America's Divided Loyalties
“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.” (Confucius, The Analects, Chapter 13)
At the Village of Ardsley’s 2023’s Memorial Day Parade and Ceremony, Efraim Hernandez, Commander of Ardsley’s American Legion Post #458, noted that the deceased Americans honored on that solemn day died to preserve four essential freedoms, including the freedom of speech. [1]
In an unpublished preface to his 1945 political fable, Animal Farm, author George Orwell wrote, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” [2] Similarly, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the lead American prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes, opined 73 years ago:
The very essence of constitutional freedom of press and speech is to allow more liberty than the good citizen will take. The test of its vitality is whether we will suffer and protect much that we think is false, mischievous and bad in both taste and intent. [3]
As we contemplate our fundamental freedoms on Independence Day and how far our right to free speech extends, the following question has resonated through the decades:
Is it appropriate to protest against war on Memorial Day?
Denouncing war on Memorial Day is a source of long-standing debate. On the one hand, Memorial Day is a time to honor the sacrifices of military service members who have fallen in the line of duty. However, some argue that protesting against war on Memorial Day serves to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice by advocating for peace and working towards preventing further loss of life. [4]
Put differently, is Memorial Day a day in which politics should be set aside? Alternatively, should Memorial Day be balanced with calls for the peaceful resolution of conflicts and a reflection on war? [5]
Concern over maintaining the dignity of Memorial Day and keeping it free from politics has a long history. In 1905, Nebraska passed a law barring all sporting events on Memorial Day to prevent disturbances of those honoring the war dead. [6]
In May 1919, a resolution was passed by the Kansas Grand Army of the Republic (an organization of veterans who fought in the Civil War for the Union) protesting against former President Taft giving a speech in Kansas City on the League of Nations:
The Chanute Daily Tribune Chanute, Kansas · Friday, May 23, 1919
In June 1941, the Federated Patriotic Societies allied with the Grand Army of the Republic protested against any change of the date of Memorial Day and the use of foreign-made flags.
(New York Times, June 19, 1941, p. 17)
On Memorial Day 1969, the below newswire report was printed in The New York Times:
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The debate over protesting against war on Memorial Day came to life in the Rivertowns during the height of the Vietnam War. [7] One of the most controversial aspects of that war was the intensive level of aerial bombing of Vietnam, considered the most staggering attack in human history.
“Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II. Pound for pound, it remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history.” [8]
However, military historians and defense department experts overwhelmingly agree that the American bombing campaign against North Vietnam (initially known as “Operation Rolling Thunder”) had little productive effect on either ending the war or reducing North Vietnamese military capability. [9]
Opposition to this unprecedented saturation bombing led to an ad hoc tri-village committee of residents from Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, and Ardsley called “Citizens to Stop the Bombing.” [10]
December 21, 1967 [11]
Opposition to the American bombing in Vietnam was driven by humanitarian, strategic, and moral concerns coupled with resistance to the broader U.S. war effort, which many saw as unjust and illegal. Agent Orange (one of a class of color-coded herbicides used by U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1961 to 1971 to defoliate trees and shrubs and kill food crops that provided cover and food to opposition forces) was causing significant environmental damage. [12] The sheer magnitude of the bombing was seen as both brutal and an obstacle to tentative peace talks set to begin in Paris. American soldiers were dying at record levels, with May 1968 possibly the most lethal of the war following the launching of a series of bloody offensives by the People’s Army of Vietnam. [13]
On Memorial Day in 1968 (which took place on May 27th), despite acting in an orderly manner and carrying American flags (while wearing identifying badges apparently as their association with their plea to stop the bombing), members of the “Campaign to Stop the Bombing” attempted to join the Memorial Day parade in Hastings but were prohibited from doing so by members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and later the Hastings Police Department. \As a letter to the editor of the Greenburgh Publications observed, “access to Hastings’ public streets was improperly limited to participants approved by the “chairman of observances” of the VFW.” [14]
Two days later, in response to this incident, the Greenburgh Independent published a scathing editorial titled "Whose Memorial Day?"
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While no war in American history has lacked detractors and opponents, for the most part, Memorial Day was an occasion of reverence and patriotism honoring those who had made the supreme sacrifice for their country. [15]
That consensus was broken by the Vietnam War, where the rites of Memorial Day could not unify an American civil community fragmented over the question of the meaning of the war or the sacrificial quality of the death of American soldiers. [16]
Weeks after the editorial, the local newspapers continued to publish contrasting letters on the event that sparked the dispute between the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Citizens to Stop the Bombing. Private First Class John R. Moffitt, a teenager from Elmsford stationed in Fort Lewis, an army post outside of Tacoma, Washington, asked:
“How can people in the “Stop the Bombing” movement feel they have a right to march in a Memorial Day Parade, giving tribute to heroes of past wars, when now that our nation is at war once again (technically a conflict) they attempt to undermine everything we do. These people don’t even have the right to live in America, much less march in an American parade.”
Moffitt’s “love it or leave it” perspective was disputed by Dobbs Ferry resident Dr. Howard Halpern whose brother had died in World War II:
I wish to add my voice to the controversy about the VFW halting the Citizens to Stop the Bombing in the Memorial Day parade. I watched horrified as the police of Hastings stepped forward and blocked the passage of the small and orderly group. It was a scene worthy of Moscow, Peking or Madrid, not Hastings. I was further appalled at the (June 13) letter to the editor by the past commander of a local VFW district because he missed the whole point – namely, that in a democracy nobody has the right to tell others how they may observe a national holiday as long as they are peaceful and law abiding.
I submit that the narrow, coercive efforts of the VFW and other self-righteous patriots creates the atmosphere to assassinate those we disagree with as being un-American.
Interestingly, Moffitt’s hyperbolic sentiments that the members of the Stop the Bombing group were in some manner “undermining everything” were similarly expressed two years later in Ardsley in connection with a First Amendment dispute concerning the efforts of four Ardsley High School students to fundraise for the legal costs of the Chicago 7 trial defendants when Ardsley’s Superintendent, Dr. Burt Johnson, was quoted in The New York Times as follows about the federal lawsuit filed by the students asserting a first amendment right to solicit money from fellow students on school grounds:
“This was just the final thing that set it off,” Dr. Burt Johnson, the District Superintendent, said of the lawsuit. He said that the controversy had been “very disruptive of the school.”
“We were a very quiet district,” he said. “Now all of a sudden somebody wants to challenge everything you do.” [17]
In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, in a letter published nearly three decades after he expressed his opinion on the Hastings Memorial Day event, Dr. Halpern made the same observation about the vilification of those we disagree with and its deadly consequences, an evil that continues to infect our nation and its politics:
“Social psychologists and demagogues have long known that if ordinary citizens are to be provoked to violent actions against individuals or groups of fellow citizens, it is necessary to sever the empathic bond with those to be attacked by painting them as different and despicable.
We are unlikely to harm a friendly neighbor because she has strong views about equal rights for women, but if we call her a "femi-Nazi," she becomes "the other '' -- evil, dangerous, hated. We are unlikely to harm the couple down the block who are active on behalf of protecting endangered species, but if we call them "environmental whackos," (sic) they become "the other'' -- weirdos who must be vilified and suppressed as enemies to "normal" Americans.
When our shared humanity with those with whom we disagree is stripped away, it becomes acceptable to blow them up.” [18]
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Nearly three years after the Memorial Day parade fracas in Hastings, on Mother’s Day 1971, a heartbreaking opinion piece written by Bronxville resident Louise Bristol Ransom, whose oldest son, Lt. Robert (“Mike”) Ransom, Jr., a marine killed while on patrol in Vietnam on Mother’s Day 1968, just a few weeks after he had landed in that foreign land, appeared in The New York Times. In her cri de coeur, Ransom painfully noted:
BRONXVILLE, N. Y.—Mother's Day, 1971, marks the third anniversary of our son's death in Vietnam. It also marks the third anniversary of the Paris peace talks. Once again we mothers cry “Peace,” but there is no peace.
We are told that if we leave Vietnam now our 54,094 men will have died in vain. But how could we possibly justify the sacrifice of these young men by killing yet more Americans and Vietnamese in a meaningless war?
My husband and I have faced the painful truth that our son did indeed die in vain for what John Kerry calls “the biggest nothing in history.” There was no gain for his country from his death. His life was wasted, and nothing we do, now or ever, can alter that.
Now we know that it is only the bereaved who learn that lesson— certainly not our elected leaders. The silent many who are either enriched by the war, or totally untouched by it, or deluded by the imagined glories of former wars, do not raise their voices to protest its injustices.
And so tomorrow I shall walk with other sorrowing and indignant mothers in a silent parade down the main street of our town, where Mike once marched as a bright‐eyed Cub Scout on Memorial Day. We shall walk together into our churches where we shall pray from the depths of our souls that this madness will end before the rest of our children are destroyed. [19]
Debates about the propriety of mixing politics and Memorial Day mirror the same arguments made by some politicians and Second Amendment absolutists after each mass shooting in claiming that “this is not the time to politicize the issue of guns.” while offering “thoughts and prayers” which many find offensive. [20] In the aftermath of the same Texas mall shooting, California Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted:: “This is freedom?? To be shot at a mall? Shot at school? Shot at church? Shot at the movies? We have become a nation that is more focused on the right to kill than the right to live. This is not what the American people want.”
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Fifty five years after members of the Stop the Bombing campaign tried to join the Memorial Day parade in Hastings, a speech made by the Grand Marshal at Dobbs Ferry’s 2023 Memorial Day event led to a series of letters in the Rivertowns Enterprise (The hometown newspaper of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Hastings-on-Hudson, and Irvington) over the ensuing weeks. According to Dobbs Ferry resident Kate Price, the speaker, Ret. Col. Brian Annachiarico, used his platform to “deliver a divisive political message that demonized the media, denied racism, discussed the Second Amendment, and veered into right wing rhetoric.” (Enterprise, June 2, 2023).
The officers of the Dobbs Ferry Democratic Committee and the elected officials of the Village of Dobbs Ferry lambasted Annichiarico for improper politicking on Memorial Day and “straying from the task at hand” of honoring the fallen, and apologized to those present who were pained by the speaker’s remarks. However, Dobbs Ferry resident Veronica Kurian defended Annichiarico, and chided a member in the audience who heckled him during his speech by reminding this person (who she diagnosed as suffering from either Adult Impulsivity Disorder or Bratty Child Syndrome) that they are privileged to live free in America because of people like Colonel Annachiarico. She further argued the heckler owed the Colonel and Village residents an apology for not seeking to speak to Annachiarico civilly about their differences (Enterprise, June 9, 2023). The author of this Timepiece submitted a letter as well which raised the question of what is suitable for discussion on Memorial Day:
Today only a sliver of Americans serve in our armed forces. Are the disparities of who dies in today's wars of choice a suitable topic on Memorial Day? Is it appropriate to recall President Eisenhower's warning in his farewell address against the influence of the military-industrial complex or his admonition that "every warship launched" is theft from those who hunger and are not fed? (Enterprise, June 9, 2023)
Whatever one's sentiments are about the Dobbs Ferry Memorial Day debate, River Village residents' ability to still write Letters to the Editor of a local newspaper is a rare freedom of expression offered to few Americans. It is now undisputed that the continuing disappearance of a vibrant local press is detrimental to American democracy. [21]
In any event, Memorial Day 2023 in Dobbs Ferry posed the perennial question: Whose Memorial Day is it?
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Ardsley’s Memorial Day ceremony held in front of Ardsley’s 1941-1945 World War II “Roll of Honor'' in Pascone Park has featured, inter alia, a parade of boy and girl scouts, little leaguers, police cars, fire and ambulance department vehicles and the volunteers who staff their crews, cars chaperoning veterans allowing them to be seen by those along the parade route, tributes to the diminishing number of living veterans in Ardsley, and an urging of audience members to speak to them about their experiences, short speeches by local politicians and invited guests, a color guard, a gun-firing salute, and the somber roll call of the names and response of “absent” which honors the missing fourteen soldiers from the Ardsley School District who made the supreme sacrifice in WWII, Francesco Campione and Luigi Tomosetti, the two Ardsleyans killed in World War I in October 1918 during the immense Meuse–Argonne offensive which stretched along the entire western front, and Lt. Craig Towson O’Connor (b. 1942), a 1960 Ardsley High School graduate, who died on December 12, 1968, after plunging into the ocean on a routine training mission while piloting a McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom jet fighter off the North Carolina coast, the singing of “America the Beautiful'' by members of the Ardsley High School select chorus, and the playing of taps (followed by the supplying of refreshments), all conducted with precision by members of Ardsley’s American Legion Post #458 (started by returning Ardsley WWI veterans such as Arthur McCartney, a Second Lieutenant serving with the U.S. Artillery in France whose father James built the building now housing a military museum maintained by the Ardsley Historical Society ) for his real estate and insurance agency in 1918 which the McCartney family offered to the veterans as a place for Ardsley American Legion Post #458 to hold their monthly meetings. [22]
Greenburgh Publications (March 14, 1968)
Undoubtedly, a century ago those returning WWI veterans celebrated July 4th in Ardsley by visiting Brinkerhoff’s, the “Headquarters for Fireworks” in what was then known as Ardsley Square or to locals “the Square.”
Dobbs Ferry Register (June 23, 1922, p.2)
Ardsley Square, now Addyman Square, was re-named for Mayor Frank Addyman who died in office in 1934, and is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery. It is now slated for a major renovation. [23] A bronze tablet in Addyman’s honor (unveiled on Memorial Day, 1935) (Herald Statesman, May 15, 1935) is affixed to the exterior of the front entrance of Ardsley’s Village Hall. Addyman is also listed on the Ashford Avenue monument paying tribute to the men from Ardsley who served in “The Great War” (i.e., World War I).
Brinkerhoff’s store was in the Lawrence Building (unfortunately now missing the building’s identifying sign on the roof which can be seen in the photo below) which is still located on the south side of the Square.
Brinkerhoff held a gold badge for 25 years of service to the Ardsley Fire Engine Company and, at the time of his unexpected death in 1951 at age 58, was the proprietor of The Igloo, a refreshment stand at the corner of Saw Mill River and Dobbs Ferry Roads just north of Ardsley in Worthington, a roadside attraction whose design was inspired by the igloo shaped Carrier Air Conditioning exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens. [24]
Some returning veterans may even have spent Decoration Day looking to build a home on a lot in Ardsley Acres, a development along the soon to be constructed Saw Mill River Parkway in the vicinity of present-day Colony Road, Alamena Avenue, and Swanston Road in Ardsley as the following advertisement appearing in The Rye Chronicle (May 25, 1925) and the first page of the development’s promotional brochure beckons: [25]
The Hastings Echo (May 30, 1925, p.3)
Coincidentally, and not mentioned at Ardsley’s Memorial Day event, this year's Memorial Day fell on May 29, the exact date 50 years ago in 1973 when the last U.S. combat troops left South Vietnam, ending direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.
Also missing was a recognition that 2023 was the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Girl Scouts in Ardsley who have a storied legacy of service to the Ardsley community on Memorial Day (as can be seen in the below announcement in the May 30, 1925 edition of the Hastings Echo that the upcoming Ardsley Memorial Day service will feature a solo recitation by Gertrude Walter (a charter member of the Ardsley Girl Scouts whose first troop was known as the “Bluebirds”) of Theodore O’ Hara’s poem “Bivouac of the Dead”). The history of the Ardsley Girl Scouts was featured in the Ardsley Historical Society’s Winter 2015 newsletter. [26]
1926 Ardsley Girl Scouts at the Ashford School
(notice the “Y” in the flag, possibly for “Ardsley”)
Gertrude Walter was the Valedictorian of Ardsley High School’s Class of 1927 (and later a magna cum laude graduate of Mount Holyoke College from which she also received her Masters Degree in Chemistry). She earned the first-ever 90-year pin for service to the Girl Scouts. In the aftermath of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, which prohibited racial segregation in public schools, as President of the Girl Scout Council in Washington, D.C., she was a driving force in desegregating the campgrounds utilized by local troops in the Capital region. [27]
Walter was also instrumental in establishing the Juliette Low Legacy Society, a financial support group for the Girl Scouts (Low was the founder of the Girl Scouts). Gertrude “Bobby” Frieda Walter Lerch died in Chevy Chase, Maryland, at age 104 in 2014. [28]
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Surprisingly, American recording artist Bruce Springsteen has never had a number-one hit song, although Manfred Mann's Earth Bands’s cover of his “Blinded by the Light” composition (which appeared on Springsteen’s remarkable but unheralded 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ), reached number one in 1976, America’s bicentennial year. [29] Although Springsteen’s music catalog includes songs tinged with patriotic themes such as “Independence Day” (released in 1980 on his fifth album, The River, and “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” (released in 1974 on his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle), one of his most iconic (and misunderstood) songs is the 1984 single, Born in the U.S.A., about the difficulties experienced by a returning Vietnam War veteran. [30]
As Springsteen explained to former President Barack Obama in their 2021 podcast Renegades: Born in the USA, about what was going on in his mind when he wrote the song:
It's a complex picture of the country. Our protagonist is someone who has been betrayed by his nation and yet still feels deeply connected to the country that he grew up in.
Its imagery was so fundamentally American, but it did demand of you to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at one time. You can both be very critical of your nation and very prideful of your nation simultaneously.
And that is something you see argued about to this very day. [31]
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The little-known Beach Boys recording “4th of July” (recorded in 1971 but not released until 1993 and written by Dennis Wilson and Beach Boys manager Jack Rieley) with a haunting vocal by his brother Carl Wilson is arguably the finest song about Independence Day in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The music brilliantly evokes the searching mournful mood of the nation (and stands in stark contrast to the mostly sunnier and summery albeit occasionally melancholic 1960s Beach Boys discography) with lyrics evocative of the current uncertain future of our nation as we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. [32]
Listen Here: The Beach Boys - "4th of July" (along with the lyrics reproduced below)
Born of the age
Flagged hopes
Censored rage
The black clad box
Bombs bursting in air
Bleed white red and blue
Cried dawn's early light
For the hope
Oh where has it gone
Brothers sisters stand firmly and try
Reaching the spacious ski-ies
Fourth of July
Lie by the sword
Black times
False reward
The greetings of doom
So proudly they hail
Lost fortune of free
The stripes and bright stars
Promise lost
Oh where has it gone
Brothers sisters stand firmly and try
Reaching the spacious ski-ies
Fourth of July
Brothers sisters stand firmly and try
Reaching the spacious ski-ies
Fourth of July
Since America's founding, when colonists were forced to choose between remaining subjects of King George III (the Loyalists) or supporting the cause of independence (the Patriots), such divided loyalties have existed. Most notable in our region was the Ward family of Eastchester, where two brothers positioned themselves on opposing sides of the conflict. [33] Similarly, at the time of the American Revolutionary War, various Native American nations had to choose whether to back the revolutionaries or ally themselves with the British. [34] For example, in Emanuel Leutze’s heroic Crossing the Delaware (1851), on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, “the boatman pictured in the stern wears Native moccasins, leggings, and a shoulder pouch, and likely represents an Indigenous member of Washington's troops.” Other than the Civil War, the most notable example of divided loyalties in the 19th-century was Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech in Rochester, New York, to that city’s Ladies Anti-Slavery Society: “What To The Slave is the Fourth of July?” [35] where Douglass’s views converge with those of Lincoln who in his “House Divided” speech (1858) observed:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”
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The Fourth of July, also known as Independence Day, commemorates the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence, founding the United States of America. [36] Ironically, however, it also marks the day in 1863 when the Confederacy suffered its two most significant battlefield defeats in the Civil War (the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, which took place from July 1-3, and the Fall of Vicksburg in Mississippi, which occurred on July 4). Although these military defeats did not conclusively predict a Union victory, they halted a streak of victories by Confederate soldiers headed by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
The Declaration of Independence (actually labeled in the parchment paper it was written on as “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America), was strikingly recalled in the famous opening sentence (one of only ten) in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (to wit, “Four score and seven years ago,” which is 87 years after 1776), and appropriately in connection with our foray into the history of Memorial Day, was delivered in the afternoon of November 19, 1863, at the consecration of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. [37]
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Although not buried in Gettysburg, Jasper Acker (1841-1915) (a member of one of Ardsley’s oldest families, who likely trace their ancestry to the settlement by the Dutch of the New Netherland colony along the eastern seaboard of what is now the United States), in 1862, at age 21, mustered into the New York Heavy Artillery for three years and saw action at the seminal Civil War battles of Gettysburg, Manassas (Virginia) (commonly known as the Battle of Bull Run), and Cedar Creek (Virginia). As his below cemetery record indicates, his grave was at one time marked by the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.).
Jasper Acker’s Civil War Pension Index Record (1890)
Obituary, Irvington Gazette (February 5, 1915)
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Acker’s cemetery record was indexed in 1939-40 under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program known as the Works Progress Administration as part of its Historical Records Survey. Kitching Post #60 (G.A.R.) of which Acker was a member, was based in Yonkers. The G.A.R. (a private organization that predates the modern-day Veterans Administration) was comprised of veterans of the Union Army, US Navy, Marines, and Revenue Cutter Service (now part of the Coast Guard), the latter of which was envisioned in 1790 by Alexander Hamilton to establish a service that would patrol the nation’s coastal waters, protecting an essential source of revenue: import tariffs, had three primary purposes: “to provide a fraternal organization for veterans and to promote the memories of war dead, to provide aid for veterans and families of war dead, and “To maintain true allegiance to the United States of America.” [38]
The G.A.R. supported voting and pension rights for black veterans who fought for the Union. Many of its Posts were integrated (including the Kitching Post, which Acker belonged to) (although Union regiments were segregated during the Civil War). Although, as noted above, the origins of Memorial Day are contested, on May 5, 1868, the G.A.R. established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. May 30th was urged as the observance day because the timing would permit flowers to be in bloom all over the country. Memorial Day is now officially the last Monday of May under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act (enacted in 1968 but not effective till 1971). The G.A.R. dissolved in 1956 when its last member, Albert Woolson died at age 106. [39]
Acker’s gravesite at Mt. Hope Cemetery (shown above) is unmarked but lies within the plot where his sister Abbie (1842-1929) and brother-in-law (Jacob L. Murden (1835-1897) (also a Civil War veteran who served in Battery C of 7th New York's Heavy Artillery and later member of the Kitching G.A.R. Post) are buried. Jacob, who died in Ardsley, began receiving a Civil War pension of $2.00/month in 1873 for a gunshot wound of the left thigh on May 19, 1864, at the Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia. [40] Murden was discharged from the Second Company, Second Battalion, Veteran Reserve Corps (which is engraved on his tombstone) on August 9, 1865, in Washington, D.C.
As reported in the “Ardsley Happenings” section of the Dobbs Ferry Register (May 2, 1902), Acker’s sister Abbie Murden moved from her Ardsley, N.Y. hotel property (advertised below) to her tenement over the grocery store of Peter B. Lynt, Ardsley’s First Postmaster whose appointment was discussed in What's In A Name? The Origins of Ardsley and the 5-Hive Murden’s Hotel, a three story, frame structure was destroyed in 1914’s “Great Ardsley Fire.” [41]
Greenburgh Register (April 30, 1886)
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The issue of divided loyalties in present-day America was the subject of a session at the American History Association’s 2019 annual meeting entitled “Divided Loyalties in the United States: Polarization and Partisanship in Contemporary America,” featuring a panel with University of Virginia historian and podcast host Nicole Hemmer. [42]
Six decades earlier, the 1960 Presidential campaign between Republican Party candidate Richard Nixon and Democratic Party Candidate John F. Kennedy brought the issues of religious freedom and assertions of divided loyalty into stark relief. No President had been a Catholic, and many Protestants believed Kennedy’s Roman Catholic faith would compel him to follow the dictates of the Vatican. [43]
According to Shaun Casey, a leading academic on the role of religion in presidential politics, and the author of The Making of a Catholic President, Kennedy received hundreds of letters from conflicted Democratic voters saying that they loved his policies but could never vote for a Catholic. [44] Sensing his political future rested on ending suspicions about his allegiances, Kennedy rejected the advice of his political consultants, such as Former House Speaker Sam Rayburn, an old-hand Texas Democrat, who warned, “They’re mostly Republicans and they’re out to get you,” and accepted the invitation to address a special meeting of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of approximately 300 Protestant ministers who had expressed skepticism if not hostility toward Kennedy as both a Catholic and a liberal which they viewed as a pretext for Marxist revolution. [45]
In an eleven-minute speech that can only be described as a rhetorical masterpiece, on September 12, 1960, Kennedy firmly addressed the theological demon plaguing his presidential candidacy with these poignant words dispelling any doubts as to his undivided loyalty to the American people should he be elected President of the United States:
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none--who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him--and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."
And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died--when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches--when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom--and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey--but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo. [46]
Senator John F. Kennedy addressing the Greater Houston Ministerial Association at the Rice Hotel, Houston, Texas [47]
Endnotes:
[1] On January 6, 1941, eleven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, in his State of the Union address, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed four “fundamental freedoms that people ‘everywhere in the world’ should enjoy: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.” Four Freedoms Park, designed by noted American architect Louis Kahn (born Itze-Leib Schmuilkowsky in present-day Estonia), is located at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island in the East River between Queens and Manhattan and celebrates the Four Freedoms set out by Roosevelt. Kahn is the subject of a fascinating documentary by his son Nathaniel Kahn (entitled “My Architect”) focussing on his father’s architectural impact and bizarre personal life of having three separate families simultaneously whose existence from each other was kept secret.
[2] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/06/hear-liberty/
[3] Williamson v. United States, September 25, 1950 reported at 184 F.2d 280. The Supreme Court has come to identify within the First Amendment a broad guarantee of “freedom for the thought that we hate,” as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described the concept in a dissent in United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929) Is hate speech legal? | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
[4] The opinions expressed in this Timepiece are solely those of the author and the Ardsley Historical Society has not expressed any opinion relating to its subject matter.
Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day originated in the years following the Civil War (often referred to as the War of the Rebellion). Many Americans observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings, and participating in parades. Unofficially, it marks the beginning of summer. The origins of Memorial Day are contested. The Black Origins of the First Memorial Day Fittingly, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1922, however, while Confederate veterans were given seats of honor as a sign of national unity, gun-toting soldiers ushered Black spectators far from the monument and behind a rope barrier to segregate them from white onlookers. A sculpture of Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William H. Seward, who arranged for purchasing what is now Alaska from Russia in 1867, was sculptured by brother and sister team Judith and David Rubin, who grew up at 31 Lincoln Road in Ardsley. Their mother, Mateel, who taught in the Ardsley’s elementary schools for 35 years, passed away on April 7, 2023, at 94. The Seward sculpture was fabricated in the basement of the Rubin’s Ardsley home. Schlepping bronze, a Ketchikan artist retraces Seward's route - Alaska Public Media Although not as direct a connection, both the Lincoln Memorial and the first Mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery (historically listed as being near Ardsley) were built under the supervision of civil engineer James Baird. The Ferncliff Cemetery Mausoleum was dedicated on Memorial Day, 1929. James Baird donated 590 acres of land in Dutchess County for a state park named for him.
[5] In 1938, Henry Nicholson of Rochester, N.Y. suggested that the name of Memorial Day be changed to “National Unity Day” as a way to stress the achievement of the members of the Grand Army of the Republic who preserved the Union and to “call regularly to public attention the need for a greater degree of single-mindedness in these contentious times.” (New York Times, May 22, 1938). The 1940 Census lists Nicholson as being a “Publicity Man” in the Advertising field. In a Letter to the Editor appearing in 1940, he urged the broadcasting industry to adopt the following slogan: “Let’s all pull for America – not against each other.” (New York Times, August 14, 1940). Notably, speeches given on Memorial Day while veterans from both sides of the Civil War were present (sometimes referred to in various parts of the country as the “Brothers War”) often emphasized reconciliation over a now resolved dispute over the Constitution. ("No more remarkable spectacle has ever been witnessed in the world's history than the healing of the differences and dissensions arising out of that awful struggle") (Oration at memorial services by General Horatio C. King, Grant Post (G.A.R), Brooklyn at the Confederate Veterans Camp, Mt. Hope Cemetery, Hastings (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 27, 1907)). Yet, two years earlier, in 1905, forty years after the end of the Civil War, an invitation by the Grant Post asking the New York Camp of Confederate Veterans to march with them on Memorial Day to show the old wounds were healing led to a threatened pullout by other G.A.R posts from the march who were opposed to marching behind those who they fought against in the war. The matter was resolved (and harmony somewhat restored) when the Confederate veterans withdrew from marching in the parade. However, both groups participated together at the exercises at Grant’s Tomb. Confederate Veterans Withdraw From Parade (New York Times, May 15, 1905). See also, Sutherland, Daniel E. “Southern Fraternal Organizations in the North.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 53, no. 4, 1987, pp. 587–612. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2208776. More partisan names for the Civil War include “Mr. Lincoln’s War,” “the Slaveholder’s Rebellion” (Frederick Douglass’s appellation), and the “War of Northern Aggression.” The term “War Between the States” is inscribed on the United States Marine Corps War Memorial ((Iwo Jima Memorial) in Arlington Cemetery (the memorial was inspired by the 1945 photograph by combat photographer Joe Rosenthal of the second raising of the flag on Mt. Suribachi (the highest point) on Iwo Jima, a volcanic island 750 miles from Tokyo). Although at the time the image was taken the flag only had 48 stars, the current flag with 50 stars is used. History of the Marine Corps War Memorial - George Washington Memorial Parkway (U.S. National Park Service)
[6] Norfolk (Nebraska) Daily News, April 28, 1905, p.3
[7] Unlike World War I and II, there was no declaration of war under the Constitution for the Vietnam conflict. In Vietnam, the military engagement with the United States is called the ‘American War” or in full, the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation.” Spector, R. H.. "Vietnam War." Encyclopedia Britannica, April 14, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War.
[8] Bombing Missions of the Vietnam War In May 1947, the United States Morale Division published a report on the Effect of Strategic Bombing on German Morale during World War 2. The report is a fascinating compendium on the impact on German morale and the efforts of the Nazi state to counter the devastating effects of strategic bombing. However, while the bombing severely impacted morale, its impacts were less pronounced on ardent Nazis and, according to one of the conclusions of the report, which was based on a survey, “The morale effects of bombing may thus prove to have had even more importance for the denazification of Germany than for hastening military defeat.”
.https://isr.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/historicPublications/Effects_300_.PDF
[9] For an analysis of America's air power doctrine as it developed over the 20th century and its application in the Vietnam War, see this informal paper by the Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education Rolling Thunder 1965: Anatomy of a Failure (noting that America’s air power doctrine was designed to fight a modern industrial state, not a rural country with few strategic targets undergoing what was essentially a bitter civil war). In the 2000s, a quote was circulated on the internet reportedly made by North Vietnamese General Giap, the strategist who defeated the French and American militaries, alleging that had America kept bombing Hanoi, the North would have surrendered. The quote is false. https://www.historynet.com/general-giap-quote/ To the contrary, Giap preternaturally predicted as early as the late 1940s that neither the French nor later the Americans could defeat the Vietnamese in their fight for independence from colonialism by observing: “The enemy will pass slowly from the offensive to the defensive. The blitzkrieg will transform itself into a war of long duration. Thus, the enemy will be caught in a dilemma: He has to drag out the war in order to win it and does not possess, on the other hand, the psychological and political means to fight a long-drawn-out war.” After the seminal Battle of Ia Drang in late 1965, the first significant encounter between American ground troops and the People’s Army of Vietnam, Giap became convinced of ultimate victory: “We thought that the Americans must have a strategy. We did. We had a strategy of people’s war. You had tactics, and it takes very decisive tactics to win a strategic victory….If we could defeat your tactics—your helicopters—then we could defeat your strategy.” Ia Drang - The Battle that Convinced Ho Chi Minh He Could Win The actual first encounter of American ground forces in Vietnam is the lesser known August 1965 Operation Starlight. The First Fight U.S. Marines in Operation Starlite August 1965 Historian Mark Moyar, in his 2022 revisionist book “Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (the second book on his planned trilogy on the Vietnam War) takes a contrary view on the issue of North Vietnamese patience in the war and whether the limited cessation of American bombing of North Vietnam announced on March 31, 1968 by President Johnson (under public pressure to do so) saved the North Vietnamese army from imminent defeat.
[10] Other local anti-war groups included “Ardsley-Hartsdale Women for Peace,” (originally “Edgemont and Ardsley-Hartsdale Women for Peace” which arose in the early 1960s advocating for a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons) and Tarrytown-Irvington’s “Committee for Negotiations.” By 1969, the Chair of Citizens to Stop the Bombing was Steven Kanor, who briefly lived in both Ardsley and Dobbs Ferry and finally settled in Hastings. Dr. Kanor’s devotion to peace was long-standing, having opposed compulsory ROTC at the University of Vermont in 1953. In 1969 he sought to represent Ardsley on the Westchester County Board of Legislators while running on the Liberal Line almost strictly on an anti-war platform (He came in third behind second-place finisher Democrat Anne Malarkey of Hastings and the Republican winner, Allen A. Richman of Greenville (now Edgemont) in a close race. Malarkey blamed Kanor for her loss) (Tarrytown Daily News, November 5, 1969) Kanor, a biomedical engineer, later became the first manufacturer of toys for children with special needs. The company (with over 700 products shipped globally and started in the basement of his Hasting’s home) is now run by his son Seth in Hawthorne. https://enablingdevices.com/our-story/ (author’s phone conversation with Seth Kanor, May 2, 2023). In 1972, while living in Ardsley, Dr. Kanor organized an impromptu demonstration by the Citizens Campaign to Stop the Bombing against then moderate Republican Congressman Peter Peyser, which marched up the Old Croton Aqueduct to the Congressman’s “white clapboard home” in Irvington (where he once was the Mayor) urging him to cut off funds for the Vietnam conflict. (The Citizen Register (Ossining, NY) May 13, 1972). In 1976, Peyser became a Democrat and defeated a young county legislator and later Assemblyman, Richard Brodsky (Ardsley High School Class of 1963). Brodsky, who owned the historic Romer-Van Tassel House on Saw Mill River Road just north of Ardsley, died from the coronavirus. Former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky dies at 73
[11] This appeal appeared in the Greenburgh Publications which consisted of The Hastings News,The Ardsley Recorder, The Dobbs Ferry Sentinel, and The Greenburgh Independent.
[12] An April 1, 2023, review in The New York Times of author George Black’s recently published book, “The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam,” observes: “A massive defoliation campaign to reduce cover for Vietnamese ambushes, known as Operation Ranch Hand, began in 1961. Soon, the U.S. government began to authorize crop destruction as well. Black describes Ranch Hand as “without precedent in history, using all the tools of science, technology and air power to lay waste to a country’s natural environment.” By contrast, when the destruction of Japan’s rice crop had been proposed in 1944, Adm. William Leahy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s chief of staff, “vetoed the idea, saying it ‘would violate every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all known laws of war.” Regarding the atom bomb, “although Leahy later wrote in his memoirs that his "own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages," historian Barton J. Bernstein noted that Leahy did not oppose its use at the time: Nor is there solid evidence that any high-ranking American military leader, other than General George C. Marshall on one occasion, expressed moral objections before Hiroshima to the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities. Nor, before Hiroshima, did any other top military leader — Admiral William Leahy, Admiral Ernest King, or General Henry Arnold – ever raise a political or military objection to the use of the A-bomb on Japanese cities or argue explicitly that it would be unnecessary. Only after the war would Leahy utter moral and political objections. William D. Leahy - Wikipedia Parenthetically, Vietnamese often use chat doc da cam (orange-colored poison) instead of chat da cam (Agent Orange) when referring to the herbicide. On Memorial Day, 1981, actor Jon Voight (who won an Oscar for his role as a disabled veteran in the movie “Coming Home”) joined a group of protesters on Memorial Day in placing a symbolic casket in the lobby of the Wadsworth Veterans Hospital (in Los Angeles]. They were demanding better medical treatment for Vietnam-era veterans by the Veterans Administration (VA) and protesting proposed VA budget cuts. They charged that the government ignored Vietnam veterans and did not provide proper care for the physical and psychological ailments allegedly caused by the Agent Orange jungle defoliant. (Daily World, May 29, 1981, p.15). The Voight family lived in Yonkers, and Jon’s younger brother Chip Taylor (b. 1940), who wrote the classic blues rock staple “Wild Thing,” spent part of his youth at the “Chat ‘N Chew” restaurant in Ardsley. From Writing ‘Wild Thing’ to Nostalgia for Yonkers. The Chat ‘N Chew was built in 1957 following the completion of the New York State Thruway exit for Ardsley. (Dobbs Ferry Sentinel, August 15, 1968)
[13] "Crack the Sky, Shake the Earth" was the message conveyed to North Vietnamese forces who were informed that they were "about to inaugurate the greatest battle in the history of our country" in connection with the offensive launched in early 1968 and again in May and August. Although these efforts failed militarily, they shattered the confidence of the American public in the war and its leaders. Giap’s prediction (discussed in footnote 4 above) had once again proven true as calls for ending the Vietnam War escalated in the United States.
[14] May 29, 1968 (“Says Bomb Halt Group Not Welcome at Parade”). The leaders of the Campaign to Stop the Bombing decided not to seek court action to permit them access to the public streets.
[15] However, as the connection with the Civil War waned, so did formal Memorial Day observances. Even at the height of World War II, some decried that Memorial Day was becoming more of an excuse for picnics than for serious contemplation of those who gave their lives for their country. “Too many people accept the day as a time of jollification or self-comfort,” proclaimed Congressman Ed Rowe of Ohio in 1943. By the 1960s, the New York Times noted that only a few thousand attended Memorial Day ceremonies and parades across New York City, while nearly 800,000 flocked to Coney Island for the beginning of summer fun.” The Evolution of Memorial Day - JSTOR Daily Notwithstanding passage of 158 years since the end of the Civil War, scholars maintain the public memory of the Civil War continues to dominate America’s collective memory even today.The Best Books on American History - Five Books Expert Recommendations.
[16] Albanese, Catherine. “Requiem for Memorial Day: Dissent in the Redeemer Nation.” American Quarterly 26, no. 4 (1974): 386–98. Requiem for Memorial Day: Dissent in the Redeemer Nation.
[17] Students' Suit on Free Speech Splits Westchester Community (April 19, 1970) The litigation which reached the United States Supreme Court was analyzed in a four-part series in the Ardsley Historical Society Newsletter (now The Beacon) and is fully searchable by using the “searchable database” downlink under The Beacon tab on the Society’s website under “The First Amendment at the Ardsley Schoolhouse Gate.” https://ardsley.historyarchives.online/home
[18] The New York Times (May 5, 1995). Halpern was a well known therapist and Self-Help Author. Obituary, January 1, 2012
[19] Channeling the arguably dominant anti-interventionist sentiment of the 1930s, then President Franklin Roosevelt, a veteran of World War 1, in an August 14, 1936, speech given in Chautauqua, New York, laden with references to promoting peace and the angst that would be known to mothers like Ransom, famously proclaimed:
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line — the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
[20] ‘Spare us your prayers’: Ted Cruz faces backlash after Texas mall shooting kills eight
[21] The Guardian view on local journalism’s decline: bad news for democracy | Editorial
[22] In the past, Ardsley’s Memorial Day ceremony was marred by displaying a banner containing the jingoistic and historically inaccurate claim (albeit arguably not maliciously intended to be) “If you can read, thank a teacher, if you are reading this in English, thank a veteran.” Among other things, this nativist view of language ignores the fact that beginning in World War I and most prominently in World War II, Native American code talkers (i.e., those who use their tribal language to send secret messages on the battlefield) were pivotal to the American military’s success in war (“The irony of being asked to use their Native languages to fight on behalf of America was not lost on code talkers, many of whom had been forced to attend government or religious-run boarding schools that tried to assimilate Native peoples and would punish students for speaking in their traditional language”). In response to this “English only” sentiment, others have stated, “If you are reading this in English, thank a Code Talker.” American Indian Code Talkers Implying that the defense of the English language was critical to the war’s mission ignores not only the Native American Code Talkers upon which so much depended but the benefit and importance to the success of the United States in war as a multilingual society. Americans who spoke German and Japanese served as effective spies during WWII. Since that time, the translators have been indispensable during the most recent American conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as have the ability of diplomats and intelligence officials who speak two or more languages which is crucial to maintaining our national security. Finally, Memorial Day is a day to remember the deceased, not the living. That is only appropriate on Veterans Day.
[23] Addyman Square slated for facelift in fall | Ardsley | rivertownsenterprise.net
[24] The following testimony from a 1958 court case (Attoram Realty Corp. v. Town of Greenburgh) explained what was sold at The Igloo, which, during the time it was operated by William Yale Brinkerhoff, was known as Daddy Bill’s:
Q. Was there an establishment known as the Igloo?
A. North on the corner of Dobbs Ferry Road and Saw Mill River Road there was a gas station and an Igloo.
Q. And the Igloo was a refreshment stand for the sale of frankfurters and ice cream ?
A. Yes, that’s right.
Ardsley banned the sale of fireworks in 1931 after a spate of injuries and noise complaints. On May 12, 2023, the Village’s Recreation Department sponsored a food truck event in Pascone Park that featured a dazzling fireworks display depicted on the thumbnail image to this Timepiece (photo courtesy of Blake Rappaport). The 1939 World’s Fair was built by Robert Moses on land that was a forlorn ash pit. To cover the ash, Moses contracted with landowners in still undeveloped Westchester to remove large amounts of dirt from the County, including according to local lore, parts of Ardsley.Westchester Soil is Stripped by Fair (“Adoption by the Westchester County Village Officials Association of a protest against the removal of top soil from the county for use on the World's Fair grounds and New York's Henry Hudson Parkway was announced here today.”) The New York Times, May 14, 1938
[25] As was customary for the era, the brochure contained the following: “Ardsley Acres Lots are carefully and adequately Restricted for your Protection,” indicating the deeds likely contained racial covenants. Ardsley Acres Real Estate Brochure For a general overview of the history of racial covenants in residential housing and why they may have become more prevalent during the 1920s as was the case with Ardsley Acres, see Racially Restrictive Covenants in the United States John G.S. Swanston, one of the developers, pitched the idea of renaming the village to “Ardsley-on-the-Parkway” to distinguish it from “Ardsley-on-the-Hudson.” The image of the Ardsley Acres development in the brochure was an aerial shot turned into a watercolor as part of Swanston's creative approach to real estate marketing.
[26] All of the Ardsley Historical Society’s newsletters and past issues of The Beacon and The Timepiece are now fully accessible via the “searchable database” entry under the Society’s website link for The Beacon. A bivouac is a temporary encampment without tents or covers used particularly by soldiers. The O’Hara poem (originally written in 1847 for Kentuckians who died in the 1846-1848 Mexican War) is inscribed on the gates of Arlington National Cemetery. As shown in the below photograph, Gertrude Walter is standing in front of an “Arlington” flag. Bivouac Of The Dead - By Theodore O'Hara (Written in memory of the Kentucky troops killed in the Mexican War - 1847)
[27] Carey, Miya. “Becoming ‘a Force for Desegregation: The Girl Scouts and Civil Rights in the Nation’s Capital.” Washington History, vol. 29, no. 2, 2017, pp. 52–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/90015025
[28] At Ardsley High School she was the associate editor of the Ardsleyan, Secretary of the Senior Class, Second Lieutenant of the Girl Scouts and Chairman of the luncheon committee. She was also a Charter member of the Clef and Arts and Crafts clubs, and for two years took part in the Senior play. Walter lived at 17 Orlando Avenue in Ardsley.
[29] Blinded by the Light was Springsteen’s debut single as well. Fifty years ago, Record World, in commenting on the release, opined: “Tune should start Springsteen off toward a bright future.” (March 19, 1973) p. 12 Record World Single Picks Springsteen is one of America’s most successful singer-songwriters with a net worth of $700 million.
[30] The song’s working title was “Vietnam Blues.” Although Springsteen is sometimes viewed as a “working class hero” (the title of a John Lennon song from his eponymous first album after the break-up of The Beatles), Springsteen admitted in his Broadway show that he never had a 9-5 job (or any position on a factory floor or otherwise) and that he schemed his way out the military draft during the Vietnam War era first by his aunt pulling some strings allowing him to enroll in a community college and then by faking a form of mental illness by appearing to be high on LSD. Some commentators have posited that Springsteen’s myth-making harmonizes with his musical heritage as a troubadour in the no-name bars and clubs along the carnival-like boardwalks of the New Jersey Shore. An accurate and actual nickname for Springsteen, a master showman who performs epic multi-hour concerts, is “The Boss.” Boss: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - The Illustrated History Except for an obscure song he wrote and performed once in 1970 about the killings of four unarmed Kent State University students while fronting a hard rock band called Steel Mill on June 19th –just 46 days after the shootings – at The String Factory in Richmond, Virginia, entitled “Where was Jesus in Ohio?,” according to Ken Rosaler, Ardsley High School Class of 1969, sports editor of The Ardsley Panther, musician, and Springsteen expert, Springsteen was largely apolitical until appearing at the “No Nukes” concert at Madison Square Garden in September 1979. Rosaler appeared on the cover of the Woodstock soundtrack album and was also at the “No Nukes” concert (where he can be briefly seen in a movie of the concert) organized by the activist group Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) against the use of nuclear energy. “Reviewing [a later album of Springsteen’s set at the concert] for Pitchfork, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said the audio recording and accompanying film (The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts) "flesh out a pivotal moment in Springsteen's rise to superstardom, providing the first professionally recorded and filmed glimpse of the E Street Band at full roar.” Bruce Springsteen / The E Street Band: The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts Album Review | Pitchfork
[31] RENEGADE_The Rising_Final Transcript_3-29-21 Other than Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen’s best-known song is 1975’s “Born to Run,” where the first line of the song is “In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream.” “Here Springsteen is cutting right at the heart of the mythos of the American Dream. It’s a “runaway” just always barely out of reach for those that want and need it the most.” Curiously, as Renegades reveals, Springsteen is more popular overseas, where he finds foreign audiences are still fascinated by America, compelling him to create a sound as big as the country itself. Equally anomalous is that outside of the first verse of the Springsteen song “Glory Days,” which appears on the Born in the U.S.A. album, and Bob Dylan’s “bootlegged” song “Catfish,” a tribute to future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Catfish Hunter, neither Springsteen nor Dylan, America’s greatest singer-songwriter, have written much about the national pastime. Legendary Yankee baseball player Lou Gehrig delivered his memorable farewell address at the former Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. Gehrig’s speech, a mere 277 words, has been called "Baseball's Gettysburg Address” due to its emotional impact and a feeling of humility, perseverance, and devotion to a cause bigger than oneself. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (spoken on November 19, 1863, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg) contains 272 words and is engraved on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial. Gherig (known as the “Iron Horse for playing 2,130 consecutive games from 1925 to 1939), is buried in Kensico Cemetery, in Valhalla.
[32] Three Minute Records: 4th of July (as the blog post about the song details, 4th of July was not released on Surf’s Up, the Beach Boys 17th studio album due to a schism as to the direction of the band. The cover image for Surf’s Up is based on an acclaimed but controversial sculpture by James Earle Fraser (“End of the Trail”). Fraser’s prominent works in Washington, D.C are discussed in Does History Take Sides? — Ardsley Historical Society ); The Beach Boys (dubbed “America’s Band”), headlined the July 4th concerts held on the National Mall in the 1980s. Locally, Revolutionary Westchester 250 (as well as the Friends of Odell House Rochambeau Headquarters) are spearheading the effort to highlight Westchester’s role in the American Revolution.
[33] The Ward Family and the American Revolution David Osborn, Site Manager, St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site. “The Ward family, an influential Eastchester family dating back to the late seventeenth century, had sorely divided loyalties. Two brothers, both of considerable economic and social stature prior to the war, cast their lots with opposing sides—Stephen with the Americans, Edmund with the British—thereby severing their ties for years to come.” Caught Between the Lines: Eastchester, New York, During the American Revolution On July 11, 1776, Stephen Ward was present on the White Plains Courthouse steps when the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time to the people of the newly formed State of New York. Timeline — Friends of the Ward House, Inc. The Ardsley Historical Society was one of several local historical societies which supported the Village of Tuckahoe's successful landmarking of The Ward House.
[34] “The role of the American Indian during the American Revolution was a shadowy and tragic one… It was shadowy not only because the Indian operated physically from the interior forests of North America and made his presence felt suddenly and violently on the seaboard settlements, but because the Indian was present also in the subconscious mind of the colonists as a central ingredient in the conflict with the Mother Country.” Indians and the American Revolution. Buried in the Declaration of Independence is the final grievance by the Continental Congress against British King George III when Jefferson wrote that George had "endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." This alleged wrong has been criticized as hypocritical as the American revolutionaries sought to recruit the Indian Nations to their side. Among others, the Oneida Nation supported the colonists. Additionally, the signers of the Declaration also accused the King of endeavoring “to prevent the population of these States” which refers to the efforts of the British to prevent further colonization of Native American lands. The Declaration of Independences – The Twenty-Seven Grievances
[35] Frederick Douglass, “What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” | NEH-Edsitement
[36] On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed a law with bipartisan support making Juneteenth a federal legal holiday. The official name of Juneteenth is “Juneteenth National Independence Day.” S.475 - Juneteenth National Independence Day Act 117th Congress (2021-2022) Juneteenth has been referred to as America’s Other Independence Day.Juneteenth: Our Other Independence Day | History| Smithsonian Magazine
[37] The address continues with the following reminder from the Declaration of Independence: “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The Declaration of Independence continued to inspire other efforts to oppose colonialism. For example, on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi. The first line of his speech repeated verbatim the second paragraph of America’s July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence:
All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
[38] The Civil War in Westchester
[39] Establishment of Local G.A.R. Posts · Civil War Five American presidents were enrolled in the G.A.R in connection with their Civil War military service: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley. “The fate of some presidential elections was dependent upon the candidate's support of GAR-sponsored pension bills. President Grover Cleveland was defeated for re-election in 1888 in large part because of his veto of a Dependent Pension Bill. President Benjamin Harrison was elected because of his definite commitment to support pension legislation.” Grand Army of the Republic and Kindred Societies: A Guide to Resources in the General Collections of the Library of Congress
[40] 7th New York Heavy Artillery Regiment's Civil War Newspaper Clippings
[41] Four Perish in Fire, Ten Buildings Burn (The New York Times, December 7, 1914, p. 6) Preternaturally, Abbie Murden was a charter member of the Daughters of Rebecca, a women’s service organization (as the female auxiliary of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows) whose name honors the biblical character who offered hospitality to a humble stranger. Obituary, The Herald Statesman, Yonkers, New York, Tuesday, August 6, 1929, p. 18
[42] From the program description: “Drawing on their own recent publications as well as a growing literature in contemporary American history, the roundtable participants will discuss the origins and impact of increasing levels of partisanship and polarization in American political life, the steady fragmentation of traditional media with special attention to the influence of new social media, the widening of the economic gap between rich and poor, and the fracturing of the American people along lines of race, gender, sexuality and class.” Divided Loyalties in the United States: Polarization and Partisanship in Contemporary America
[43] As related in co-host Nicole Hemmer’s podcast “This Day in Esoteric Political History,” anti-Catholic bigotry was a strong element in a little-known assassination attempt on President-elect Kennedy on December 15, 1960 in Palm Beach, Florida. https://pod.link/thisday/episode/555fe5c19106aa8dfdb024bcec55961e Four term New York Governor Alfred Smith (1873-1944), who ran as the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 1928 and was the first Roman Catholic to be nominated by a major political party, was subjected to extreme anti-Catholic bigotry including anti-Smith pamphlets that asked voters, “For Hoover and America, or For Smith and Rome. Which? Think it over Americans.” Smith was defeated by Herbert Hoover in a landslide due in part not only to religious intolerance, but over his opposition to prohibition of the sale of alcohol, which was favored by many Protestant ministers, and Smith’s support for racial equality. Smith, who, after losing in 1928, became president of the Empire State Building Corporation which constructed and operated the Empire State Building, later became an opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal and endorsed Roosevelt’s Republican opponents for the presidency in 1936 (Alfred Landon) and 1940 (Wendell Wilkie). Smith was awarded a gold medal in 1926 by Adolph Lewisohn for his work on prison reform. Smith and Pinchot Get Prison Medals The award ceremony was held in Ardsley at Heatherdell Farm but unexpectedly Smith was unable to attend. (New York Times, June 13, 1926, p. 25)
[44] The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (2009)
[45] “Senator Barry Goldwater, the far-right Arizona Republican, described Kennedy’s platform as a “blueprint for socialism.” Religious critics combined Cold War fears of creeping socialism with anti-Catholic conspiracies, which, of course, made little logical sense given the Soviet regime’s intolerance toward organized religion. “[T]he heart of the communist menace,” declared one Protestant organization, stems from “the threat of Roman Catholic control of our culture.” Houston had a deep history of rabid anti-Catholicism, enforced unofficially but effectively during the Roaring ’20s by the Ku Klux Klan. The Kennedy Speech that Stoked the Rise of the Christian Right
[46] Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association | JFK Library Rabbi Hyman Judah Schachtel of Houston’s Temple Beth Israel, one of the handful of non-Protestant ministers present, became a close personal friend of Lyndon B. Johnson, delivered the inaugural prayer at President Johnson's inauguration in Washington, D.C. on January 20, 1965. Three years after his appearance in Houston, Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas, Texas, itself a center for ultraconservative reactionary politics which Kennedy described to his wife (who was donning a new pink Chanel dress) on the morning of November 22, 1963 as “Nut Country.” Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy Although several other Catholics have run for vice-president, including Republican William Miller (with Barry Goldwater in 1964), and Democrats Ed Muskie (with Hubert Humphrey in 1968), and Geraldine Ferraro (with Walter Mondale in 1984), President Joe Biden was the first Roman Catholic vice-president of the United States. Mike Pence, Trump's vice-president, was reared as a Catholic but converted to Evangelicalism. Although she was introduced to Hinduism as a child and is the nation's first female vice-president, Kamala Harris identifies as a Baptist although she married her husband Doug Emhoff in a Jewish wedding. Biden’s Catholicism was a seemingly insignificant issue in the 2020 presidential election.
[47] President John F. Kennedy visited the Rice Hotel on September 12, 1962, following his "We choose to go to the moon" speech and on November 21, 1963, before traveling to Fort Worth, and then Dallas, where he was assassinated. Kennedy used a suite at the Rice Hotel to hold meetings, which was supplied with caviar, champagne, and his favorite beer. After a brief visit by the Kennedys at a League of United Latin American Citizens event at the Rice Hotel (where the first lady thrilled the attendees by speaking in Spanish Jacqueline Kennedy's Speech in Spanish) and after giving a speech at the Albert Thomas Convention Center, Kennedy returned to his Rice Hotel suite for a change of clothes. After less than six hours in Houston, he headed to the airport for his flight to Fort Worth. After the assassination, the attending physicians sensed the wounds were too severe so a Catholic priest was summoned to Parkland Hospital to administer the last rites. John F. Kennedy, 46, was declared dead at 1:00 pm on November 22, 1963, 25 minutes after arriving at the hospital's emergency entrance. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency and the youngest at the end of his time in office.