Sixty years ago, April 22, 1964, heralded the opening day of The New York World’s Fair, which was ostensibly planned to celebrate the tri-centennial of the founding of New York City. [1] As the image on the balloon shown below indicates, the centerpiece and symbol of the Fair was the 350-ton, 120-foot-diameter stainless steel globe known as the Unisphere.  Designed by Gilmore D. Clarke, one of the most accomplished landscape architects of the 20th century on the back of an envelope, and fabricated by a division of U.S. Steel, it remains the world's largest world.

However, the site of the 1964 World’s Fair, where 25 years earlier, the 1939 World’s Fair (a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington in New York) was held, was a mere interlude of the long-term but unrealized dream (going back four decades earlier to the 1920s) of master builder Robert Moses to transform an area in Queens known as Flushing Meadows, described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby as “the valley of ashes,” into a great urban oasis bearing the name Robert Moses Park. [2] While wrapped up in the lofty platitudinal and ambiguous theme of the Fair’s purpose of  achieving “Peace through Understanding,” for Moses, the 1964 World’s Fair was a bit of a subterfuge, a fleeting sideshow of temporary pavilions that would allow him to use the Fair’s revenues and Federal, state and local government and sponsor funds to finally build the infrastructure (e.g., landscaping, lighting, and roadways to transform the “valley of ashes” of incinerated waste [3] into the 20th-century equivalent of the 19th century’s Central Park in Manhattan. [4] Notably, Moses’s biographer, Robert Caro, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Power Broker, Robert Moses and the Rise and Fall of New York, quotes Moses as enigmatically asking: “If the ends don't justify the means, what does?” [5]

World’s Fairs have never lacked critics. As far back as 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, which was held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492, was subjected to a campaign led by Ida Wells and fellow African American activists to boycott the Columbian World’s Fair World based on its intentional exclusion African American history and portraying the African American community in a negative light. [6]

The 1939 New York World’s Fair, which chose as its theme “The World of Tomorrow,” was legitimately subjected to complaints that African Americans were offered insignificant amounts of employment at the Fair and at best, only menial work by the Fair’s president Grover Whalen. 

Whalen, who once headed Wanamaker’s Department Store and after becoming New York City’s Police Commissioner at the request of Mayor Jimmy Walker, was tapped by Mayor La Guardia to take charge of the 1939 Fair. As deftly told by American historian Claudia Keenan in her “Through the Hourglass” blog post  Wanamaker, Ogden, Whalen & Powell: A Story about Race, Wanamaker’s had long been a beacon for racial equality. It had resisted efforts after World War 1 to fire its negro elevator operators in favor of returning white veterans. However, such racial benevolence would change under Whalen who re-segregated the department store’s lunchrooms. Concerning the World’s Fair, Keenan’s post recounts:  

“In his autobiography, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives, recalled visiting Whalen around 1935 just after the former police commissioner had been named chair of the New York World’s Fair Corporation.  The fair would open in 1939. We went to ask him for employment for qualified Negro people.  He offered us token jobs.  We refused them.  The slogan of the fair was “Building the World of Tomorrow,” and I can remember telling Grover Whalen: “You cannot have a World of Tomorrow from which you have excluded colored people.” Mr. Whalen, suave and urbane, smiled beneath his carefully trimmed mustache and said, “I do not see why the world of today or tomorrow of necessity has to have colored people playing an important role.”

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This ignominious history aside, the 1939 World’s Fair  had a profound impact on shaping the cultural and technological landscape of the 20th century, showcasing futuristic innovations and setting the stage for post-war optimism and progress captured in E.L. Doctorow’s 1985 book “World’s Fair,” a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the 1939 World’s Fair where the protagonist, Edgar, a young boy, witnesses the excitement and wonder of the fair as it competes with a world on the brink of transformation with the coming of World War II on the heels of the September 1, 1939, Nazi invasion of Poland shortly after the Fair opened. [7] Towards the end of “World Fair,” Edgar, in imitation of the fair's organizers who had created a time capsule which was not to see the light of day for 5,000 years, [8] plants his personal time capsule in Claremont Park in the Morrisania section of the Bronx.

Similarly, the Carrier Corporation’s “Igloo of Tomorrow” exhibit at the 1939 Fair, which advanced refrigeration and air conditioning as the technologies that provided “individual fulfillment and human progress,” [9] served as the inspiration for Ardsleyan Edward Aim [10] to build “The Igloo,” which was described in a 1958 court case concerning an effort by the residents of Worthington to block the commercialization of Saw Mill River Road just north of Ardsley (and now the site of several medical and other offices at the Ardsley Professional Center between Sylvia Avenue and Secor Road  in the following testimony:

Carrier Corporation “Igloo” at the 1939 World’ Fair

Dobbs Ferry Register, August 11, 1939

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In 1959,  just three months after he acceded to the Papal throne, John Paul XXIII shocked the Catholic Church with his call for what became known as the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II which sought to renew and update the Catholic Church in response to the modern world, encourage dialogue with other religious traditions (both Christian and non-Christian), and initiate reforms within the Church to make its teachings more accessible and relevant to the faithful while still upholding its core doctrines and traditions. [11] One of the reforms was encouraging that the liturgy (which are prescribed forms of public worship) be held in the local language of the congregation rather than in the traditional Latin which had become less accessible to people over time. It was contended that allowing this shift permitted worshippers to engage more fully with the prayers, readings, and other elements of the Mass in a language they understood. [12]

The spirit of Vatican II would soon reach the Western Hemisphere in two startling ways. First was an article in the March 29, 1962, edition of The New York Times with the following header:

The “Michelangelo Art” was not the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica which Michelangelo (1475-1564) had painted in fresco between 1508 and 1512, but instead his Pieta, a Carrara marble sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the crucified body of Jesus carved by Michelangelo from a single block of marble between 1498-1499. [13] The work, commissioned by French Cardinal Jean de Bilhères de Lagraulas, who lived in Rome as the ambassador to the Holy See for the French monarchy, was planned as an altarpiece for his funeral chapel in the Old St Peter's. In the nearly five centuries following its creation, it had never left Rome. 

 Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pietà. 1499.  In St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican.

“When The New York Times published the announcement that Pope John XXIII would allow the loan of the Pieta, it hit the art world like an atom bomb. First of all, the Italians were offended that this treasure would be sent to, what they viewed as, a carnival. How would we feel if the Chinese asked us to send over the Statue of Liberty for their trade show! Also, it would mean that the Pieta would be overseas for the 400th anniversary of Michelangelo's death.

Then there were the art historians who feared the Pieta would be damaged, and of course, that was always a possibility. The team that Cardinal Spellman assembled to arrange the shipment were experts in their field and carefully studied all options. [14] The sculpture was even x-rayed by Kodak while still at St. Peter's to check for any fissures, and they confirmed, as Michelangelo had always said, there were none. Nevertheless, it was a risk.” [15]

Signed photograph of F. Cardinal Spellman in the lobby of the OLPH School in Ardsley dated October 16, 1960 (Day of Dedication) inscribed to Ardsley OLPH Msgr. William T. Greene who served as OLPH’s longest Pastor for two decades (1956 to 1976).

As part of the preparations, two copies of the Pieta were made; one was transported by plane, the other by ship to assess the safest method of shipping the massive yet fragile work. One of the replicas is displayed in St. Joseph’s Seminary in the Dunwoodie section of Yonkers. 

How the Pieta came to be exhibited at the Vatican’s pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair is shrouded in intrigue but something previously thought unbelievable that could not have occurred in the absence of the unique relationship of New York’s unrivaled princes of power,  Moses and Spellman. [16] As astutely noted in the description of Nelson’s forthcoming book:

Driven by different motives, Robert Moses and Francis Cardinal Spellman had the same vision: to display Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Pietà, in the Vatican's pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in New York City…Moses believed this blockbuster would guarantee the fair's financial success. At the same time, Spellman, Archbishop of New York and the spiritual leader of Cold War America's Catholic community, hoped that at a time of domestic strife and global conflict, Pietà's presence would have a positive spiritual impact on the nation.

“Ultimately, there was only one piece that combined drawing power with a suitably religious theme: Michelangelo’s Pietà, … “one of the most moving and dramatic statues ever made and represents one of the finest examples of Italy’s greatest sculptor.” Since there were no Michelangelo sculptures in the United States, its uniqueness would add to the attraction; but more importantly, it carried a deeply religious theme that would be most appropriate for the Vatican pavilion.” [17]

Since its creation, the Pieta has been seen as the ultimate expression of artistic genius.  In his magnum opus Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (a biography of Italian artists first published in 1550), Giorgio Vasari, considered the father of art history, triumphantly praised Michelangelo’s unparalleled Pieta with these words:

“It is indeed a miracle that a block of stone, formless at the beginning, was brought to such perfection which nature habitually struggles to create in flesh! No other sculptor, not even the most rare artist with all his hard work, can ever reach this level of design and grace.”

The obstacles to moving the Pieta from its home in the Vatican were monumentally equal to the singular magnificence of the Pieta.  Italy’s government was unwilling to provide a pavilion, the Bureau of International Expositions refused to sanction the Fair, the Fair encountered difficulties in enlisting Italian industries such as Fiat to participate, and the conservative practices of the Church hierarchy itself (coupled with the risk of damage to an irreplaceable object that represented the Roman Catholic Church and the Italian Renaissance) made the whole improbable undertaking fraught with risk. “Then there was the criticism from within the American Catholic Church from those who simply didn't like Spellman, and by protesting the loan of the Pieta, indirectly took a swipe at the cardinal. [18] And, in that same vein, the Fair was a proxy for Robert Moses, and the press took aim.” [19]

Moses, in his characteristically caustic manner when it came to criticism, was ready to return fire: 

The June 3, 1963, death of Pope John XIII, who granted Cardinal Spellman the favor of allowing the Pieta to travel to New York, gave opponents of the loan a final opportunity to lobby the new Vatican leadership to annul the decision to loan the Pieta, which allegedly due to public pressure, John XIII had been considering. The effort failed. 

Fourth Bishop of Brooklyn Bryan J. McEntegart congratulates Captain Guiseppe Soletti (left) of the Cristoforo Columbo as he delivers the Pieta to the West Side piers prior to its move to the Vatican Pavilion

As the April 22 opening day approached, a new threat emerged, a planned “stall in” by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) [20] to block the very roads Moses had spent his career building. The Brooklyn chapter of CORE announced plans for a fair exhibit of their own: hundreds, if not thousands, of stalled cars on the highways leading to the fairgrounds, tying up traffic for hours and preventing hundreds of thousands of eager fair patrons from entering the gates. Isiah Brunson, the soft-spoken 22-year-old and chairman of Brooklyn CORE, explained it this way:

“We are having the stall-in to shut off traffic at the World’s Fair because the city and the state have seen fit to spend millions and millions of dollars to build the World’s Fair, but have not seen fit to eliminate the problems of Negroes and Puerto Ricans in New York City”.

Due to overwhelming public condemnation by public officials (New York City Mayor Robert Wagner somewhat hysterically called the activists’ plan “a gun to the heart of the city”) and the media, and the quick passage of a law making it illegal to intentionally run out of gas on a New York City roadway, the protest stalled.  However, a combination of bad weather and possibly the excess coverage of the planned “stall in” kept the crowds away on opening day. [21]

Despite its derision as a paean to corporate America (whose pavilions dominated the Fair’s 845-acre expanse), and hindered by the absence of exhibits from Canada and most major European countries, visitors who came to Flushing Meadows (and braved long lines and the heat) loved the Fair as can be attested to by the nostalgic (and occasionally romanticized) views posted by attendees on the Fair’s Facebook page and elsewhere. [22] Deborah C, a retired attorney, now living in Edgemont, but at the time of the Fair, lived in the outer reaches of working-class Queens, fondly remembered the World’s Fair, the way the 1939 World’s Fair had done for Edgar, as a formative, electrifying, and magical experience which held out the possibility of a better future. She vividly recalls seeing the Pieta at the popular Vatican pavilion where she obtained a copy of one of the prayer books offered for sale (shown below) which she has kept in her library as a treasured heirloom for over six decades. In the preface to Our Lady of the World’s Fair, author Ruth Nelson, who attended the Fair on a family vacation wrote, “Nothing quite compares to the memory of the excitement, the color, and the magical fantasy of a visit to the fair. It was a dream world in real life.” 

As for the Pieta, for “most of the 14 million who saw it … it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That was the ambition of every world’s fair—and the accomplishment of only a few.”  However, in a scathing critique penned by  The New York Times’s leading art critic John Canaday of the Pieta’s blue light setting at the Vatican’s pavilion, he found the sculpture, “an elaborate complicated work that has been wrenched from its harmonious architectural surroundings in the Vatican,” which, at the Fair, faced by three levels of automatic belts that carry passengers past it, has “an air of waiting, of enduring the well-intentioned indignity until it can go back home where it belongs.” Nevertheless, Canady conceded seeing the Pieta in this forum was better than not seeing it all. [23] Eight days after the Pope’s visit, 500 Ardsley residents attended the World’s Fair on “Ardsley Day” where 80 members of the high School band gave a half hour concert under the direction of Ardsley’s legendary music teacher Joseph Greco.

The proceeds from the sale of books and souvenirs (including miniature Pietas) would help pay for the second unprecedented event that can be attributed to Vatican II, the visit in early October 1965 of Pope Paul VI to New York City, the first Roman Catholic Pontiff to journey to the Western hemisphere.  In a whirlwind 14-hour visit, after arriving at JFK Airport, the Pope traveled a 24-mile motorcade route into Manhattan where he led a prayer service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, followed by a private meeting with President Lyndon Johnson at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Paul VI then returned to Cardinal Spellman’s residence, where he dedicated a plaque commemorating the visit.

At 3:00 p.m., he addressed the General Assembly in French where he promoted peace in a manner consistent with the then expanded theme of the World’s Fair, to wit, “Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,” and then led a second interfaith prayer service at the Church of the Holy Family, the United Nations parish church. The Pontiff then traveled to the old Yankee Stadium where he celebrated mass before a massive crowd of nearly 100,000. [24] The Pope’s visit ended with a stop at the Vatican pavilion of the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows (where he saw his roommate, the Pieta), before departing back to Italy from JFK Airport.

Oddly at the time of the Pope’s visit, the United States and the Vatican did not have diplomatic relations, reflecting an American skittishness about the relations of Church and State. However, by every measure the Pope’s appearance was a stunning success, and perhaps the last time one individual commanded the attention of the entire world.  The New York Times opined in an editorial praising the Pope’s address to the United Nations General Assembly (“the high point of his brief, historic trip to the United States”), that it “was a powerful and moving reminder to the nations of the world of the first principles and basic interests they hold in common in the age of nuclear weapons.” Presciently, as the Times noted, the Pope reminded the nations of the world that  “The world has become a single city; the task now is to make it a single community” by each member country doing its share to advance the cause of peace. [25]

On November 13th, 1965, the Pieta returned safely to its home in St. Peter’s Basilica where Cardinal Spellman was on hand in Rome to witness its arrival, another event that would not reoccur as “In response to the Italian outrage that Michelangelo’s most famous work was missing for the four hundredth anniversary of his death, in September 1965 the Vatican banned shipment of all its artworks.” [26]

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Six years after the Pieta’s miraculous arrival in New York, the global village foreseen by the Pope would witness a strikingly similar image of  grief, this time created in an instant by the hands of a 21-year-old photographer.  

In 1970, on average, seventeen American servicemen lost their lives each day in Vietnam. But on May 4, 1970, a helicopter crash around 11:30 p.m. resulted in seven more fatalities making it a sorrowfully above-average day.  May 4, 2024, is also the 54th anniversary of arguably the most infamous unsolved mass murder in American history: The Ohio National Guard's indiscriminate killing of four unarmed Kent State University students.

A compelling answer to why the massacre happened has eluded the world despite consideration by The Report of The President's Commission on Civil Unrest (the "Scranton Commission"), innumerable books including the recent "67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence" by Howard Means, music (the anthemic "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; "Student Demonstration Time" by The Beach Boys,  or "Where Was Jesus in Ohio" by the then-unknown Bruce Springsteen), [27] and years of litigation including a landmark decision on governmental immunity by the United States Supreme Court which permitted a wrongful death action by the parents of the murdered children.

After President Nixon announced on April 30, 1970, that he was expanding the undeclared Vietnam War into neutral Cambodia, civil disturbances rocked the city of Kent and nearby Kent State University. At the request of Mayor Leroy Strom, Ohio Governor James Rhodes (a candidate in an upcoming Senate primary election scheduled for Tuesday, May 6, where he was trailing), and likely seeking to burnish his "law and order" credentials, rushed the National Guard, who were completing tense duty at a nearby month-long wildcat teamster's strike in Northeast Ohio, to Kent. On the morning of May 3, after the weekend burning of the campus ROTC building, which Rhodes claimed at a press conference without proof was caused by "the worst people in America," he lashed out at the protestors with incendiary and politically calculated rhetoric: "We're going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms."

The next day, Ohio National Guard General Del Corso promised reporters he would use "any force necessary even to the point of shooting" to maintain campus order.” In opposition to the war's escalation and the subsequent campus takeover by nearly one thousand members of the Ohio National Guard (now regarded as the domestic alter-ego of an increasingly unpopular war), Kent State students held a demonstration at noon on Monday, May 4. Tear gas and a show of force by the Guard's fixed bayonets had mostly dispersed the mid-day assembly. However, Guard Commander Robert Canterbury, who had just arrived on campus and was still wearing civilian clothing, startled his troops as they retreated to a skirmish line by ordering them to: "Make sure you have your weapons in ready position." Lethal for half a mile away, the M1 rifles shouldered by the Guards had an explosive power able "to shift a 500-pound object four feet on impact." A college campus, inflamed by the hysteria of civilian and military officials, was poised to become a killing field. Moments later, at 12:24 p.m., twenty minutes after the helicopter crash half a world away in Vietnam resulted in the pointless loss of another seven American lives, twenty-eight Guardsmen spun around in unison, assumed the position of a firing squad, and turned the campus into a battlefield by firing sixty-seven shots over thirteen-seconds into an ill-fated group of protestors, onlookers, and students heading to class. 

Four students were slain. Nine undergraduates were wounded, including Dean Kahler, whose father fought in WWII with the same M1 rifles employed by the Guard, paralyzing him for life. Nine of the thirteen victims were shot in the back or on the side. This unsettling fact refuted the Guard's claims (later determined to be fabricated) that they needed to use lethal force to defend their lives. Notably, Some Guardsmen did fire into the air or in the ground.

Scranton Commission member James A. Ahern, in his 1972 book "Police in Trouble," provided one plausible answer to why some members of the Ohio National Guard fired a barrage of bullets into a crowd: "A group of bedraggled, ill-trained, poorly led… people who happened to be wearing National Guard uniforms - an army in a police situation - marched among "the enemy"… their rifles locked and loaded. Short on sleep and patience, caught in a crowd they had been assured was antagonistic toward everything they held sacred, a few of them came to see the Kent State campus as a free-fire zone." Although neither the Scranton Commission nor a subsequent federal investigation discovered a direct order to fire, Kent State Emeritus Professor of Sociology Jerry Lewis, who has written extensively on the May 1970 events, skeptically asked: "If there wasn't an agreement or order to fire, how do you account for the Guardsman turning together in unison?" [28] Further investigation has revealed the possible use of hand signals ordering the Guardsmen to discharge their weapons. A recording made on a dormitory windowsill of the events immediately before and during the slayings arguably revealed an order to fire. However, it lacked sufficient audio clarity to support the filing of charges by the Department of Justice. 

Although the Scranton Commission found that while some of the actions of the students were both violent and criminal as well as dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible, it concluded the Guard's "indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed was unjustified, unwarranted, and inexcusable." Yet, no one has ever been held accountable for the deaths of these four Americans. Notably, the slaughter raises the same grievances our forefathers asserted against the King of England in the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence, to wit, "rendering the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power" and "protecting them ... from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States." Ironically, The London Times understood this American injustice by observing: "An Ohio grand jury absolved the Kent State Guard of any guilt in the deaths of four students, even though they indubitably killed them." 

The ashes of one of the slain, 20-year-old Jeffery Glenn Miller of Plainview, New York, are in a mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery, just north of Ardsley Village, but in its school district. Miller is the sophomore lying dead on the ground with blood pouring from his lifeless body in front of a grief-stricken Mary Ann Vecchio captured in John Filo's iconic (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) image of that fatal day, which ricocheted over the front pages of the world’s newspapers (and is now a fixture in history books). [29]

“Professor Lewis compares the drama of the Mary Ann Vecchio photograph to nothing less than Michelangelo's renowned religious sculpture The Pieta ... Both the Vecchio photo and …the 500-year-old marble sculpture are “framed as pyramids with the top being the heads of two Marys while the bases are outdoor scenes with the earth for the Pieta and the tarmac of a Kent State University parking lot for Jeffrey Miller. The Mary Vecchio picture shows the shock and horror of the shootings at Kent State by the look on Mary's face. Next, her upraised hands, as if in prayer, capture the sorrow of the moment. [Michelangelo's] Mary expresses her grief over the death of her son, not in her face but with her left hand.” [30]

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According to the  May 14, 1970 edition of the Scarsdale Inquirer, four days after the Kent State shootings nearly one thousand high school students from central and southern Westchester held a noon rally at Crossways Field in Scarsdale calling for "an end to this wasteful endeavor in Southeast Asia." Unbeknownst to the anti-war student protestors in both Kent and Scarsdale, their anti-war demonstrations in May 1970 took place nearly sixteen years after the day in May 1954 when the first two Americans died in clandestine military operations in Vietnam. Two decades later, the total would reach nearly sixty-thousand dead Americans and more than twice that number wounded in action. 

Over half a century after that fateful Monday in May 1970, America continues to wrestle with the legacy of its military involvement with Vietnam and its domestic doppelgänger - the Kent State Massacre. Was it, as Thomas Grace (one of the university students wounded by the Guard's use of live ammunition that day), pondered in his 2016 book "Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties: "just a tragic mistake like the war itself?" Or is it a cold case of murder? The answers to these grave questions will likely go unanswered for a reason explained by Kent State alumnus Jerry Casale who was at the mid-day protest on May 4: "I don't think anyone wants to know the truth. It ruins the myth of freedom in America to find out how easily it can be gone."  

It is unlikely we will ever find out why four American college students were slaughtered in northeast Ohio over half a century ago. The adage "Truth is the first casualty of war" may be the most accurate explanation for why, even after over five decades, a definitive answer remains like a fugitive from justice. One who will never know is Elaine Holstein, Jeffrey Miller's mother, who died in 2018 at 96. She was the last surviving parent of the four dead in Ohio. Her ashes are interred in the same sepulcher with her son at Ferncliff. One prominent difference between the Miller and Holstein burial vault and others in Ferncliff is that theirs is one of the rare chambers among tens of thousands in the Mausoleum that contain the full dates of their lives, immortalizing May 4th. 

Ferncliff Mausoleum Plot MO7N-HO-12

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On the morning of May 4, 1970, Filo, a senior at Kent State majoring in photo illustration, was moping around the university’s photo lab mixing chemicals and handing out equipment to students. “Two professors spotted him moping around and encouraged him to use his lunch break to photograph a student rally. Filo grudgingly picked up his camera, stuffed six rolls of black and white film in his right pants pocket, and headed out” and like the Guardsmen and the Kent State Four, reached a turning point in American history. After snapping the photo of an anguished teenaged Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the fatally wounded Jeffrey Miller with his last roll of film, other students were angry he was taking photos of their reaction to the dead body and asked him “Why are you doing this?” Filo says he yelled back: “No one is going to believe this happened!” [31]

Endnotes:

[1] The original settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1625 (the year the Dutch West India Company designated New Amsterdam as the seat of government for all lands held by the Netherlands in New York and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. In 1975, the 1664 date on the Seal of the City of New York was replaced with 1625 however most municipal buildings and structures still retain the 1664 date. As significant events relating to New York City’s founding took place in 1624, 1625, and 1626, New York City’s 400th anniversary will be celebrated in 2024, 2025, and 2026 About Us – NY400 

[2] In an article written by Moses and published in the January 15, 1938 edition of Saturday Evening Post, Moses conceded his goal was to turn the Corona dump into glory while further acknowledging that the 150th anniversary of Washington’s Inauguration in New York was an excuse but not the reason for the 1939 World’ Fair. From Dump to Glory p.72.  1939 was also the 150th anniversary of the effective date of the United States Constitution, and another reason given for the Fair.

[3] “About half-way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is the valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” The Great Gatsby, Chapter 2. p. 25. For an analysis of Gatsby’s metaphorical use of the “valley of ashes,” the history of Flushing Meadow as a repository of cinder waste, and the efforts by the City of New York and Moses to reclaim it, see, The Valley of Ashes: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Robert Moses.

[4] For a jaundiced view of why Moses agreed to become the President of the New York World’s Fair (i.e., that Moses, who as a public employee had never made much money, was in dire need of funds to afford his daughter’s cancer treatments that the position would bestow on him) and how Walt Disney was able to use the World’s Fair to develop the “animatronics” technology that would give birth to EPCOT, watch Defunctland: The History of the 1964 New York World's Fair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTRKG_ovjsA Earlier, Moses had been tasked in the 1930s by New York’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to restore Central Park which had become an eyesore. As outlined in a promotional pamphlet dated August 15, 1960, (indicating the then theme of the 1964 Fair – “Man’s Achievements in an Expanding Universe.”) which was authored by Moses, and seemingly prepared for prospective Fair investors and the press, Moses explained that the first objective of the Fair was to utilize $95,000,000 of Federal, state and local money for “arterial improvements” to enable automobile access to the Fair by widening the Grand Central Parkway, creating an extension of the Van Wyck Expressway, the addition of four lanes to the Whitestone Expressway, and widening Northern Boulevard in the vicinity of the Fair. http://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/fair-corp/1960-fair-corp-doc.pdf No mention is made of improving rail or subway access to the Fair which was anathema to Moses whose development plans were markedly car-centric. Ironically, Moses never learned to drive.(”Although a great proponent of highways, he never learns to drive, instead keeping a staff of chauffeurs on 24-hour call”) Robert Moses and Tudor City

[5] The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York p. 369. (New York: Knopf, 1974).A key lesson about the use of power that a young Robert Moses learned in his first political fight, one that he would recite to associates, was that “As long as you're fighting for parks, you can be sure of having public opinion on your side. And as long as you have public opinion on your side, you're safe. "As long as you're on the side of parks, you're on the side of the angels. You can't lose.” As Caro also observed, Moses understood that “in the eyes of the public, the end, if not justifying the means, at least made them unimportant.” Caro.  p. 370. For Moses, the overriding importance was to “get things done.” “These lessons had other implications. If ends justified means, and if the important thing in building a project was to get it started, then any means that got it started were justified. Furnishing misleading information about it was justified; so was underestimating its costs. Caro, p. 371. These “lessons” would be applied by Moses in his stewardship of the 1964 World’s Fair.  The philosophical origin of using the ends to justify the means is often traced to Machiavelli’s treatise The Prince (1524) on how new princes should acquire and exercise power, but it may have a longer pedigree in the Latin phrase exitus ācta probat (“the outcome justifies the deeds'') found in Ovid’s Heroides (ca. 10 BC). 

[6] Ida B. Wells’ International Appeal: The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition - Tennessee Historical Society  Chicago would host another World’s Fair in 1933, arguably the worst year of the Great Depression, oddly using the slogan “A Century of Progress” commemorating one hundred years since the 1833 incorporation of Chicago as a town with a population of 350. How Chicago Transformed From a Midwestern Outpost Town to a Towering City  Cleveland was the home of a World’s Fair in 1936-1937, whose moniker  was the “Great Lakes Exposition.” It is now the site of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which opened in 1995.

[7] The 1939 World’ Fair, which employed the hopeful slogan “Dawn of a New Day,'' would continue to operate in 1940 under a new slogan: “For Peace and Freedom.” Official Guide Book: The World's Fair of 1940 in New York - for Peace and Freedom: Various: Amazon.com  A scholarly review of World’s Fair observes that “While the rest of the family  peers at the Westinghouse exhibit's Time  Capsule, a metal container  intended to be opened five thousand years in the future, Dave examines a list of the contents, which range from a Mickey Mouse plastic cup to a Lilly Daché hat to a copy of Gone with the Wind. Dave [Edgar’s leftist father] asks his sons why there is nothing in the capsule  "about the great immigrations that had brought Jewish  and Italian and Irish  people  to  America  or  nothing  to  represent  the  point  of  view  of  the  workingman."  He goes on, "There is no hint from the stuff they included that America has a serious intellectual life, or Indians on reservations or Negroes who suffer from race prejudice.” https://core.ac.uk/reader/162640460

[8] The Westinghouse Time Capsule, the “World of Tomorrow” and the Changing Understanding of Time at the 1939 World's Fair

[9] “Inside the Igloo and in the adjacent Hall of Weathermakers, guests learned the steps involved in air conditioning, toured a modern food store using Carrier refrigeration, and viewed an exhibit with Carrier self-contained air conditioning.” https://www.carrier.com/marine-offshore/en/worldwide/about/history/  A collection of images of 1939 World’s Fair before and after its construction can be seen beginning on page 725 in renowned New York Architect Robert A.M. Stern’s 1987 book New York 1930: Architecture And Urbanism Between The Two World Wars which is available on the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/newyork1930archi0000ster/mode/2up  

[10] Aim, the son of two Czechoslovakian immigrants, moved to Ardsley as a child with his parents and continued to live in the same location just off Dobbs Ferry Road for 80 years which had apple trees. His wife Doris is still remembered in Ardsley for her apple pies.  Aim graduated from Ardsley High School in 1929 and entered Harvard Law School in 1933. He later served as counsel for the Ardsley Board of Education for three decades. As related in footnote 19 of the author’s “The First Amendment at the Ardsley School House Gate: Part Two (the Beacon, Spring 2021 (Vol 34, No. 1) The Beacon, Spring 2021, Vol 34, No. 1 and in an interview on the video link on the website of the Ardsley Historical Society, Aim explained how he arranged for the acquisition of all three parcels where Ardsley’s school buildings now stand. Preternaturally, in Doctorow’s World’s Fair, Edgar watches his brothers and their friends build a backyard igloo. Aim ran the Igloo until 1941 (when he joined the US Army) and subsequently leased it to William “Daddy Bill'' Brinkerhoff (b. 1891) whose family had a grocery store in what is now Addyman Square. The Igloo was demolished in the early 1950s to make way for the New York State Thruway. Brinkerhoff’s 1951 obituary identified him as a “Refreshment Stand Proprietor” of the Igloo who had earned a gold badge for 25 years of volunteer service to the Ardsley Fire Department. (The Herald Statesman, 10/23/51, p.2) He, along with many Brinkerhoff family members, is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery. 

[11] The First Vatican Council, often referred to simply as Vatican I, was held nearly a century earlier from December 8, 1869, to July 18, 1870, in Vatican City. Pope John XIII used the Italian word “aggiornamento” (meaning, updating) in explaining the reason for Vatican II. While initially seen as a caretaker Pope as he was 77 at the time of his election, John XIII quickly proved he was serious about confronting the scientific and intellectual revolutions of the 20th century, the legacy of two world wars, communism, fascism, and Nazism, and especially the Holocaust.

[12] The Mass, also known as the Eucharist or Holy Communion, is the central act of worship in the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations and consists of two principal rites, the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. Mass | Church, Definition, & Facts | Britannica However, this liturgical reform was criticized by Traditionalists who argued it undermined the sacredness and reverence of the Mass and disrupted the Church's continuity with its past. In 2022, Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat weighed in on the consequences for the Church on the 60th anniversary of Vatican II. How Catholics Became Prisoners of Vatican II - The New York Times Most of the reader comments on the Douthat piece strongly disagreed with his contentions that Vatican II caused any decline in church attendance or devotion, noting the decline in religious observance experienced by all organized religions. Significantly, Vatican II also relaxed the near absolute ban on cremation.

[13] Sculpted by Michelangelo in his early twenties when he was essentially unknown, it is the only work of art he signed after allegedly overhearing a group of viewers attribute the work to other artists. “The theme of the Pieta (which is Italian for “pity” or “compassion”), in which Mary holds on her lap the body of the dead Christ, has been one of the most popular Christian images since its appearance in the West at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The origins of the theme are obscure, but there are  a number of factors that can account for the sudden and unexpected introduction of new iconographic themes to the repertory of Christian images in the period, of which the Pieta was one. There is no biblical reference to this event having taken place after the crucifixion, although texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such as the poems and laments of the Virgin in the vernacular, had probably come into play as sources. Pictorial treatments like icon paintings, ivory carvings, and manuscript illuminations of the lamentation of the Virgin may have migrated from Byzantium to Europe via the Italian peninsula and then served as models or templates in pattern books for those workshops which had access to them. Surely, however, the most important factor that gave rise to the theme of suffering, loss, and motherly grief was the radical reorientation of spiritual culture that began to take place at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century. The practices of devotion and its assisting imagery were totally transformed by the desire of clergy and laity to experience in a multitude of formats the humanity of Christ. Christ as man, son, infant, mortal sufferer-these were characteristics of the divinity the late medieval believer hungered to know, to feel, and to see. As the thirteenth century wore on, it bore new fruit in vigorous eucharistic practices, the visions and physically encoded messages of women, and pious devotions which moved out of official liturgy and into the everyday, ordinary sphere. The Pieta theme was one of the amazing documents of the change in spiritual climate that had overtaken most of the European Continent by around 1300.” Ziegler, Joanna E. “Michelangelo and the Medieval Pietà: The Sculpture of Devotion or the Art of Sculpture?” Gesta 34, no. 1 (1995): 28–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/767122.  

[14] Francis Cardinal Spellman, sometimes referred to as the American Pope (as well as “the Powerhouse”) due to his towering influence with local and national government officials and in the Vatican, was the Archbishop of New York from 1939 to 1967 and a member of the Council of Cardinals in Rome. The American Pope: Life and Times Of Francis Cardinal Spellman: Cooney, John: Amazon.com: Books In 1950, Spellman held a solemn Mass of dedication for the newly built Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic (OLPH) church and convent in Ardsley. (Herald Statesman, November 19, 1950).  He returned to Ardsley in 1960 to dedicate the new OLPH school on Cross Road where the building’s inscription reads “For God and Country.” (Herald Statesman, October 17, 1960). According to lifelong Ardsley resident Packy Murray, and current caretaker of OLPH, sometime in the 1970s, two large mosaics were installed in the gymnasium, one of John XIII (the Pope in 1960) and the other of Pius VI (the Pope at the time of the first graduating class (1964). Our Lady of Perpetual Help is a title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary, associated with the Byzantine icon of the same name, said to be from the 13th or 14th century, but perhaps 15th century, which has been in Rome since at least the late 15th century. The image is highly popular among Catholics throughout the world and has been much copied and reproduced and a mosaic of the sacred image can be seen at the back of the lobby of the OLPH school. In the 1960 presidential election, Spellman supported Richard Nixon over the Catholic candidate, John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy asked an aide "Why is Spellman against me?" The aide replied, "Spellman is the most powerful Catholic in the country. When you become president, you will be." During his tenure, Spellman, the church’s master builder, built 15 churches, 94 schools, 22 rectories, 60 convents, and 34 other institutions. Notably, as reported in his front-page obituary in The New York Times, Moses “built 658 playgrounds in New York City, 416 miles of parkways and 13 bridges.” “Before him, there was no Triborough Bridge, Jones Beach State Park, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, West Side Highway or Long Island parkway system or Niagara and St. Lawrence power projects.” The New York Times (July 30, 1981).

[15] Email to the author from Ruth D. Nelson, author of the forthcoming book entitled “Our Lady of the World's Fair: Bringing Michelangelo's "Pietà" to Queens in 1964” (Cornell University Press, 2024) (the publisher has provided the author with an advance copy of this fast paced, gracefully written, and deeply researched semi-biographical story of the two men {Moses and Spellman} who seized on a unique moment in time, negotiated the inner workings of the Vatican, confronted a bevy of naysayers, and assembled a “dream team” to bring the Pieta to the unlikeliest of places, the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens, an amazing accomplishment exceeded only by a second stunning feat, a Papal visit to the World’s Fair in 1965.

[16] As explained in The Power Broker, Moses and Spellman operated a private favor bank: “The relationship between Church, Irish-Catholic contractors and the Irish-Catholic building trades unions had traditionally been close and directed toward pressuring the city for more public works, which provided simultaneously jobs for Catholic parishioners and, through the contractors’ religious contributions, funds for Catholic parishes and charities. Moreover, the Archdiocese, perhaps the largest owner of real estate in the city, constantly needed favors from its government. Moses saw that it got these favors. Moses, in his rebuilding of the city, was continually needing its cooperation. The Archdiocese gave it to him. Sometimes he and the Church swapped pieces of land as casually as if they were playing Monopoly.” The Power Broker, p. 1174.

[17] Our Lady of the World’s Fair, p. 35.

[18] A fervent anti-communist, Spellman was closely aligned with and defended the demagoguery of Joseph McCarthy. In 1949, in response to a strike by Catholic workers at Calvary Cemetery who demanded a forty-hour work week (they’d been working forty-eight hours) and an increase in hourly wages. Spellman brought in his seminarians from Dunwoodie to break the strike, while alleging without proof the worker’s union was controlled by communists. After Spellman proudly admitted to being a strikebreaker (believing the strike was immoral), counsel for the union responded:  "With all reverence and respect for the cardinal, it is more important to recognize the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively in unions of their own choosing, and to pay the living a just wage, than to bury the dead." For a detailed discussion of the background of the strike and its political and theological dimensions see Sparr, Arnold. “‘The Most Memorable Labor Dispute in the History of U.S. Church-Related Institutions’: The 1949 Calvary Cemetery Workers’ Strike against the Catholic Archdiocese of New York.” American Catholic Studies 119, no. 2 (2008): 1–33.http://www.jstor.org/stable/44195067 Spellman was also a defender of the Vietnam War which he saw as a “war of civilization.” The New York Times, December 27, 1966 (“Spellman Again Tells G.I. 's in Vietnam They Are Defending Civilization” and that “less than victory is inconceivable.”) In response, the article contained a report from the Associated Press news service from Moscow that the Soviet Government newspaper Izvestia accused Cardinal Spellman of neglecting the the Bible (sic) commandment, “Thou shall not kill” and that the militant sermons of the Cardinal were “in sharp dissonance with recent statements of Pope Paul VI who appealed for an end to the bloody killing.”

[19] Email to the author from Ruth D. Nelson (April 17, 2024).  In the New York of the 1950s, what was built, where it was built, and who built it were dictated by Moses. The exercise of such unelected power made enemies despite Moses generally enjoying fawning press coverage until the late 1950s when his aura of infallibility began to slowly drip away as he endured a bitter battle with Joseph Papp over free Shakespeare in Central Park, an urban renewal scandal on the Upper West Side, his fateful “David and Goliath” encounter with Jane Jacobs in Greenwich Village, and the biting criticism she leveled at Moses’s destruction of local neighborhoods in pursuit of his grand plans in her seminal 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York, Random House). Moses was also partially blamed  for the departure in 1957 of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team to Los Angeles. Within four years after the 1964 Fair (which was a financial debacle Moses tried to conceal), the drip of criticism became a flood that allowed Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1968 to wash Moses from the last vestige of power as the chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority whose revenue stream from tolls funded many of Moses’s projects.

[20] CORE, an interracial civil rights organization founded in 1942 in Chicago, played a crucial role in the civil rights movement, employing nonviolent direct action tactics to challenge segregation and discrimination. Reportedly the Brooklyn Chapter was the most radical and its vow to tie up traffic on all the highways leading to the World’s Fair exhibition site in Queens, on its opening day, was disavowed by CORE’s national chapter. Martin Luther King called it a “tactical error.” Interestingly, Brunson, the head of the Brooklyn CORE chapter which promoted the stall in, was an auto mechanic. 

[21] CORE’s 1964 stall-in: The planned civil rights protest that kept thousands away from the World’s Fair in New York.

[22] 50 Years Later, World’s Fair Nostalgia Still Alive - The Tablet

[23] April 20, 1964, p. 24. Setting for the ‘Pieta’: A Critique (“Blue Lighting at Fair Gives Cold Effect”)

[24] At the Church of the Holy Family, the Pope met with representatives of Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish faiths. He told the interfaith gathering that "the work of peace is not restricted to one religious belief” and that striving toward peace "is the work and duty of every human person, regardless of his religious conviction." Significantly, the urgency of the Pope’s message was prompted by the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union.

[25] The Pope’s Message, October 6, 1965, p. 4

[26] Our Lady of the World's Fair, p. 178.

[27] https://estreetshuffle.com/index.php/2020/07/06/roll-of-the-dice-where-was-jesus-in-ohio/

[28] “Lewis was in the crowd that horrible, sunny day in May, serving as a faculty marshal. He was standing a mere 20 yards from Sandy Scheuer, one of the four students killed. When he heard the shots, Lewis, an Army veteran, dove behind a bush.” Kent State shootings: Iconic image stokes anti-war sentiment across US  Lewis, has written extensively on the events of May 4th, including this important resource for educators on the tragedy: The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy  In the aftermath of the events of May 4, 1970, Kent State University struggled with its legacy. A commissioned sculpture of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac by the eminent American sculptor George Segal to symbolize the themes of “both violence and compassion” and as an allegory for the conflict between the generations, was rejected as inappropriate and now sits on the campus of Princeton University where Segal had taught. In a documentary about his work, Segal discusses the genesis of his Kent State piece just past the 40-minute mark. george segal video On the 48th anniversary of the shootings, Beverly Warren, the then President of Kent State, in a moving speech delivered at the Chautauqua Institution, reframed the debate over the meaning of May 4th and added yet another Pieta-like aspect to the tragedy of using the wound created on that day as a force for remembering, renewal, and healing. Kent State Beyond the Shootings: Journey of the Wounded Healer | Pro Rhetoric 

[29] At the time of Miller’s death, his father Bernard was a typesetter for The New York Times.  “Like other fathers of his generation, he worked three jobs - as a linotype operator for The New York Times, a freelance photographer and a collector and broker of antique medals - to send his two sons to college. Along the way, he lost track of them. "I didn't know Jeff went to Woodstock until after," Miller says. "I didn't know he had long hair." Memorial Opens Painful Wounds Of Kent State His son’s wallet, left in his room on the day he died, contained a Long Island Railroad Commuter ticket. On top of a notebook he had printed “Rocky for President in ‘72.” For a time he had dated fellow victim Sandra Scheuer, aged 20, a sorority girl who was on her way to speech therapy class with a friend when struck in the neck. The other two students killed were William K. Schroeder, aged 19, an Eagle Scout at 13, an honor student, and member of the campus Reserve Officer Training Corps, and Allison Krause, aged 19, who was on her way to class when shot. The day before her death she had placed a flower in a guardsman’s rifle barrel and said, “Flowers are better than bullets.” Friends of Kent State Victims Say They Were Not Radicals - The New York Times

[30] As a recent Washington Post Magazine story about Vecchio entitled “The Girl in the Kent State Photo,” explained: “Taken by student photographer John Filo, it captures Mary Ann’s raw grief and disbelief at the realization that the nation’s soldiers had just fired at its own children. The Kent State Pietà, as it’s sometimes called, is one of those rare photos that fundamentally changed the way we see ourselves and the world around us.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent-state-photo-lifelong-burden-being-national-symbol/ 

Coincidentally, the females depicted in the Pietas are not only both named Mary, each is grieving over the death of two Jews, Jesus and Miller. Four years before his limp body would appear in what Time Magazine considered one of the hundred most influential images of all time, at age sixteen, and although Miller had never visited Ohio, he prophetically wrote these lines in a poem entitled “The War Without End:

A teenager from a small Ohio farm clutches his side 
in pain, and, as he feels his life ebbing away, he too, 
asks why -
why is he dying here, thousands of miles from home,
giving his life for those who did not even ask his help?

The War Without Purpose marches on relentlessly,
not stopping to mourn for its dead,
content to wait for its end.

But for all the frightened parents who still have their sons fear that the end is not in sight.

[31] Thirteen seconds. Dozens of bullets. One explosive photo (Columbia Journalism Review, June 1, 2016)