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Douglas Bloom recalls how his uncle Stanley
Imerman’s business, Imerman Industries, was
guarded by paratroopers because they had
a government contract to make bomb fuse
adaptors. The company chose to remain in
Detroit, moving operations to another of its
buildings at Mack and Connor.
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DODGING BULLETS
Douglas Bloom of Birmingham,
immediate past president of the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit, tells a riveting story of his
own. Bloom’s uncle, Stanley Imerman,
owned a business called Imerman
Industries that manufactured auto
parts, brake products and more. They
also had a government contract to
make bomb fuse adaptors. As a result,
paratroopers guarded the factory dur-
ing the riot, preventing any damage.
“We were Up North and, as we flew
in, I saw through the window that the
city was on fire, everything was burn-
ing,” Bloom says. “When I got to work
in the morning, I had to call up the
Chrysler missile plant and tell them
we needed protection. This big Army
truck showed up and they dropped off
these paratroopers and we cooked food
for them. They didn’t have ammunition
in their guns, but nobody knew that.”
The 100,000-square-foot, two-story
building at Lafayette and Mount Elliot
was not damaged. But, Bloom, a gradu-
ate of Mumford High School, had his
own brush with danger one evening
while driving home from work.
“I got shot at,” he says. “I was driv-
ing home on Jefferson and they were
shooting from a building on the right
side of the street. A bullet went right
above my car — I heard it zing by —
and I was in traffic. The police said,
‘Get out of your car and get behind it,’
which I did. They used rifles to take
out the shooter. They just shot into
the window [where the gunfire was
coming from] and there was no more
shooting in the street. I got back in my
car and went home.”
Within a few short days, the fam-
ily had decided to move their entire
operation to Mack and Conner, where
they had another building. But, they
made a conscious decision to remain
in Detroit.
“A lot of our employees took a bus to
work,” Bloom says. “[Making it easier
for them to get to work] was impor-
tant to us. We already had a factory
on Mack and Connor, so that’s why we
chose to stay in Detroit.”
The company went out of busi-
ness in the 1980s, but Bloom took all
of the same employees and formed
another manufacturing company, Bar
Processing, which he sold in 1999.
During the tumultuous time, the
Jewish community was involved in
efforts to repair the damage and help
people put their lives back together.
Jewish Vocational Service (JVS), which
will celebrate its 75th anniversary in
the coming year, “provided services
to those who lost jobs or businesses
during Detroit’s civil disturbances,”
according to the nonprofit organiza-
tion’s historical timeline. Specifics were
not available at press time.
A 1997 Detroit Jewish News article
on the 30th anniversary of the riot
mentions the role Jewish business lead-
ers played in trying to find solutions
and ease tensions. The late Stanley
Winkelman, whose women’s clothing
business suffered losses during the riot,
was one of them.
“Shortly after the riots, Winkelman
became a charter member of New
Detroit, a coalition of business and
community leaders [including labor
leaders and political radicals], founded
at the request of then-Gov. George
Romney and Mayor Jerome Cavanagh,”
the article says. “New Detroit was
assigned to identify and address
the root cause of the disturbance.
According to Winkelman, New Detroit
enjoyed substantial progress early on,
but its effectiveness dissipated over the
years as business involvement declined,
and its mission was diluted.”
Today, led by the efforts of Dan
Gilbert, founder and chairman of
mortgage giant Quicken Loans (whose
family of companies employs 15,000
team members Downtown), Detroit
Mayor Mike Duggan and others, busi-
nesses, jobs, shops, services and a
sense of optimism are returning to the
city.
Since 2014, several Fortune 500
companies, including Ally Financial
and Fifth Third Bank, have estab-
lished their headquarters Downtown
and retail stores like Nike and John
Varvatos have opened on Woodward
Avenue, along with dozens of res-
taurants and other businesses. Five
decades later, while the scars of the riot
remain, there is new hope Detroit will
finally see the comeback so many have
been waiting for.
*
Historical data was taken from Violence in
the Model City by Sidney Fine (Michigan State
University Press; 1989).