimental moment, he added, “It’s a beautiful thing in my life to be mixed up with a man like the President.” Because of Franklin Roosevelt’s paralysis Gus was as much body servant as bodyguard. He gave him his arm on many a platform, helped him in the complicated business of backing into automobiles, played water games with him in pools, lifted him bodily into wheel chairs, served behind the scenes as a male nurse. With James Roosevelt and his friend, the White House physician, and military and naval aides, Gus Gennerich was one of the very small party accompanying the President on the Indianapolis.

So at Buenos Aires, having seen the President to bed in the U. S. Embassy, it was not until after midnight that Gus, feeling fine and apparently in the best of health, was able to go out to see the town. With two Navy men attached to the White House, Chief Yeoman Charles Claunch and Pharmacist’s Mate George Fox, he went to the gay Tabaris cabaret. On the dance floor towards 3 a. m. he suddenly collapsed. By the time a physician could get there, Gus Gennerich was already dead. The President was not told until he awakened next morning. He canceled all his unofficial engagements for the day. The following morning a Navy chaplain held funeral services at the Embassy and the body of Gus Gennerich was taken aboard ship for the return to the U. S.

The death of his loyal retainer and friend not only caused Franklin Roosevelt genuine grief, but it must have caused him considerable discomfort and embarrassment. In the small Presidential party there was no one who could readily be called upon to do all the intimate personal duties which Gus Gennerich had performed. For the following three days of official functions and the long voyage home, Gus’s duties were divided. Some of the more important were taken over by Son James, who thereby was given an unexpected opportunity to earn the $250 a month which he is getting as a Lieutenant Colonel of the Marine Reserve on active duty with his Commander-in-Chief. Gus’s lesser duties were temporarily split among the regular Secret Service Men.