Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History (63 page)

Rob Florence, who’s one of the best tour guides in New Orleans, Louisiana, and took me to the old Karnofsky building at 427 South Rampart, where Louis Armstrong had his first job. Armstrong credited the Karnofskys, a family of second-generation Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, for nurturing his love of music and caring for him when he was virtually homeless. Throughout his life, Armstrong—considered one of the greatest jazz musicians in the world—wore a Star of David as a tribute to, in his words, “the Jewish family who instilled in me Singing from the heart.” (I’m also grateful to Suzanne N. Blaum at the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans for helping me find other little-known jazz-related sites.)

Ed Furman, in Palestine, Texas, who assisted me in locating the field near his home where a part of Ilan Ramon’s diary was found; Ramon was an astronaut aboard the
Columbia
space shuttle, which exploded over Texas on February 1, 2003, and, incredibly, pages of Ramon’s diary survived the blast and almost forty-mile descent to earth.

John Imes, who let me use the John Muir Room in his Arbor House Inn as my temporary base of operations during my visit to Madison, Wisconsin. I was there to visit the dormitory on Bascom Hill where Muir had lived while a student at the University of Wisconsin. Most important, it was outside this dorm that a fellow student gave Muir an impromptu tutorial about locust trees that, in Muir’s words, “sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm” and caused him to be one of America’s greatest advocates for nature and the great outdoors. (Special thanks also to Michael Hoel and Eve Robillard for the impromptu tour of Bascom Hill.)

Susan Johnston, who let me visit her home in Dover, Delaware, which is where the famed astronomer Annie Jump Cannon was raised. (The house is actually owned by Wesley College and is the school’s president’s home; Susan’s husband is Dr. William Johnston, president of Wesley.) Cannon used to go on the roof when she was a little girl and gaze at the stars. Later, while working at the Harvard Observatory, Cannon discovered 300 variable stars and, in the early 1900s, came up with the stellar classification system that is used to this day to categorize all stars. She became the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University and the first woman to earn the Henry Draper Medal, the highest award given in the field of astronomy.

Lisa Kobrin, reference librarian at the May Memorial Library in Burlington, North Carolina, who helped me track down the former site of the Alamance General Hospital, where Dr. Charles Drew died on April 1, 1950, after being in a car accident. Drew was the prominent African American surgeon who helped revolutionize how blood was stored and used in transfusions.

James Lewis, at the Newark Public Library’s Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center, who helped me find the general location of where Clara Maass’s home in Newark would have been. Maass was the heroic American nurse who volunteered to be bitten by mosquitoes thought to be carrying yellow fever to see if the virus was spread by the bugs or some other factor. Maass was aware of the health risks of these experiments, and they indeed proved fatal; she died on August 24, 1901.

Christine McKeever, at the 6th Cavalry Museum in Georgia, who showed me where the internment camp at Fort Oglethorpe had been constructed to detain Americans suspected of being spies or simply unpatriotic during World War I. Bridget Carr, the archivist at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, also provided me with information about one of the camp’s most famous inmates—Karl Muck, the fifty-seven-year-old German-born conductor of the BSO. Muck had been (unfairly) accused of not playing the national anthem during a concert, and he was imprisoned for more than a year. In Georgia, I’m extremely grateful as
well to Jonathan Lewis for taking me on a tour of Atlanta and pointing out various little-known historic sites.

Dennis Northcott at the Missouri History Museum, who helped me find the office building at 1222 Spruce Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, where a man named Henry Grant sold Underwood typewriters in the 1940s. What makes Grant an intriguing character is that his real name was Hugo Gutmann, and he was the Jewish lieutenant in the German army who, during World War I, nominated a young corporal named Adolf Hitler for the Iron Cross. (Hitler received the prestigious award and, although furious that a Jewish officer had recommended him, cherished the medal more than almost any other possession.) Obviously Gutmann didn’t know that Hitler would turn into the monster he became, and Gutmann himself fled Germany in 1940 for the United States, where he changed his name and tried to live a life of obscurity.

Deb Novotny, a battlefield guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, who introduced me to the story of Elizabeth Thorn. Thorn became the caretaker of the Evergreen Cemetery near Gettysburg after her husband, who would otherwise have been responsible for managing the property, joined the Union Army. Despite being six months pregnant, Thorn took on the responsibility of burying more than one hundred soldiers killed during the historic battle. She became known as the “Angel of Gettysburg,” and while there is a statue at Evergreen in her honor, her name is not on it, nor is there a marker explaining her significance.

Jimmy Ogle, a Memphis historian who gave me a whirlwind tour of the city, including through its storm drains—which are historic in themselves and influenced how numerous other municipalities constructed their sewage and draining systems. I’m also indebted to Toni Holmon-Turner in the Memphis mayor’s office for telling me about Jimmy Ogle; sewer historian Jon C. Schladweiler for background information on Memphis’s system; and Ronald Kirby, who was at the Memphis Department of Public Works at the time and took me to one
of their waste treatment facilities. (This was all much more exciting than it might sound.)

Antonio M. Perez, the chairman and chief executive officer of Kodak. Mr. Perez brought my attention to an extraordinary American patriot and publisher named Mary Katherine Goddard, who printed in January 1777 the first edition of the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signers. (Since the War for Independence was still raging, the very act of printing and distributing the Declaration was considered treasonous by the British and could have resulted in harsh reprisals against Goddard.) I’m grateful to M. J. Kraus and Maria Day at the Maryland State Archives and Bruce Kirby at the Library of Congress for providing me with additional information about Goddard. And I’m also indebted to Francis O’Neill and Damon Talbot at the Maryland Historical Society for helping me locate the former site of Goddard’s print shop at what is now 125 East Baltimore Street in downtown Baltimore.

Inée Slaughter, executive director of the Indigenous Language Institute, who was instrumental in helping me find Edwin Benson, the only living Mandan Indian still fluent in the Mandan language. Edwin very kindly met with me in Twin Buttes, North Dakota, and he’s been working with the linguist Sara Trechter to record as much of the language before it’s lost forever. They usually meet at the Twin Buttes Elementary School, which is also where I met Edwin. I’m grateful to him for sharing his story, and he reminded me that some of the most important things we need to save aren’t always tangible.

Finally, to everyone I met in passing throughout my trip who told me about their own favorite little-known spots, thank you for your recommendations—and please keep them coming; the journey continues.…