Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 14, 1918

New Yorkers stopped what they were doing in mid-April 1918 to remember the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. It is important to remember that Lincoln’s death was still within living memory for many Americans; it had only occurred fifty-three years previously. With so many young men now in training camps and soon to be on their way to France, the Lincoln commemoration was muted. As the headline here shows, the Brooklyn Riding and Driving Club remembered both Washington and Lincoln at its 27th annual dinner on Saturday 13 April. Present for that event at the Montauk Club were officers from the British and French Armies. During a toast to men for the BRDC who had joined the AEF, one poilu reflected “The German [1918 spring] offensive is to be taken seriously but the real days of anxiety were the days of 1914. Now we know that you are rushing troops to our aid. Then it was a question of ‘to be; or not to be.”

Lincoln was being remembered throughout the city that weekend. In its April 14 edition the New York Times published recently discovered letters by Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it could be that in presenting letters from both Lincoln and Lee the Times sought to balance regional sympathies. That day the Calvary M.E. Church in Harlem hosted Laura D. Prisk, who for the past several years was pushing to officially designate June 14 as Flag Day. (That came to pass in 1949.) There were many veterans from the Grand Army of the Republic on hand to see Mrs. Prisk and others talk about the ongoing war in Europe. Prisk proclaimed that “Much attention is being payed to the long-range gun of the Hun but the real long-range gun is that of America, reaching 3,000 miles to the battle line.” Prisk was in attendance again the next day when she laid a wreath and spoke at the Lincoln statue in Union Square. On hand were sailors from the USS Recruit, the depot established in Union Square the previous May to sell liberty bonds and spur enlistment.

Alfred Restaino is incorrectly commemorated as “Albert J. Restaino” on Eastern Parkway.

Though his tablet is incorrect, Restaino’s tree has fully grown.

I wrote about six months ago about the tress along Eastern Parkway dedicated to Brooklyn boys who had died in the Great War. For my Grand Army Plaza tour I wanted to do a deeper dive and discuss a few of the men. So I did a little digging. Here we have a tablet laid for one “Albert J. Restaino.” When I began checking I discovered sadly that this is an error. The solder is actually Alfred Restaino. Here is the card with his personal information. He was wounded and subsequently died of pneumonia. Note that under Person Notified of Death it lists “Mrs. Restaino–Mother.”

Restaino is on the far right in the second row from the top.

The story only gets more interesting. I wanted to know where Restaino was buried. I never found his final resting place, but did discover that he indeed returned to the United States. In 1920 they held the Summer Olympics in Antwerp in a gesture for all that Poor Little Belgium had suffered during the Great War. In doing an Ancestry search for when or if Restaino came home, Restaino arrived in the United States on the US Army Transport Ship Sherman in September 1920, almost two years after the Armistice. That led me to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, in which I searched for any articles about the Sherman published that September. That led incredibly to an article describing the return of the U.S. Olympic Team coming back on the Sherman with the remains of 763 doughboys.

Here is the documentation of Restaino’s return on the Sherman, 11 September 1920.

and an excerpt from the 12 September 1920 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article in which an Olympian describes the journey home.

Stories like this are why monuments and memorials are as poignant as they are.