Eugene Dennis
Biography
Eugene Dennis, born Francis Xavier Waldron and also known as Tim Ryan and Paul Walsh, was a Communist Party USA organizer and later its general secretary. After a California criminal-syndicalism prosecution in 1930, he went underground rather than serve the resulting jail sentence and left for the Soviet Union under a false passport around January 1931. He returned to the United States in 1935 as Eugene Dennis. In 1947 he refused to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee and later served a one-year contempt sentence. He was also a lead defendant in the 1949 Foley Square Smith Act trial and served a five-year federal sentence after the Supreme Court affirmed the convictions.
National Guardian, April 3, 1961: A memorial placed by his wife Peggy Dennis prints his lifespan as August 10, 1904 to January 31, 1961 and commemorates his Communist Party work. These exact biographical dates are explicitly printed in the contemporary family notice, rather than inferred from age. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-guardian/1961-04-03-13-25-nat-guardian.pdf#page=9 The notice’s 1904 birth year conflicts with the separately recorded 1905; its January 31 death date agrees. No birth-date change is made on this conflicting evidence.
