APRIL 25 — 1851Legend of Bolt Castle on Heart Island; 1964 Westmoreland commanded to MAC-V; 1864 Battle of Marks Mills; 1994 Eagles’ Hell gets Frozen Over
APRIL 25
1851 – Happy birthday George Boldt, builder of Boldt Hall on Heart Island, NY. Boy did this he love his wife.
Prussian-born George immigrated to the US as a teenager, worked at a factory in New York, and met his future father-in-law who hired George to manage the Philadelphia Club. As in, The Philadelphia Club. That one. From there, George became a self-made millionaire, building the Bellevue-Stratford in 1904. Now it’s the Park Hyatt, but back then it was the largest hotel in the entire city. George also mediated a feud between William Waldorf Astor and John Jacob Astor IV over the two cousins adjoining hotels, and George merged the two into his own management company. This was called the Waldorf=Astor Hotel where legend has it, Thousand Island dressing was invented in his hotel restaurant. Nowadays, the Empire State Building occupies its old space.
In the Thousand Islands area in New York, at Alexandria Bay, George completely outdid even himself and began building a ginormous six story castle for his lovely wife, Louise. Key word there: began. He never finished. George, Louise and the kids would stay in their cottage during the construction and watch in awe as stonemasons, carpenters and artist designed and built this 120-room castle, complete with a drawbridge, tunnels, a powerhouse, Italian gardens, alter tower for the kids to play, This is where the story gets really sad and pretty much every tourist starts crying. In January 1904, Louise died. George ordered all construction on the castle to stop immediately, and he never stepped foot on Heart Island again.
As time went on, George moved to Santa Barbara California, but he died of a heart attack in the Bronx in 1916. He’s buried in Woodlawn Cemetery there. As far as the castle he left behind, there it sat near Alexandria Bay for over 70 years. After being subjected by decades of rain, win, ice and vandals the Thousand Island Bridge Authority acquired the property in 1977, a few million was put in for restoration, So if you happen to have your yacht sailing in the Alexandria Bay area, stop by and check it out! Happy birthday George!
1917- Happy birthday Ella Fitzgerald,
…aka the First Lady of Song, the Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook, and throughout her 60 year long career she sold over 40 million copies of her 70 plus albums, won 13 Grammies, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George HW Bush.
But possibly the coolest thing about Ella Fitzgerald, if she married Darth Vader, her named would be Ella Vador.
Cool.
1964-LBJ appoints General William Westmoreland to command the MACV.
President Johnson made the announcement on April 25, and Westmoreland took his role on June 20th. Westy had come from a long line of military ancestors dating back to the American Revolution. He fought in WWII as well as the Korean War and rose up the ranks to a four star general. When he was appointed commander of the MACV, or the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, he fought a war of attrition, counting the dead bodies on the enemy side as victorious.
That worked okay at first, but the American people began to get skeptical as the enemy body count increased, so did the American and South Vietnamese body count. And then came the Tet Offensive, which pretty much ended his command in Vietnam.
During the Tet Offensive, Vietcong troops attacked cities and sites in the south, seizing several cities. That is not how you win a war. News coverage from Saigon hit the US and Americans approval of the war began to wane. Westy requested 200,000 more troops, but instead Lyndon Johnson told him to come home and serve as chief of staff for the U.S. Army. During Westmoreland’s time in Vietnam, the number of U.S. troops engaged in the Vietnam war increased from less than 20,000 to about 500,000.
In Civil War news…
1864-The Battle of Marks Mills.
In the spring of 1864, three battles took place south central Arkansas as part of the Union’s Red River Campaign; and if you really want to get the whole skinny on them there are state parks in the area which contain all this information and more. There’s the Poison Springs, Marks Mills, and Jenkins Battleground Ferry State Parks.
This campaign was an attempt for the Union army to get Texas from the Confederates. John Marks established flour and saw mill in Cleveland County, south Arkansas in 1834. In 1864 on April 25th, Confederate troops under James F. Fagan overwhelmed a small Union detachment commanded by Lt. Col Francis M. Drake, leading to the Union abandonment in Cleveland County.
Finally in music news…
1994-Hell is officially frozen over. The Eagles played the first of two shows where they recorded their “Hell Freezes Over” record. The powerhouse of Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Don Felder, and Timothy B. Schmidt, got back together. The new CD included an acoustic rendition of Hotel California. The name of the album was taken from Glenn Frye’s earlier answer to the question, “When will the Eagles get back together?”