Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History (62 page)

Special thanks to:
Erin Duck and Cass Shirley at the Forest Hill Cemetery and, most of all, to Janet Ray, who shared with me her memories of her father and his military service.
Publications:
John Arnold, “Young Bay of Pigs Pilot Returns to Long-Delayed Funeral,”
Miami Herald
(December 6, 1979); Andrew Carroll, editor, Dwight D. Eisenhower letter excerpt from
War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars
(New York: Scribner, 2001); Edward B. Ferrer,
Operation Puma: The Air Battle of the Bay of Pigs
(Miami: International Aviation Consultations, Inc., Spanish ed., 1975; English ed., 1982); Howard Jones,
The Bay of Pigs
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Peter Kornblush, ed.,
Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba
(New York: New Press, 1998); Alejandro de Quesada,
The Bay of Pigs: Cuba 1961
(New York: Osprey Publishing, 2009); Warren Trest and Donald Dodd,
Wings of Denial: The Alabama Air National Guard’s Role at the Bay of Pigs
(Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2001); and David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, “The Strange Case of the CIA Widows,”
Look
(June 30, 1964).

Special thanks to:
Beverly Fields in the Washington, D.C., Office of the Chief Medical Examiner; Michael J. Desmond, a family service counselor at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, who took me on a tour of the cemetery, which I had originally visited to find the forgotten grave of Thomas Holmes (in 1861, Holmes popularized embalming in America); and Melinda Hunt, who is the author, with Joel Sternfeld, of the book
Hart Island
(Zurich, Berlin, New York: Scalo, 1998) and could not have been more generous with her time in taking me out to the island and educating me about its history.
Publications:
Percy H. Epler,
The Life of Clara Barton
(New York: Macmillan, 1915); Stephen B. Oates,
A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War
(New York: Free Press, 1994); and John F. Walter,
The Confederate Dead in Brooklyn
(Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 2003).

Special thanks to:
Lee Arnold at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, who located where Leary’s had once been and provided me with an abundance of information about other Philadelphia landmarks; Carole Herrick, who helped me find where Stephen Pleasonton hid the Declaration of Independence and other valuable documents near the Chain Bridge in Washington, D.C; Miriam Kleiman, the public affairs specialist at the U.S. National Archives; and Courtenay Singer, manager of the Global Health Initiative at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center.
Publications:
Eleanor Blau, “Declaration of Independence Sells for $2.4 Million,”
New York Times
(June 14, 1991); Julian P. Boyd, “The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
(October 1976); Julian P. Boyd and Gerard W. Gawalt, eds.,
The Declaration of Independence: The Evolution of the Text
, rev. ed. (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1999); Marc Eepson,
Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House That Jefferson Built
(New York: Free Press, 2001); Dorothy S. Gelatt, “$8.14 Million Dunlap Declaration Has Checkered Past,”
Maine Antique Digest
(August 2000); George W. Givens,
500 Little-Known Facts in U.S. History: The More We Know About the Past, the Better We Understand the Present
(Springville, Ut.: Bonneville Books, 2006); Frederick R. Goff,
The John Dunlap Broadside: The First Printing of the Declaration of Independence
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976); Milton Gustafson, “Travels of the Charters of Freedom,”
Prologue Magazine
(vol. 34, no. 4, winter 2002); Richard Luscombe and Daniel Nasaw, “Houston, We Have a Problem:
Original Moon Walk Footage Erased,”
The Guardian
(July 16, 2009); Pauline Maier,
American Scripture Making the Declaration of Independence
(New York: Knopf, 1997); John McPhee, “Travels of the Rock,”
The New Yorker
(February 26, 1990); Milestone Documents in the National Archives,
The Declaration of Independence
(Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1776); National Archives and Records Administration, “The Declaration of Independence: A History,”
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_history.html
(December 4, 2010); Wilfred J. Ritz, “From the
Here
of Jefferson’s Handwritten Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence to the
There
of the Printed Dunlap Broadside,”
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
(October 1992); Russell Frank Weigley et. al.,
Philadelphia: A 300-Year History
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982); Linda Wheeler, “Founding Documents Will Get New Cases,”
Washington Post
(March 18, 1999); and Ted Widmer, “Looking for Liberty,”
New York Times
(July 4, 2008).

Special thanks to:
Paul Carter, who helped me find where De Zavala once lived; Ernesto Malacara for guiding me around the Menger Hotel; Carol Roark in the special collections department of the Dallas Public Library; Margaret Schlankey at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History (University of Texas at Austin); Ryan Schumacher at the Texas State Historical Association; and Richard Bruce Winders at the Alamo.
Publications:
Elaine Ayala, “Preservationist Adina De Zavala Getting Her Due as Historical Figure,”
San Antonio Express-News
(November 28, 2006); Paul Bourgeois, “Dallas Library Displays Rare National Document,”
Dallas Star-Telegram
(July 6, 2001); Van Craddock, “Texans Didn’t Like Santa Anna, by Gum,”
Longview News-Journal
(June 20, 2010); Ann Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale,
Women in Texas: Their Lives, Their Experiences, Their Accomplishments
(Austin: State House Press, 1992); James E. Crisp,
Sleuthing the Alamo
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Ruth Eyre, “City to Get Declaration of Independence Copy,”
Dallas Times Herald
(July 2, 1978); Lewis F. Fisher,
Saving San Antonio: The Precarious Preservation of a Heritage
(Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1996); Will Fowler,
Santa Anna of Mexico
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007); Kim Horner, “The Pursuit of History: Dallas Boasts Display of Rare Declaration Copy,”
Dallas Morning News
(July 4, 2000); Frank W. Jennings with Rosemary Williams, “Adina De Zavala: Alamo Crusader,”
Texas Highways Magazine
(March 1995); Randy Roberts and James S. Olson,
A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory
(New York: Free Press, 2001); “San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site,” Texas Parks & Wildlife (
www.tpwd.state.tx.us
); Timothy J. Todish, Terry Todish, and Ted Spring,
Alamo Sourcebook, 1836: A Comprehensive Guide to the Battle of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution
(Austin: Eakin Press, 1998); Docia Schultz Williams,
The History and Mystery of the Menger Hotel with Special Recollections of Ernesto Malacara
(Dallas: Republic of Texas Press, 2000); and Dorman H. Winfrey, Texas Historical Association, “The Texan Archive War of 1842,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
(October 1960).

Special thanks to:
Ed Hrivnak and Mike Vrosh for spending an entire weekend with me in order to hike up Mount Baker and show me the PV-1 crash site; and Tom Philo, a military historian who helped me determine the number of service members who died in the States during World War II.
Publications:
James Barron, “Flaming Horror on the 79th Floor; 50 Years Ago Today, in the Fog, a Plane Hit the World’s Tallest Building,”
New York Times
(July 28, 1995); Bureau of Naval Personnel and US Marine Corps Headquarters, “US Navy
Personnel in World War II: Service and Casualty Statistics,”
Annual Report, Navy and Marine Corps Military Personnel Statistics
(June 30, 1964); Jonathan Goldman,
The Empire State Book
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980); Anthony J. Mireles,
Fatal Army Air Forces Aviation Accidents in the United States 1941–1945
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2010); TSgt. Linda L. Mitchell, “McChord Personnel Recover Navy Anti-Submarine Aircraft Wreckage,”
Northwest Airlifter
(October 14, 1994); Leo Mullen, “World War II Tragedy on Mount Baker: Lost Crew Returns from Clouds,”
Bellingham Herald
(September 3, 1995); and United States Forest Service, “A Brief History of Mt. Baker,”
http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/mbs/home
.

Special thanks to:
Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak and her sister Stacy Neuberger, my two wonderful guides in Washington, D.C. (and much of the information I acquired about Philip Reed—also spelled Reid—came from an early draft of Megan’s sensational book,
Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing: Adventures in Discovering News—Making Connections—Unexpected Ancestors—Long-Hidden Secrets—and Solving Historical Puzzles
); Gene and Patricia Godley, who first told me the story behind the Statue of Freedom; my neighbor Joe Rogers; Mark Indre and Kathleen Matthews at Marriott; Kenneth Despertt, a librarian in the “Washingtoniana” department of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library; and Cecelia Logan and Ayeta Heatley at National Harmony National Park.
Publications:
Taylor Branch,
The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009); Jon Elliston, “Spy Like Us?: Felix Bloch, One of the Great Unsolved Mysteries of Cold War Espionage, Is Back in the Headlines—and Still Driving a Bus in Chapel Hill,”
Indy Week
(March 7, 2001); Sam Roberts, “First Through Gates of Ellis I., She Was Lost. Now She’s Found,”
New York Times
(September 14, 2006); Rachel L. Swarns and Jodi Kantor, “First Lady’s Roots Reveal Slavery’s Tangled Legacy,”
New York Times
(October 8, 2009); Dr. Eugene Walton, “Philip Reid: Slave Caster of Freedom,”
The Examiner
(March 1, 2005); and David Wise, “The Felix Bloch Affair,”
New York Times Magazine
(May 13, 1990).

Along with the stories profiled in this book, there are several others that, for one reason or another, could not be included. But I’m extremely grateful to the people who shared them with me either during or after my main cross-country journey, and they deserve recognition:

Sandra Cano, who was the “Mary Doe” in the influential—but overlooked—January 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case
Doe v. Bolton
. This decision was announced the same day as
Roe v. Wade
and was, in fact, pivotal in changing abortion laws throughout the country. Sandra has mostly stayed out of the media spotlight and was incredibly generous with her time in telling me the behind-the-scenes account of her case, which I think could be a book in itself.

Martin Cooper, “the father of the mobile phone.” Somewhere
around Sixth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street in Manhattan on April 4, 1973, Marty (he said it was okay for me to call him that) made the first public cell phone call in history. Marty was general manager of Motorola at the time and just about to go into a press conference at the Hilton to herald this new invention. Mischievously, he phoned his competitor, Joel Engel, who was head of research at Bell Labs. I asked Marty if he made a play on Alexander Graham Bell’s “Watson, come here, I want to see you” line, but he said no; he just called Engel and casually said something like, “ ‘Hey, it’s Marty, and I’m calling you from a cell phone.’ He knew what that meant and got real quiet.” Marty also sent me a map of Sixth and Fifty-fourth and pinpointed with an
x
exactly where he was standing when he made his famous call. He added a second
x
and a note right in the middle of Sixth Avenue to indicate where, distracted while simultaneously walking and talking on the phone, he almost stepped in front of a car and had history’s “first cell phone accident.” Marty also told me, “If you look at when the telephone was invented, it was around the time Nikola Tesla was experimenting with radio waves, so there’s no reason mobile phones couldn’t have come first. We could have skipped landlines entirely.” At the end of our conversation, Marty mentioned one more thing: “I recently saw a performance of
The Farnsworth Invention
about Philo Farnsworth. I don’t know where you could see it, but maybe you could get a copy of the script somewhere.” This offhand comment is what led me to Philo Farnsworth’s farm in Rigby, Idaho. (Along with Marty, I’d also like to thank his executive assistant Jaye Riggio for all of his help, as well as Adrian Acosta and Donald Trump Jr., who I accidentally bumped into at the Trump Tower in New York, and who pointed me in the direction of Sixth and Fifty-fourth.)

Diane Cremeens at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Tucson, Arizona, who gave me a tour of the building and patiently answered all of my questions about cryonic preservation (or, “freezing” people after death so they can be revived in the future, when scientific advances might enable such a process to be possible). What makes the Alcor facility historic is that the first person to be cryonically preserved—James
Bedford—is in one of Alcor’s “dewars,” as the containers are called.

Kenneth Emery in Columbus, New Mexico, who helped me locate Hermanas, New Mexico. The town no longer exists, but it’s where, in July 1917, approximately 1,300 striking mine workers were dumped without food or water after being forced on a train at gunpoint in Bisbee, Arizona. The “Bisbee Deportation,” as it became known, was the largest mass kidnapping in U.S. history.