Category Archives: Those we remember

Frederick Seward in winter

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Governors Island, Those we remember, Uncategorized

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Frederick W. Seward helped found the Republican Party in New York.

Frederick W. Seward helped found the Republican Party in New York and lived long enough to see the first nine months of the Great War.

I was home working today. I was writing about the creation of the New York State Republican Party, which formed in Saratoga Springs in August 1854 as a response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Young Chester Arthur was one of the delegates. In September 1904 during the heat of the presidential race between Theodore Roosevelt and Alton B. Parker–two New Yorkers–the Republicans held a 50th reunion in Saratoga Springs. TR’s running mate, Charles W. Fairbanks, was one of the speakers in Saratoga at that 50th celebration. Members of John C. Frémont’s family were on hand as well, including his son Major Francis P. Fremont who five years later would be court-martialed for a third time in the waning months of the Roosevelt administration.

What caught my eye when reading the 50th anniversary Proceedings was this photograph of the aging Frederick W. Seward. Frederick was of course the son of William H. Seward. He graduated from Union College a year after Chester Arthur and he too would be at the Saratoga Convention in August 1854. Frederick later worked as Assistant Secretary of State for his father in the Lincoln and Johnson Administrations and served in the same capacity for William Evarts for a time during the Hayes’s years, eventually succeeded by John Hay. Seward thwarted the Booth conspirator who tried to assassinate his father and a half a century later was still around to tell the tale. He helped run the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in 1909, a forgotten event today but which among other things involved Wilbur Wright flying from Governors Island, around the Statue of Liberty, and back.Even more incredibly an article in the Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine informs us that passengers aboard the Lusitania witnessed that feat.

Seward died in April 1915, fifty years after the Civil War’s end and two years prior to American involvement in the First World War.

Louis Auchincloss, 1917-2010

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Those we remember, World War One Centennial Committee for New York City, Writing

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Earlier this month I read Louis Auchincloss’s memoir, A Voice from Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth. I have always found it oddly comforting that cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia still have remnants of the old families that ran things for, really, centuries. When one goes to a place like the University or Union League Club one can’t help but notice the names from these families of the sons who fought in our nation’s earlier wars. When I read the excerpt about his father and the training base in Kentucky I naturally had to do a small something about it.

Never Forgotten: the story of Sergeant Paul Maynard

13 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in Those we remember

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It is a brutally cold day here. This morning I had the chance to watch the film below. It was produced by Michael Shipman for the American Battle Monuments Commission and tells the story of a young doughboy killed during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on 11 November 1918, the last day of the war. The film showed at last year’s GI Film Festival over Memorial Day Weekend. Carve out 25 minutes this Presidents Day Weekend to watch the poignant documentary.

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882-1945

30 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

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A youthful Franklin Roosevelt as he was circa 1916 in his mid-30s. He loved performing these types of duties as assistant secretary of the Navy

A youthful Franklin Roosevelt as he was circa 1916 while in his mid-30s. He loved performing these types of duties as assistant secretary of the Navy

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on this day in 1882. It’s interesting how we commemorate Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays and then it drops off from there. I suppose with Washington commemoration had much to do with binding the tenuous nation together through the early decades of the republic; Lincoln then joined pantheon as the first president to be assassinated. That’s pretty much it. I thought it would be interesting to see what FDR was doing a century ago. His tenure as assistant secretary of the Navy is one of the least studied periods of his life, probably because he was not making policy per se but carrying out the orders of Naval Secretary Josephus Daniels and President Wilson.

In January 1916 Roosevelt was campaigning hard for Preparedness. He gave a talk in Binghamton, New York 100 years ago this week in which he averred that the U.S. Navy should give up “not one dollar” in appropriations. He was in accord with Wilson in many respects; the sinking of the Lusitania that past May had hardened Wilson’s stance. What is more, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was gone by this time, having resigned over what he saw as Wilson’s belligerent stance. In many ways Franklin Roosevelt was making the case better and more forcefully than Wilson, whose appeals to Congress and elsewhere were largely met with skepticism from all sides. FDR’s cousins Theodore Roosevelt for one was not impressed with Wilson’s proposals and called them “half-preparedness.” Of course as a former president he had more leeway than his cousin did to call it as he saw it.

Franklin Roosevelt returned to Washington after his Binghamton speech to get back to work and attend to Eleanor and his kids. He needed to be close to home. He and Eleanor’s last child, John Aspinwall Roosevelt, would be born just six weeks later. It is lost on us how young he was when so much of this was going on.

(image/Library of Congress)

George Clayton Johnson, 1929-2015

31 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Rod Serling, Those we remember

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George Clayton Johnson in 2006

George Clayton Johnson in 2006

I noted with sadness yesterday the passing of George Clayton Johnson. George actually died on Christmas Day but I had not heard the news until catching up on the news after the holiday. I earned the right to call him George after meeting him at the 2009 Rod Serling Conference at Ithaca College. He was the keynote speaker and as chance had it he was staying in our hotel; I recognized him immediately in the hotel restaurant in the morning. How could one not with the way he always wore his trademark hat? I was speaking an hour later at the conference about George Beaumont and as I was making my opening remarks who walked in but George himself. I realized instinctively that the pressure was one–I was talking about the guy’s best friend. He really could have called me out on any b.s. I might have spouted. It meant the world to me that he liked my talk. He even worked a few of my points into his keynote speech that evening.

I was talking to our houseguest earlier in the week about the Twilight Zone episode “Ninety Years Without Slumbering,” in which the elderly protagonist will die should the old grandfather clock he has owned for his lifetime should stop ticking. George Clayton Johnson wrote the episode. Death was a common theme in Clayton’s work. “Ninety Years,” “The Four of Us are Dying,” “Kick the Can,” “A Game of Pool,” and “Nothing in the Dark” all have mortality and immortality as central themes. I have always loved the photo of the young GCJ standing with Robert Redford on the set of “Nothing in the Dark.” In his memoir New York in the 50s Dan Wakefield makes a strong case that Redford was too good-looking for his own good, never receiving his full due as an actor.

Mr. Johnson did so much besides the Twilight Zone. He wrote the first episode of Star Trek, reams of short stories, the novel Ocean’s 11, and collaborated on the book Logan’s Run. He was working on a sequel when he died. George Clayton Johnson’s death marks the end of a Twilight Zone era. He was the last of the Big Four that included Beaumont (1967), Serling (1975), Richard Matheson (2013), and now George Clayton Johnson. I am glad to have met him when I had the opportunity.

Don’t forget that New Years means the annual Twilight Zone marathon. Happy 2016, and give a thought to George Clayton Johnson.

(By JaSunni Productions, LLC, at PicasaWeb [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Remembering Millard Fillmore Cook

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Governors Island, Those we remember, WW1

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Millard Fillmore Cook served under General Pershing on the Mexican border in 1916. The following year he was discharged from the 106th (23rd) due to a broken leg. He served forty-one in the New York State militia.

Millard Fillmore Cook served under General Pershing on the Mexican border in 1916. The following year he was discharged from the 106th (23rd) Regiment due to a broken leg. He served forty-one years in the New York State militia.

This month marks one of the smaller but nonetheless poignant moments in the early months of America’s involvement in the Great War. Millard F. Cook was discharged from the 106th Infantry Regiment in December 1917. The 106th was the  designation for the old 23rd New York Infantry Regiment before its calling into national service for eventual deployment to France. Millard F. Cook had joined the 23rd in December 1876 and by time of the American declaration of war in April 1917 was the oldest officer in the entire New York State National Guard. Corporal Cook was in the militia during the Great Railroad Strike in 1877 and was an officer as part of the Punitive Expedition on the Mexican border in 1916.

One sees the two calls to national service. New York Governor John A. Dix appointed Cook a brevet captain in 1912. Five years later a Governors Island medical board recommended his honorable discharge on medical grounds.

One sees the two calls to national service. New York Governor John A. Dix also appointed Cook a brevet captain in 1912. Five years later a Governors Island medical board recommended Lieutenant Cook’s honorable discharge on medical grounds.

Cook (1855-1934) was born during the Franklin Pierce Administration six years prior to the onset of the Civil War.

Cook (1855-1934) was born during the Franklin Pierce Administration six years prior to the onset of the Civil War.

Cook was born in Detroit in 1855 but moved to Brooklyn, NY with his family as a young child. He apparently believed in commitment and longevity; Cook was an accountant with the New York Sun for sixty-two years, a national guardsmen for forty-one, and a church musician and musical director for much of that same time. Newspaper accounts show him directing such efforts as Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S Pinafore, the Haydn Vocal Society of Brooklyn, and numerous congregational musical groups for decades. Cook was elected secretary of the 23rd Infantry’s Council of Officers in February 1917. However when the Great War came he was not destined to go to Europe with the men of his unit. The 23rd was nationalized as the 106th that spring, but Cook broke his leg in a car accident during a training exercise in Upstate New York on May 16. The recovery did not go well and he was eventually examined at Governors Island on December 5. Before the end of the year a panel of four physicians at Fort Jay recommended Lieutenant William F. Cook be honorably discharged. He is buried today in Uniondale, Long Island’s Greenfield Cemetery.

(top images via Ancestry.com and bottom from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle courtesy of Newspapers.com)

Georges de Paris, 1934-2015

27 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Those we remember

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I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend. A friend is visiting from France and I gave him the official Trader Joe’s experience this morning. I picked up a New York Times on the way home as well. As I wrote a few years back, one of life’s small pleasures is reading the “Lives They Lived” section that appears the final Sunday of every year. The genius of it is that the focus is on people who who were not necessarily famous, per se, but who contributed to society in some important way. I have only had a chance to glance at it so far but I read with interest the vignette on Georges de Paris. de Paris was a tailor whose workshop was three blocks from the White House. He tailored suits for every president from LBJ to Obama. He even made the tan suit that President Obama was unjustly ridiculed–pilloried–for wearing two summers ago. It was all rather hysterical. Earlier this year the Administration had a little fun the day of the State of the Union speech and featured the suit on the White House twitter page.

Georges de Paris led a complicated life that was not all that he claimed it to be. Though he claimed to have been born in Marseille, France, de Paris was actually born Georgios Christopoulos of Kalamata, Greece. I would tell you more but then that would be depriving you of the captivating story.

Enjoy your holidays.

Frank Sinatra, 1915-1998

12 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by in Governors Island, Those we remember

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Today would have been Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday. I linked over on the Facebook page to a bit I did for the Governors Island website about Sinatra’s 1945 visits to Fort Jay for his Army physical. His draft board had recalled the singer to see if his 4-F classification should be reconsidered. I’d tell you the rest but then you wouldn’t click on the link. I stumbled upon the story of Sinatra’s visit seventy years ago to Governors Island when reading Earl Wilson’s 1976 biography, which had been sitting unread on my shelves for a few years before I pulled it down last week.

It seems a little wartime Frank is in order. During the Second World War performers recorded these V Discs exclusively for distribution to soldiers overseas. They no doubt wanted to do it for the war effort, but their reasons were not entirely altruistic; the musicians strike that lasted from 1942-44 prevented artists from recording any material. These V Discs were the only exception. All the big names recorded them. The strike had other repercussions but, ironically and thankfully, it worked out to the benefit of the boys in France, Italy and the Pacific.

Remembering my Aunt Carol

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Genealogy, Those we remember

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Gettysburg was one of Aunt Carol's favorite places.

Gettysburg was one of my Aunt Carol’s favorite places.

My mother’s older sister died this past week and I am still trying to process it all. Some may note that Carol Zurlo was a regular commenter here on this website. My aunt was born in Washington DC in 1935, where my grandfather worked in the Navy Yard during the Depression and then throughout the Second World War. The family moved back to Boston in 1945. My own parents lived in Connecticut until we all moved to South Florida in the mid 1970s. My brother and sister and I were cut off from the extended family for the next decade and more. Remember: there was not internet, no cell phones, no text messaging, and no anything else in these years. When you were cut off, you were cut off.

Her last several years were a struggle health-wise but Carol never failed to keep in touch. And it was not just about genealogy. She had an interest in art, history, crafts and quilting, and numerous other things. She was elementary school teacher for so long that she ended her career teaching the grandchildren of some of her original students. After retirement she supervised field trips for her own grandkids’ visits to Gettysburg and elsewhere. Naturally she always filled me in about these excursions. She was also a great Boston sports fan. Over the past dozen or so years each of the four Boston teams have won at least one title. The biggest one, at least as far as my extended family went, was when the Red Sox finally broke through in 2004. I have always been thankful that everyone from these two generations lived to see it. That may sound funny, but it is no small thing.

One of the best things about moving to Brooklyn in the late 1990s is that I was able to reacquaint myself with much of the extended family. When I began tracing my family history about a dozen years ago the two individuals who helped fill in the most about their respective sides of my family were my father and my Aunt Carol. Others filled in gaps as well, and have even generously taken me to the old schools, houses, and final resting places of our relatives. My dad and aunt were the foundation though. This made sense, as they were both the oldest siblings and so had the most memory to fall back on. Now both my father and Carol are gone, but what they passed on to me has been saved.

John Kipling, 1897-1915

27 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by in Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember

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What do Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Asquith, Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling have in common? They are just a few of the prominent fathers of their era to have had their sons killed in the First World War. This was not uncommon. If one visits the Union League or University Clubs here in New York, just to name one city, one see the names of the war dead from some of society’s most prominent families. Rudyard Kipling’s son was killed at the Battle of Loos one hundred years ago today. John Kipling, known as Jack in the family to differentiate him from his grandfather and namesake, was an eighteen-year-old second lieutenant in the Irish Guards fighting. It was the young lieutenant’s first engagement.

John ("Jack") Kipling died at the Battle of Loos 100 years ago today.

John (“Jack”) Kipling died at the Battle of Loos 100 years ago today.

Roosevelt and Kipling knew each other quite well and there are parallels and differences in the deaths of their sons in France. Jack and Quentin were both born in 1897, and each was the baby in his family. Like Quentin, Jack was a witty and inquisitive young man who invariably saw the glass as half full. Though they both died young and tragically there was a crucial difference between their deaths: when Quentin was shot down in 1918 the Germans gave him a full burial; Jack’s remains were not found, which caused his father no end of anguish. Rudyard Kipling did all he could to find his son’s remains–indeed he did not give up hope that Jack was still alive until after the Great War’s end–but it was all to no avail. He went to his own grave in 1936 never knowing for certain what happened to his youngest child.

In the early 1990s officials at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission announced that they were now certain Jack was interred in the St Mary’s field hospital cemetery in Loos. That seemed to end the mystery until, in the early 2000s, two scholars released their own research that brought the War Graves Commission’s findings into question. The truth is that we will probably never know for certain. Stalin’s cliché about one death being a tragedy while one million a statistic is as true as it is cynical. Kipling himself channeled his grief into his writing. Later that very year he “My Boy Jack.” The first stanza reads:

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

(image/Rudyard Kipling Papers, University of Sussex Library)