Myles and Mary, 1942 (10.17.23)

I have some additional data to support this theory: that every human interchange, however random or brief, enriches the spirit and improves the world. I’m a proponent, and further speculate that the duration of the interchange might be less important than their frequency, with their little flavors of connection, chatting, and a dollop of serotonin. Luckily for us and for the future, the idea still works over technologies. An example.

I was on the phone making some travel arrangements and by luck of the draw, ended up talking to “Andrew in New Hampshire.” Very helpful, a credit to his profession, and additionally, a storyteller with a fine engaging voice. I was considering a stay at the Hotel New Yorker, a midtown Manhattan location whose enormous red over-street sign serves as a navigation guide at the end of a long day. Built in 1930 with a private power plant, an underground tunnel direct to Penn Station, and even an ice rink, it’s an Art Deco beauty that claims it was once the most technologically advanced hotel in the country. NBC broadcast live from the Terrace Room. Nikola Tesla occupied adjoining rooms. In 1948, the hotel boasted the greatest number of television sets under one roof. In 1971, Muhammad Ali recuperated there after his famous fight with Joe Frazier, just down the street at Madison Square Garden. In 2001, the hotel donated ten thousand free nights of lodging to volunteers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. So, a place of public history; I could hardly wait.

And yet, history is both public and private. We need stories to help bring it into tight focus. Andrew-from-New-Hampshire had one to tell.

He thought that I’d like the hotel. “In 1942, my grandparents stayed at the Hotel New Yorker on their honeymoon; my grandmother took everything that wasn’t nailed down. I have a Hotel New Yorker hanger in my closet. I have envelopes and letterhead and a tabletop ad for Benny Goodman, who was playing in the Terrace Room. I have an invitation to stop by the restaurant, signed by Jack Dempsey, who was the owner.”

1942. The history timeline on the hotel’s website says of that year, “Due to its proximity to Penn Station, the New Yorker hosts numerous GIs during World War II en route to the European Theater. Being a big-city, state-of-the-art hotel, The New Yorker developed its own renown among GIs, many of which (sic) had never lived in such luxury, much less visited New York City.”

So, newlyweds Lieutenant and Mrs. Burke, Myles and Mary, traveled down from Springfield, Massachusetts to stay in luxury for their honeymoon, amid soldiers headed overseas in the fraught months just following Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war. Did they hear Benny Goodman? Dine with Jack Dempsey? Go arm-in-arm to Times Square? Unknown.

New York City was gearing up in 1942. The hotel is close to the Empire State Building, which was considered to be a possible prime target for a German air raid; on the 86th floor observatory American Legion volunteers were looking for enemy bombers. Out on Staten Island, a spy wrote in a letter to Germany: “Still no air-raid shelters. Protection against raids completely inadequate. Complete confusion.” One evening, all the air-raid wardens in one Manhattan zone – 1,790 of them – were summoned to a police stationhouse for a lecture on how to use a screwdriver to turn off street lights during an air raid drill. U-boats were prowling America’s East Coast unmolested, sinking scores of oil tankers and freighters bound for Britain; the glow from New York City’s lights was silhouetting ships offshore, leaving them easy marks for those submarines. (Only two months after the Burkes’ honeymoon, the city-wide dimout began, with all exterior lighting turned down, automobile headlights hooded. Buildings more than fifteen stories were required to veil their windows.) The city was full of servicemen.

After enlistment, Myles was stationed stateside. When he shipped out in 1945, a photo was taken in his uniform and colorized for the baby, so she would know what her father looked like. It was near the end of the war by then, and he was sent to Germany, where concentration camps were being liberated, and hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were surrendering. Lieutenant Myles Burke was killed in action there in 1945; back in Springfield, his child, Andrew’s mother, was two years old. Eventually, her child Andrew-from-New-Hampshire would carry the middle name Myles. “We were cheated,” he would say to his mother as an adult. “You never got to know your father. We never got to know him.”

Andrew knows the importance of history; Lieutenant Burke’s many letters are being digitized at the Springfield History Museum. His grandfather’s gold star is framed and hanging in his home, and he can pick out Myles in a photo with one hundred soldiers. “It’s a matter of loss,” he says. “If they are forgotten, they die a second time.”

I thought about the lieutenant and his lady when I stayed at the Hotel New Yorker, passing through the lobby, walking up 8th Avenue toward the theater district, descending to the subway. It is an American story, and a family story, and a wartime story. One surviving detail paints Lieutenant Burke as a decent officer who was kind to a trainee bullied in camp as a “sissy”.

“We know what that means,” says Andrew.

“If they want to give him a hard time, Mary,” Myles told his wife, “they’ll have to go through me.” The trainee finished the long march in full gear, with his encouragement. A deeply honorable legacy.

I would add that this is a love story, too. After Myles was killed, Andrew says, Mary never re-married. She never took off her wedding ring. She saved the paper ephemera, and his letters, and then her daughter saved them, and Andrew in turn. The letters will go into the museum archive. It is nice to know that some beloved things survive as home artifacts, along with the echo of a wartime honeymoon in a New York hotel in a time that seems nearly vanished, except for memory, carried by their child, and then grandchild. Andrew told me about it in a phone encounter. And now I’m telling you. You’re welcome.

Decent Myles in the colorized photo. Mary who saved souvenirs from her honeymoon. History is a crowded place, isn’t it?

Thank you, Andrew, for letting me share the story of your grandparents. Photo by Jim.henderson. Some material drawn from “Helluva Town: The Story of New York City During World War II” by Richard Goldstein.