November 1963

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gettysburg, Memory

Gettysburg battlefield for the back porch of Eisenhower's farm, early 1960s

Gettysburg battlefield from the back porch of the Eisenhower farm, early 1960s

This past Wednesday morning I mentioned to the Hayfoot that it was Remembrance Day, the anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Remembrance Day, besides being an opportune time to contemplate Lincoln’s words, is a gentle reminder that the cold and early darkness will not last forever. Spring and summer will indeed return and with that will come our near-annual visit to Gettysburg.

I was thinking about this again yesterday when I realized it was the 51st anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. JFK’s murder is something I have never gotten too involved in; it just seems an interminable rabbit hole. I remember living in Dallas in the mid-1990s and coming across Dealey Plaza by accident one day. This was already thirty years after Kennedy’s death and more people than you might think were out selling their pamphlets with their individual theories. For 5/10 bucks someone would take you on a guided tour. Maybe people are still doing this.

One aspect of Kennedy’s assassination that does not always occur to people is that it came three days after the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Quite intentionally, some of the iconography of Lincoln’s funeral was incorporated into the ceremonies for Kennedy. Interestingly they had invited Kennedy to Pennsylvania but he went to Texas instead. His predecessor, Eisenhower, took his place. Eisenhower of course lived in Gettysburg and was an active part of the community. One thing that stands out in the Eisenhower parlor are the statuettes of Meade and Lee on the mantel.

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this letter just after the 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and Kennedy assassination

Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this letter days after the Kennedy assassination and 100th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

This past February, on Lincoln’s Birthday no less, I was doing research at the Union League Club for the Theodore Roosevelt Sr book. Nineteen sixty-three was the centennial not just of the Gettysburg Address but of the ULC as well. Roosevelt Senior and his brothers were early members of the club, which was founded in February 1863 to help Lincoln prosecute the war. This was just after Fredericksburg and the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln popularity was down and he needed all the help he could get. The Union League Club is something I always discuss during my tours of the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace.

I came across an interesting document. It is a letter written by Dwight Eisenhower to the leader of the Union League Club thanking him for honorary membership in the organization. Many things stand out in the letter. One of the most striking is that it was written on 30 November 1963, eight days after the Kennedy assassination.

(top image/Library of Congress)

The United American War Veterans

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary

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Yesterday I submitted some research to the World War 1 Memorial Inventory Project about a plaque that stands on the northern wall of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Bowling Green. The Custom House is a beautiful structure designed by Cass Gilbert at the turn of the twentieth century. Standing at the corners of Broadway and Whitehall, the building is one of the grandest and most distinct structures in Lower Manhattan. Today it houses the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Archives. Late in the summer I stumbled upon this monument early on a Sunday morning on my way to Governors Island:

I had to look him up but William H. Todd was a shipbuilder who lived in Brooklyn, NY. That makes sense as his company, Todd Shipyards Corporation, was based Red Hook. The company was formed through various mergers in 1916 and built many of the barges and minesweepers used by the U.S. Navy during the Great War. Oddly Todd died in 1932 when he fell down a flight of stairs at his son’s home.

What caught my attention on the plaque though wasn’t Todd, but the reference to a U.A.M.V. It turns out this was something called the United American War Veterans. I had never heard of this group but as it turns out it was a veterans group that in some ways competed with the American Legion after the First World War. It did not last; the U.A.M.V. seems to have gone defunct in the late 1920s.

If you search old newspapers from the 1920 you see a crazy quilt of Memorial Day commemorations across New York City. The Grand Army of the Republic was shrinking but still very much around. Not to be outdone there were then the veterans of the Spanish-American War. Now in 1919 and into the 20s there were the doughboys. Sometimes these cross-generational groups marched together and sometimes not. What’s more, even after consolidation in 1898 Brooklyn and Manhattan, not to mention the other boroughs, often had their own separate commemorations. There could be even more than one within the boroughs.

We see the remnants of the G.A.R. all around us. And the American Legion is still with us. It is funny though how some of these other groups fell by the wayside, all but forgotten by history.

Remembrance Day 2014

07 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

General Pershing receives the first American Legion poppy, March 1932

I remember way back in 1986–more than a quarter century ago–when the Dallas Cowboys played the Chicago Bears in a pre-season game in London’s Wembley Stadium. These were the days of William “Refrigerator” Perry, Walter Payton, and Jim McMahon. Tom Landry was still the coach in Big D. American football was taking off in Europe and Japan. The idea in playing overseas was for the league to build its brand. The strategy worked. The game is huge internationally. This is so much the case that the NFL now plays regular season games outside the United States routinely. The first was in 2007. There are three NFL games in London this year alone. The Jacksonville Jaguars have sort of become the home team; they are in the middle of playing in London every season for four years.

The reason I mention all this is because this coming Sunday’s matchup falls on Remembrance Sunday, the Sabbath that falls before Armistice Day. To mark the occasion the Cowboys and Jaguars will be wearing poppies on their helmets. From what I understand there will be other commemorative events before, during, and after the game as well. The teams seems to be getting into the spirit as well, with players visiting the Cenotaph and actually selling poppies themselves. I have never been much for some of pro football’s jingoism, but this one seems fitting for the occasion. It’s a small something to look out for over the weekend.

(image/Library of Congress)

The Great Fair turns 75

19 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Museums, New York City

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I recently began researching a small piece for the World War I Centennial Commission social media page when I came across these remarkable photographs taken during the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair. If you do the math you will note that we are currently in the middle of the fair’s 75th anniversary. It was a fascinating historical moment because the Depression was finally starting to lift, while at the same time the clouds of war were gathering in Europe. The fair began on April 30 and the German invasion of Poland was on September 1. Needless to say, these and other events wreaked havoc on the fair and its hope for a batter world of tomorrow. The Second World War also had immediate concerns for event planners from the dozens of participating nations. For instance, which constituency would represent this or that recently conquered nation in the fair’s pavilions? Would it be the resistance leaders or the representatives of the new regime? Or neither? Perhaps a country’s organizers would be better off shutting down their nation’s pavilion and washing one’s hands of the entire matter. How does one celebrate knowing the news of such death and destruction back home? These are the issues they dealt with.

The photos here are of American Civil War veterans at the fair. I wish I could date the images more precisely but as of yet cannot. I hope to do more with this in the future. In some cursory digging I discovered that Civil War veterans went to the 1939-1940 World’s Fair on several occasions. Helen D. Longstreet, Pete Longstreet’s widow, was at the fair at least twice. In June 1939 she was there to dedicate an exhibit of Confederate artifacts at the Florida Pavilion. A month later–on 2 July 1939, the 76th anniversary of the second day’s fighting at Gettysburg–she appeared again. Her appearance came one year after Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke at the unveiling of the Peace Light Memorial.

The very week the Germans and Soviets were dividing Poland Civil War vets inspected the tanks of the Seventh Cavalry Brigade at the fairgrounds in Queens. Again, it is not clear when these photographs were taken. The one of the soldiers standing in front of the Lincoln statue says it was taken on Lincoln’s Birthday. The heavy coats would seem to corroborate that. I would guess the photograph was taken in 1940 but it could have been 1939 when the final touches were being made in preparation for the opening that spring. Note the photo of Robert E. Lee. This was quite consciously a reconciliationist effort on the part of the organizers.

A young girl admires the medals of a Civil War veteran. One can imagine that Americans found comfort in the presence of these aging soldiers as war was getting underway yet again. The Second World War’s role in the reconciliation process is often overlooked.

Here are our friends in blue and grey yet again. I am not sure of the building in front of which they are standing.

This past August I took this photo of the rear of the New York City Building. This is today the Queens Museum of Art.

Here is a mosaic commemorating the fair. This area today is Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. I took these two photos on my way to a Mets game.

(images of Civil War veterans, NYPL)

Hubert Rochereau’s Great War

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory

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Lieutenant Hubert Rochereau died in Flanders fields a year before this postwar image was taken.

Nine million soldiers died in the Great War, each one of whom had a personal story to tell. My friend Susan sent me something today about one of those young men. Hubert Rochereau was a twenty-one year old second lieutenant in the 15th Dragoons when he perished in Flanders fields in April 1918. Later he would posthumously receive the croix de guerre and Legion of Honour. What makes his story so poignant is that Hubert’s parents preserved his childhood bedroom for posterity in the decades after he was killed. Even more incredibly, the home’s current owners have kept the room that way as well.

(image/Library of Congress)

The Meuse-Argonne campaign begins

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, WW1

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This past weekend marked the anniversary of the start of the Meuse-Argonne campaign, which would continue on through the end of the war in November 1918. The American Battle Monument Commission just published this video that captures the essence of what it was all about. I cannot emphasize the quality of the work the ABMC has been doing during the Centennial, though that is no surprise given the organization’s rich history and institutional memory.

Cal breaks his silence

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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The Mount Rushmore groundbreaking was this week in 1927. Construction was completed in October 1941.

In 1927 Al Jolson appeared in The Jazz Singer, Louis Armstrong recorded “Potato Head Blues,” and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig combined for 107 home runs. The Great War was over for almost a decade and life was seemingly returning to normal. That August President Calvin Coolidge traveled to South Dakota to speak at the groundbreaking of Mount Rushmore. As if channeling his inner Roosevelt, the staid Coolidge rode up the mountain on horseback. Curiously–perhaps in a nod to recent Franco-American relations?–a choir sang “The Marseillaise” in addition to “The Star Spangled Banner” and other patriotic tunes.

Rushmore literally put Theodore Roosevelt on the same level with Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson, and the monument was a big win for Roosevelt supporters. The RMA had lost a protracted battle for a Roosevelt memorial on the National Mall just a year earlier. The spot Hermann Hagedorn and others coveted eventually went to the Jefferson Memorial.

Ironically, Mount Rushmore has skewed our perceptions of the 26th president. When many people think “Theodore Roosevelt” they think of the West. Being depicted on a granite slab in the Black Hills will do that. Still it is important to keep in mind that, while Roosevelt spent chunks of time hunting and ranching out West, he was a city slicker first and foremost. Indeed he was the only president born in Manhattan, and it was to New York City and Long Island that he returned over and over across the course of his life.

(image/National Park Service)

Thinking about the war’s legacies

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Historiography, Memory, WW1

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Europe as it was after being redrawn in 1919

Yesterday a friend sent me something from the Wall Street Journal. It is one of those list type things in which the Journal chronicles 100 legacies of World War One. A few of the items cannot be truly credited/blamed on the First World War. Doctors were fitting wounded soldiers of the American Civil War for prosthetic devices decades prior to 1914. It is true, however, that the science of prosthesis took a great leap forward in the 1910s and 1920s. Give the whole thing a look. Among other things the list encourages us to think beyond the minutiae of the battles–important though they are– and ask ourselves why the events of 1914-1919 are important to us today in the 21st century. I cannot think of a better lesson as the Centennial gets underway.

(image/National Archives, United Kingdom)

Archiving the Great War

04 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Libraries, Media and Web 2.0, Memory, WW1

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I received confirmation late last week that the Library of Congress will be preserving The Strawfoot as part of the LOC’s Web Archiving initiative for the World War I Centennial. The Library of Congress’s goal is to collect and preserve materials born digitally during the Centennial. So much of what is online seems transitory and impermanent. I am very excited about the 100th anniversary of the Great War and think it offers all kinds of interpretive and other possibilities. That the blog will be included in the endeavor means a lot to me. Working on the website these past 3 1/2 years has been a labor of love, with equal emphasis on both words: love and labor. It was a lifestyle change. Writing the blog has its rewards; the site might not get the traffic that some others do but it does have a regular readership.

Longtime followers may have noticed a shift of emphasis in recent weeks and months. It may seem that way but to me it is all cut from the same cloth. I have never thought of myself as strictly a Civil War guy, though the events of 1861-65 have always been a source of interest and fascination for me. I have always been more interested in the causes and consequences of the war; what came just before and after is equally important. That is why I have found volunteering at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace these past ten months rewarding. The Roosevelts–both side of the extended family–offer so many intellectual opportunities.

I am still plugging away on the Theodore Roosevelt Senior and Joseph Hawley biographies, still volunteering at Governors Island over the summers, still writing the content for the TRB social media platforms. There are more connections than might be apparent. For starters, General/Senator Hawley and Theodore Roosevelt knew and admired each other. I find it fascinating that the young Franklin Delano Roosevelt lost a power struggle with his boss, the unreconstructed Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, over the naming of a new ship in 1917. Instead of Roosevelt’s choice, the destroyer was christened in honor of Confederate naval officer Matthew Maury. These types of things fall under what we now call Memory Studies, which I suppose is broader and more encompassing than just historiography. More of these types of things are going to come out here at The Strawfoot in the coming months.

(image: Theodore Roosevelt at Washington’s Union Station during the First World War, LOC)

Hermann Hagedorn, 1882-1964

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Historiography, Libraries, Memory, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, WW1

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Hermann Hagedorn died fifty years ago today. The name may not ring many bells within the general populace. Hagedorn, however, was a towering figure within the world of Theodore Roosevelt memory and historiography. When the Roosevelt Memorial Association was formed weeks after the former president’s death, Hagedorn became the group’s first acting secretary. He eventually became the RMA’s executive director. Hagedorn dedicated a significant portion of his life to the Roosevelt legacy; the RMA formed in 1919 and Hagedorn was still going strong during the Roosevelt Centennial in the late 1950s.

Hagedorn met Theodore Roosevelt in 1916 when a small group of supporters were trying to convince him to make one final run at the White House. That of course did not come to pass. The son of a German immigrant, Hagedorn was born in New York City. Though the United States was not yet involved the Great War, the fighting was raging in Europe when Hagedorn and Roosevelt first met. One can see why they were drawn to each other. Roosevelt was advocating for Preparedness while Hagedorn was extolling the virtues of Americanism, especially with the German-American community.

The Men’s and Women’s Roosevelt Memorial Associations were responsible for rebuilding Roosevelt’s boyhood home on East 20th Street. As I often emphasize on tours this was a time before presidential libraries. In addition to the house itself there was, and is, a museum and substantial library on site. Hagedorn claimed in the August 1929 Bulletin of the American Library Association that officials from the New York Public Library had told him that the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace’s collection was “the most extensive library built around one individual in the United States.” The library indeed includes a substantial collection of books and other materials. It is worth noting that the Birthplace library collected not just photographs but moving imagery as well. This was pioneering stuff in the 1920s.

The RMA and Hagedorn did a lot more than just the Birthplace though. They were responsible for constructing Roosevelt Island in Washington DC and transforming Sagamore Hill into the historic site it is today. These are just a few of their accomplishments.

Hagedorn wrote a number of biographies of Roosevelt written for children and adults. He authored his first Roosevelt biography, The Boys’ Life of Theodore Roosevelt, in 1918 while the former president was still alive. In the mid 1920s Hagedorn edited Roosevelt’s Complete Works, a substantial undertaking given that Theodore Roosevelt authored over thirty books. Some people believed that Hagedorn became too involved in the Roosevelt legacy and that he sometimes stepped over the line into idolatry. Lewis Mumford and Oswald Garrison Villard were two of Hagedorn’s harshest critics. Hagedorn did sometimes lapse into hagiography but some of the criticism was shrill and unfair.

Hermann Hagedorn accomplished many things in his lifetime. There were plays, poetry, biographies of such figures as Leonard Wood and Albert Schweitzer, and other projects over his long life. Still, he is now most associated with the life and times of Theodore Roosevelt. So much of what Hagedorn did is still here today.

The Strawfoot

~ a New Yorker's American History blog

Category Archives: Memory