John and Ellyn Boelter were well known and respected comrades in Chicago for their selfless support of workers in Chicago and their contributions to the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and InCAR (International Committee Against Racism) for decades. Ellyn passed away earlier this year. John passed in 2018.
Their generous contributions of their time and energy to InCAR and the Party will be remembered for many years to come. John came to Chicago by way of Wisconsin and Indiana and started teaching chemistry at Waller High School. As a teacher, he helped his students understand both scientific principles that describe the world and the political principles needed to change it. In 1968, as a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, he took part in the teachers’ strike of 1968. It was the beginning of John’s strong solidarity with workers’ movements and led to his joining the PLP in the early 1970s.
As a thank you from the Chicago Public Schools for his support of students, he was fired and blacklisted. This did not stop John from moving on and getting another job in the lab at Cook County Hospital and supporting his fellow workers there. He refused to cross the picket lines when the nurses went on strike in the mid-1970s. For his support, Cook County fired him, and unfortunately the nurse’s union did not support his reinstatement.
He built the PLP wherever he went. John soon returned to teaching at Bloom Trail High School in a mostly working-class suburb of Chicago. While there, John was able to involve many students, families and staff in Party activities. During this time, he was raising two young children: Aaron and Adrienne with his first wife, Terry.
In the mid-1970s John and Terry (first wife) divorced. In the late 1970s, John was introduced to Ellyn Hershman, an attorney and InCAR member who had just moved to the Chicago area from California. They married in 1977. He and Ellyn moved to the south side of Chicago soon thereafter and in short order gave active leadership in mass antiracist struggle in the community.
In 1986, PLP organized an attack on the nazi party, which had planned to march through Chicago’s Marquette Park. The neighborhood was well known for its racism and several antiracist marches had taken place there (including our May Day March in 1979). PLP had previously raided the offices of the nazis and beat the hell out of the fascists on multiple occasions.
This time, our plan was to stop the Nazis from getting to Marquette Park at all. We ambushed the truck at their set-up location with John leading the way. He later beat charges of attempted murder brought by the racists in the city government.
John later went on to teach at Daley College and then at Chicago State University to help build the presence of PLP there, recruiting more antiracist students and staff to the Party.
In the 1980s John and Ellyn became parents of two children, Suzy and Brenda. Ellyn helped the Party with fundraising and gave important legal advice. John steadfastly put forward the Party’s line and would always raise concerns in a comradely way. He and Ellyn were always generous with their time, use of their car and monetarily. John was part of the PLP contingent that went to support the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the racist murder by police of Michael Brown.
The Boelter home was, for many years, often the center of Party or InCAR activities. There, it was known, you could replenish your supply of CHALLENGE newspapers and hear a kind word from John or Ellyn. John and Ellyn can be described as true communists through and through with their generosity and organizing of the PLP for many years. Their door was always open. They were loving grandparents to several grandchildren. While they are no longer physically here, their spirit lives on in the lives of the many people they touched in their many years in the struggle in and around the PLP.
