Weekly View » Bumps in the Night

Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Part 2

Al Hunter — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:08:38 +0000

H.H. Holmes paid for his misdeeds with death by hanging on May 7, 1896. But his former “Murder Castle” caretaker/janitor Patrick “Pat” Quinlan would never escape his own self-made prison. When the Murder Castle caught fire in September of 1893, he was arrested with Holmes but eventually freed. Quinlan was accused of starting the fire (and most likely did) but it was his actions after the fire that tipped off Chicago Police that there may have been something more going on in that building than a botched attempted arson.
During the fire, many bones were found around Holmes Castle. Holmes explained they were beef bones left over from a time when the flat had been used as a restaurant during the World’s Fair at Chicago. He explained that the huge dumb waiter was used to convey those many pounds of beef. He explained that the asbestos was to make the house fireproof and for insulation. For the moment, Holmes had wriggled off the hook by the use of those crafty lies. He would soon leave town with the ill-fated Pitezel children in tow and would kill 10-year-old Howard Pitezel in Irvington a short time later.
After the fire, caretaker Quinlan took several cartloads of garbage out of the “factory.” The cops searched the dumpster a week later, they were now mostly empty but with traces of obvious human ashes and bone fragments inside. In 1893, forensic science was still a few years away and the discovery of a blood soaked rag in the basement of the castle could set off a plausible legal argument over whether it was blood or paint and a piece of bone was hard to differentiate between human or animal. Ironically, the first use of bone fragments as evidence would happen a few years later in 1897 just blocks from the Murder Castle. Adolph Louis Luetgert (namesake of the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company) was charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in lye in one of his factory’s sausage vats in 1897. A bit of jaw bone found in the factory (which was thriving at the same time as the Murder Castle) was identified as the remains of Adolph’s wife, Louisa.
Quinlan continued to live in one of the thirty-five bedrooms on the second floor, and the street-level retail shops remained open for business. A whisper campaign proliferated in the area after the World’s Fair left town. The local economy was hurting and now people were suspicious of Dr. Holmes and his questionable predatory business tactics and neighborhood scams. Chicago police were hesitant to investigate the Castle prior to July 1895 for fear of injuring the local construction trade, as Dr. Holmes had been almost continuously adding onto his hotel up until that time.
But the reputation of the place as the local haunted house was drawing negative attention by the Chicago press. Many reporters and gawkers broke into the Castle, wandering its maze-like corridors, staring at its grotesqueries, stealing Holmes’ abandoned belongings, and generally destroying it as a crime scene. The vandals drove Pat Quinlan out of the Murder Castle for good. On August 2, 1895, after Holmes was secured away in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison, Patrick Quinlan (and ironically his wife) turned state’s evidence and testified against his former boss. Quinlan, now comfortable in the knowledge that his tormentor H.H. Holmes was safely behind bars, described his former boss to police detectives as a “dirty, lying scoundrel” who should be hung for his crimes and that “he (Quinlan) would only be too willing to spring the trap.”
Quinlan gave testimony at Holmes’ trial that he was aware of the practice of stealing bodies from Western Michigan graveyards under the direction of Holmes. These bodies were then sold to local college and university medical schools, no questions asked. Quinlan’s wife testified to this too. Both claimed they were aware of the practice but did not participate in the actual grave robberies. It was reported Quinlan and another man only received the bodies and participated in the “remaking and lining” of coffins for corpses before sale for medical use.
The fire didn’t actually level the building (as most books say) but it did destroy a lot of evidence. Pat, along with his wife, continued to live in the burned out shell of the old Murder Castle while Holmes was on trial. Soon, the negative attention and gangs of marauding vandals roaming through the creepy old building at all hours of the day and night drove the Quinlan’s from the building.
When the Quinlan’s went back to his home state of Michigan, Pat found himself the center of suspecting eyes and backhanded whispers. Everywhere he went, he was stared at and treated as fodder for gossip. While the rest of the world forgot Holmes, the little town where Pat lived continued to speculate about how much he really knew.
His closest friends said that Pat Quinlan often reproached himself for his part in the dastardly affair. He told friends and family that he blamed himself for not suspecting Holmes and turning him in to the police. He was clearly dealing with demons all his own many years after his evil ex-employer was dead and buried 10 feet deep under six tons of concrete (to discourage grave robbers).
For nineteen years Quinlan could not sleep. At night he would wake up screaming and covered with sweat. He experienced night terrors almost every night. He would call for help and when a light would be brought to his room or when the electric switch would be turned on he would recount how he was “attacked while half asleep by strange hallucinations.”
For nineteen years this man had been unable to sleep peacefully because of the awful experiences he endured during his employment by Holmes and during the period immediately after. While he remained in Chicago, Quinlan claimed that the Castle was haunted by Holmes’ many victims. He told friends that his former employer would visit him in his sleep, that the victims roamed the halls and pecked on the windows of the Castle. That the spirits followed him even after he moved back to a farmhouse in his Portland, Michigan hometown. By the spring of 1914, Pat Quinlan was a broken man.
On March 7, 1914 Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the murder castle, picked up a slip of paper and scribbled a note reading, “I could not sleep.” He then quietly committed suicide by drinking from a bottle of pesticide whose active ingredient was deadly strychnine. Pat’s facial muscles stretched tight and a peculiar metallic taste flooded his mouth. His calf muscles began to stiffen and convulse, his toes curled up under his feet and as his head thrashed back-and-forth, blinding flashes of light darted across his eyes. His body went ice cold as he finally drifted off into that final sleep. Witnesses claimed that in death, he looked as though he had been carried there by the ghosts of the slain women of the Castle he helped to build. Pat Quinlan had killed himself and his death did not cause much of a stir. His name would be forgotten.
And what became of the Murder Castle, the building that had seen so much misery and pain? It stood for another twenty years on the corner of 63rd and Wallace on the southside of Chicago, a city section known as Inglewood. Of course it was known as the most haunted building in the area while it stood. The retail shops remained relatively unchanged and open on the ground floor but the two upper floors were changed radically. The building remained until the U.S. government purchased it in 1937. A United States post office was built on the site in 1938 and since then it has been the scene of poltergeist activity in the basement tunnels where the Murder Castle killing zone once stood. Chicago paranormal adventurers have heard the sounds of moans and crying coming from the site and a ghost chaser friend of mine claims to have seen one actual, full-body apparition there. No trace of the Murder Castle remains and the hauntings there may be the only evidence the of the murders that were left behind.

Al Hunter is the author of “Haunted Indianapolis” and “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide.” and the co-author of the “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Osborn H. Oldroyd: Keeper of the Lincoln Flame”, “Thursdays with Doc. Recollections on Springfield & Lincoln” and “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.

Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Part 1

Al Hunter — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 05:08:20 +0000

As a lover of all things historical, the stories I find myself most drawn to often include the aftermath of a historical event. One such story involves an incident and personality from the pages of Irvington history. In October of 1894, America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes committed one of his last murders in a quiet little bungalow on what was then the far eastern edge of Irvington. He was captured, imprisoned, convicted and hung in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1896. While that was the end of HIS story, it was not the end of THE story.
H.H. Holmes left behind a massive building at 63rd and Wallace in Chicago that the press dubbed “The Murder Castle.” Here Holmes tortured and killed his victims as systematically as cattle in a stockyard. Some claim that Holmes killed over 200 people; he confessed to killing 27. The 3-story building was a maze of confusing hallways with blind corners, doors that opened to brick walls and rooms that were escape proof with the only exit for guests being a greased chute leading to the basement.
The building was described in a contemporary newspaper article as: “The castle was built admirably for a murder shop. A dumb waiter ran from the third floor to the basement and there were no connections with the dumb waiter on the intervening floors. The conveyance was big enough to admit a man riding upon it. On the top floor in one of the rooms was a gigantic stove. It was eight feet high and three feet in diameter. It was an ideal stove for the burning of a human body. A person could be thrown into the stove bodily and could be burned to nothing. In the basement were quicklime vats. Bodies could be thrown in quicklime and consumed.”
Patrick Quinlan was the caretaker of that Murder Castle. Police described Quinlan as being “five feet, eight or nine inches tall, slim build with light curly hair, sandy mustache around 38-years-old” at the time. “Pat” Quinlan had done a pretty good job portraying his innocence in the dirty deeds that went on at the Murder Castle. He said that he was only an employee of arch murderer H. H. Holmes. He claimed that he was just the janitor of the Holmes Murder Castle, 701 63rd Street, Chicago, and nothing more. He admitted he had helped build the secret trap doors and lined the killing rooms with asbestos, designed to deaden the sound of dying men and women, but Quinlan insisted that he knew nothing of their purpose, and had no part in the devilish machinations of his boss.
Quinlan was only an ordinary employee who did what he was told unhesitatingly. Quinlan never questioned the authority of his boss, H.H. Holmes. He never asked who the many women were Holmes had visiting him. He never questioned why he would see them come in but never see them go out. He never asked where they went when they disappeared. He was an ideal servant. That was the face Pat Quinlan showed to the authorities and the role he played for the public, but the truth was vastly different. Pat Quinlan was playing games of his own in the Murder Castle.
Seems that the married Quinlan liked the ladies as much as his boss did and apparently held them in the same regard. In 1893, he got a chambermaid that worked at the Castle, named Lizzie, pregnant. His wife lived in Ohio, but would soon be joining her husband at the Castle in time to see the 1893 World’s Fair located a short six blocks away. As the time for his wife’s arrival drew ever nearer, heated arguments between Pat and his very pregnant mistress made Holmes aware of the problem. Quinlan asked his boss, Dr. Holmes, if he could deliver the baby and “keep it quiet so the missus don’t find out.” Quinlan’s agitation grew as Holmes paused for a long uncomfortable minute before answering, “I’ll do anything I can Pat.”
The plan to deliver the baby changed days after his revelation to Dr. Holmes. Now Lizzie threatened to tell Pat’s wife of their elicit love affair. Worse, Lizzie had already told her sister. Quinlan went to Holmes and explained the situation in an undisguised effort to take advantage of his boss’s nefarious skills he would later claim he had no knowledge of. Quinlan lured both women to a small room in a remote part of the Murder Castle. He left the two women and met Holmes in the basement where the doctor turned on the open gas jets, filling the room with the deadly invisible killing fumes. Within a few minutes the two sisters were dead. Their bodies were disposed of in the usual manner and without a trace. Quinlan’s problem was instantly solved and his silent loyalty guaranteed forever.
Since Quinlan did an admirable job of keeping his mouth shut while proclaiming his innocence, no one will ever know what part he played in the murders at the Castle. What we do know is that Quinlan likely remained quiet for no other reason than fear of Dr. H.H. Holmes. One of the requirements of employment with Holmes was a life insurance policy for $5,000 naming Holmes as beneficiary. Quinlan also knew that the caretaker before him was a man named Robert Latimer who tried to blackmail Holmes after learning of the insurance scams. Pat’s fellow employees told him that Latimer just disappeared one day.
On trial in Philadelphia, Holmes said this of Latimer, his 13th victim: “Robert Latimer, a man who had for some years been in my employ as janitor, was my next victim. Several years previous, before I had ever taken human life, he had known of certain insurance work I had engaged in, and when, in after years, he sought to extort money from me, his own death and the sale of his body was the recompense meted out to him. I confined him within the Secret Room and slowly starved him to death. Of this room and its secret gas supply and muffled windows and doors, sufficient has already been printed. Finally, needing its use for another purpose and because his pleadings had become almost unbearable, I ended his life. The partial excavation in the walls of this room found by the police was caused by Latimer’s endeavoring to escape by tearing away the solid brick and mortar with his unaided fingers.”
In September of 1893, one month before the close of the all-important 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the Murder Castle caught fire in several different locations simultaneously. True to form, Holmes had insured the building with several companies for a total of $25,000 (which shakes out to $900,000 in today’s money). Investigators discovered strong evidence of a liquid accelerant used to start the blaze. The fire had not spread to the lower floors and the insurance company never paid Holmes’s claim. The fire destroyed the top floor but Holmes was never charged with arson. The fire was the beginning of the end for H.H. Holmes.

Next week: Part II — Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes.

Lizzie Borden Took An Axe . . .

Al Hunter — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:08:15 +0000

My wife Rhonda and I celebrated our 25th anniversary by visiting a few east coast destinations on our bucket list: Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow, Salem, Massachusetts and the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts. Sounds romantic huh? Well, keep in mind that our 10th anniversary was spent on a trip of haunted California: the Queen Mary, Alcatraz, Brookdale Lodge and the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.
I’ll begin where we ended at the Lizzie Borden bed and breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts. Located roughly an hour south of Boston and just minutes from Newport and Providence, Rhode Island, it is the tenth largest city in the state. Located along the eastern shore of Mount Hope Bay at the mouth of the Taunton River, the city is well known for its Portuguese culture, its numerous 19th century textile mills and Battleship Cove, the world’s largest collection of World War II naval vessels. Fall River is the hometown of celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse and journalist George Stephanopoulos, but undoubtedly the city’s most famous former resident is Lizzie Borden.
The Borden house is located at 92 Second Street. It was in this house that Abby and Andrew Borden were murdered on the morning of Thursday, August 4, 1892. To say they were murdered might be an understatement — they were hacked to pieces by persons unknown. Suspicion was immediately cast upon the youngest daughter Lizzie after it was determined that she was home alone (except for the family maid Bridget who was outside washing windows) at the time of both murders. Lizzie would ultimately be charged with both murders; a woman on trial for murder was unheard of in Victorian America.
But first, some background on the Bordens. Lizzie’s father, Andrew Jackson Borden, grew up poor and never forgot it. He worked hard and became wealthy through the sales of furniture and caskets, real estate development, and as director of several textile mills and banks. At the time of his death, his estate was valued at $300,000 (Nearly $8 million in today’s money). But Andrew Jackson Borden was cheap. For instance, although the Borden home had running water, it lacked indoor plumbing and the family used a two-seater outhouse located in the basement. Andrew preferred instead that the family use chamber pots, which he regularly emptied on the fruit trees in the backyard. He was a stern disciplinarian, often causing hard feelings at home and in business. It would seem that Mr. Borden had many enemies.
Tension had been growing in the family in the months before the murders, especially over Andrew’s gifts of real estate to various branches of Abby’s family. Lizzie went from calling Abby “mother” to “Mrs. Borden” after it was revealed that their stepmother’s sister received a house from Andrew Borden. The night before the murders, John Vinnicum Morse, the brother of Lizzie and Emma’s deceased mother, Sarah Anthony (Morse) Borden (1823–1863), visited and was invited to stay for a few days to discuss business matters with Andrew. Some believe that this visit induced a conversation about property transfer to his nieces that precipitated the murders.
One of the great things about the Lizzie Borden case that there is plenty of room for speculation. The first thing you learn when you visit the house, the cemetery, or the Fall River Historical Society where the relics and records from the crime are on display, is that everyone has their own opinion about the crime. Depending on who you talk to, Lizzie did it alone, with her sister Emma, with the maid Bridget or in concert with other family members. Or the Bordens were killed by a drifter, a handyman or a disgruntled business associate. The motive is easy: money.
During his visit, “Uncle John” stayed in the second floor guest bedroom. It was here that Abby Borden was hacked to death and where her body was found on the floor between the dresser and the bed. According to the forensic investigation, Abby was facing her killer at the time of the attack. She was struck on the side of the head with a hatchet which cut her just above the ear, causing her to turn and fall facedown on the floor, which created contusions on her nose and forehead. Her killer then sat on her back and delivered 19 direct hits to the back of her head. Abby’s death came early that morning, although the exact time has never been established.
After breakfast, Andrew and Morse went to the sitting room where they chatted for an hour. Morse left to visit a relative at 8:45 a.m. and Andrew left for his morning walk sometime after 9 a.m. He went for a shave, stopped at the post office, did some business at three banks on North Main Street, and then went up to inspect a property on South Main that he was having renovated. He conversed briefly with the construction workers there, and while at the site, picked up from the ground a broken lock and slipped it into his pocket (did I mention he was cheap?). He returned at around 10:30 a.m. and went to read his papers in the sitting room. He was joined by Lizzie who encouraged him to take a nap on the sofa, offering to open some windows to help him get comfortable. What happened at that point is unclear, but someone on the premises delivered ten deadly hatchet blows to Andrew Borden’s head and face as he slept.
Shortly after the Town Hall bells had rung the hour of 11:00 a.m., Bridget was startled by Lizzie calling for her “to come quickly because someone had hurt her father.” Andrew was found lying on the couch, his head cut open and unrecognizable. A few hours later, a police photographer snapped one of the most famous crime scene photographs in American history: Andrew Jackson Borden laying on his sitting-room sofa, his head resting on the couch arm, his feet sloping to the floor, his fists clenched on his lap, and his face obliterated. The bed and breakfast has faithfully recreated that parlor scene with an identical horsehair sofa complete with a very realistic looking prop hatchet resting on the arm where Mr. Borden’s head (or what was left of it) once rested.
Although the furniture is not original, the room, woodwork, doors, radiators and fireplaces were all there at the time and remain in place as silent witnesses to the horrors that this house experienced. It is very easy indeed to walk the halls of the Borden house and put yourself right back there on August 4, 1892. Ironically, above the fireplace a hand sewn vintage sampler rests upon the wall with the message “What is home without a Father?” In the corner of the bed and breakfast rests an old-fashioned wooden Ouija board and wooden planchette that our host told us is often used by guests.
During our visit my wife and I slept in the second floor “John V. Morse” room where Abby’s body was found on the floor near the bed. Although none of the furniture in the room belonged to the Borden family, the room has been meticulously recreated to appear as it did in 1892 based on photographs taken of the murder scene on the day of the crime. Some of those photos are displayed in the room, just in case you forget what happened there. The antiques are authentic to the Victorian era and the room layout is identical in every detail. One notable addition is a dress displayed on a mannequin that was actually worn by Elizabeth Montgomery in the movie The Legend Of Lizzie Borden in 1975. The photos on the wall near the dress show the pretty, perky Bewitched star wearing the costume in the movie and seem to somehow soften the dark mood of the room.
The guests at the B & B are treated to a special 2 1/2 hour private tour of the house. Our tour was led by Rick whose wife is also a tour guide there. The room-by-room tour explores every nook and cranny of the building and is accompanied by a very detailed account of the history of the home, the family and the crime. It was immediately apparent that Rick’s theory revolved heavily around John Vinnicum Morse, whose room we were sleeping in. Rick pretty much believed that everyone was in on it: Lizzie, Emma, Bridget and Uncle John, the whole lot of them. He went into meticulous detail and made a very convincing argument, but that’s what makes the crime so interesting. Anything’s possible.
Part of what makes the tour special is that while you listen to the stories, you are leaning on the door jambs, touching the doors and handrails, or standing on readily identifiable historic spots. The tours are certainly a “hands on” experience. The home has been featured on many of the ghost hunting shows and Rick seems to have been involved in all of them and shared stories of his adventures with cast and crew. The trivia about the place was what fascinated me most. Rick informed me that “Uncle John” was a “weird guy.” As proof, he told me that after Abby’s body had been removed from the upstairs room and the bloody carpet cut from the floor, Uncle John slept in the bed that night of the murder beneath the blood spattered covers now on display in the Fall River Historical Society museum.
The B & B does have some authentic relics on display including several books from Lizzie’s collection, all initialed “L.A.B.” (Lizzie Andrew Borden) by Lizzie herself. There are spots in the house where paranormal activity is most likely to occur, particularly in the basement where Andrew Jackson Borden’s bearded face appears on the back wall of the rubbish chute when photographed. I witnessed this myself as did other eight guests in attendance that night. Coins can be found in the containers in every room left by guests as offerings to the skinflint Andrew Borden. These coins are collected and donated every year to the local humane society, Lizzie Borden’s favorite charity. The B & B is pretty pricey and most importantly, it is NOT appropriate for children. But it is a great place for couples and empty nesters.
But what is my personal takeaway from our stay at the Lizzie Borden B & B? Our tour concluded near midnight and we retired to the Morse room to catch some much needed rest (we’d been up for 16 hours and driven some 200-plus miles that day). As with most B & B’s there was no television or radio. I slept on the left side of the bed mere inches away from where poor Abby Borden’s body was found some 122 years ago. Within minutes of turning off the lights, I felt a twitch or a poke on my upper right tricep. It lasted but a few moments, but I surely felt it. I immediately dismissed it as a muscle cramp brought on by the fatigue of a very eventful day. I’ve had hundreds of them over the years. I told myself that it wasn’t Abby Borden laying face down on the floor less than 2 feet below me clutching desperately for a life raft of mortality through an ocean of ethereal pain. No, it was a muscle cramp. Or was it?

Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow

Al Hunter — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 05:08:32 +0000

Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow in New York State can be a confusing traverse through the northern environs of upper New York City if you are not careful. The search leads the tourist through communities seemingly designed to confuse and befuddle: Irvington, Sunnyside, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow might as well be one and the same. Those 17th century Dutchmen who first claimed, then settled the area must have been crazy or paranoid or both.
Known originally as “New Netherland,” Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow was a 17th-century Dutch colonial province located on the East Coast areas that now make up the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The colony was conceived as a private business venture to exploit the North American fur trade. The inhabitants of New Netherland were Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans, the latter chiefly imported as slaves. Descendants of the original settlers played a prominent role in colonial America for the next two centuries. The ghostly visages of long dead Dutchmen permeate the region to this day.
One of those long dead Dutchmen is a hero of mine: Washington Irving. I can’t resist the opportunity to share among friends why Washington Irving matters. Irving was the first American literary diarist who wrote for pleasure at a time when writing was reserved for informational, instructional, spiritual or useful purposes only. He was the first American literary humorist. He was the first American writer of modern short stories. He was the first to write history and biography as entertainment. He was the first to introduce the American Gothic style of literature to a wide audience, inspiring Gothic masters from Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Stephen King and Anne Rice. In short, Washington Irving was the bomb.
As someone who has written, admired and talked about Washington Irving pretty extensively, I find it hard to explain the feeling of euphoria I felt as I slowly drove past the sign welcoming me to Sleepy Hollow. Or was it Irvington? Wait, it was Sunnyside. Did I mention it was confusing? Regardless, I made it to the author’s home on the banks of the Hudson River and immediately fell in love. An ancient gently curved path leads down a timeless landscaped slope ending at the Hudson River and Irving’s estate known as “Sunnyside.”
When you gaze upon Sunnyside for the first time you understand where artist Thomas Kincaide got his inspiration for all of those cottage paintings. The house seems to have bloomed out of the surrounding soil. The corners and eaves are enveloped by flowering vines and greenery whose roots stretch back in time nearly two centuries. The day of our visit, my wife Rhonda and I were the only two tour guests, met by a brace of lovely women dressed in period costumes of hoop skirts and cameos, each one a specialist on their particular house tour segment.
Our welcoming guide explained how Washington Irving (1783–1859) designed Sunnyside and its 10 acre grounds himself, collaborating with his neighbor, the artist George Harvey. “It is a beautiful spot,” Irving wrote, “capable of being made a little paradise.” In 1832, Washington Irving visited his nephew Oscar Irving who lived near the old stone farmhouse. Irving had recently returned from a trip to the Arkansas River and Mississippi River. The frontier lifestyle appealed to him and he wanted to carve out his own slice of wild along the mighty Hudson River. Irving had lived most of his adult life as a guest in other people’s homes and was eager for a home of his own and he was “willing to pay a little unreasonably for it.” Irving purchased the property on June 7, 1835 for $1,800; he would add to the property to expand the estate through the years.
I would advance a much less romantic explanation as to why Irving fled the city he himself nicknamed “Gotham” for the quiet isolation of Sunnyside: a cholera epidemic was sweeping the city. People of means were escaping to the country en masse. By July of 1832, according to the New York Evening Post, “The roads, in all directions, were lined with well-filled stagecoaches, livery coaches, private vehicles and equestrians, all panic-struck, fleeing the city, as we may suppose the inhabitants of Pompeii fled when the red lava showered down upon their houses.” Washington Irving was no dummy.
But Sunnyside did not begin with Washington Irving. It began almost 200 years before with Wolfert Eckert, a Dutch-American inhabitant of the region. His property, “Wolfert’s Roost” was built around 1690 as part of the Manor of Philipsburg; among other buildings, it contained a simple two-room stone tenant farmhouse. The property remained in the Eckert family until Irving purchased it in 1835. He immediately began expanding the small cottage in stages, combining his sentimental interests in the architecture of colonial New York and buildings he had visited in Scotland and Spain. In time, the house became a three-dimensional autobiography.
The grounds read like a book, reflecting Irving’s romantic view of art, nature, and history. He arranged garden paths, trees and shrubs, vistas, and water features to enable his home to appear as natural as the rolling landscape surrounding it. Irving’s Sunnyside estate was the most talked about home and desired invitation in Antebellum America, more coveted than contemporaries like the White House, Mt. Vernon or Monticello. The author’s contemporaries extensively described and illustrated Sunnyside during his lifetime. No less a worldwide literary personage than Charles Dickens himself based his 1842 visit to America around his desire to meet his hero Washington Irving.
Since Sunnyside and many of its furnishings remained in the family for generations after the author’s death, a visit here is one of the most authentic experiences of mid-19th century life to be found anywhere in the country. Once inside, we were immediately taken into the great man’s study. It remains much the same today as Irving would have known it. Guests are surrounded by Irving’s personal library, his partner’s desk and chair and dozens of personal items that make it easy to imagine what it was like when Irving was working there. The guide explained that many other items are housed nearby and discoveries are still being made. Recently, a conservator was working on one of Irving’s books when a handwritten letter fell out quite unexpectedly. The letter was written to Irving from an admirer named Edgar Allan Poe. “Poe was a fan of Mr. Irving’s,” our guide explained. “But later Poe became an adversary of Irving for reasons unknown.”
In the rear of the office behind a pair of canopy drapes is a daybed comfortably attired beneath a landscape of books that stretch heavenward. Yes, indeed, Rip Van Winkle himself would’ve been pleased by this sleeping arrangement. The long, wide bench is adorned with thick cushions running the length of the wall and the two velvet curtains could be closed for privacy. This area was designed for him to take a break from writing and to take a nap, but it became his permanent nightly sleeping quarters. If someone came calling, Irving could go out the door in the enclosed area and come down the hallway. The visitor would have no idea that Mr. Irving had been caught napping in his office.
On the nightstand near the bed rests Washington Irving’s personal homeopathic medical chest. Looking not unlike an oaken toolbox, it is filled with small vials containing natural remedies for common maladies of the Victorian era. It seems that along with being our nation’s first fantasist to earn his living solely with a pen, Irving was also among our first to utilize holistic medicine. This was the pedestal upon which the great man died on November 28, 1859. Just before retiring for the night, the author said: “Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! If this could only end!” It should come as no surprise to my readers to learn that this room is purportedly haunted by the author. I could lead you on a room-by-room tour of the rest of the house, but to be honest, you need go no further than his office.
Although the rest of the house may have been forgettable to me, the trivia about my hero was captivating. According to legend, George Washington met 5-year-old Washington Irving in 1789 while shopping with his nanny. The woman introduced the lad to General Washington with “This bairn that’s called after ye!” and Washington gave his blessing to his namesake by ceremoniously placing his hand upon the young boy’s head in approval. Irving never forgot the moment. In the years to come he would write one of his greatest works, The Life of George Washington, at Sunnyside. A replica of the house stands at Liberty Square at The Walt Disney World; the building serving as a restaurant.
After the tour, we were invited to walk freely about the grounds. From icehouse to outhouse to wood shed, the estate is a faithful representation of the bucolic retreat as it appeared in his lifetime. I was even afforded the opportunity to pick, and devour, an apple from orchard behind the house. However, there is one aspect of the estate that is undeniable to every visitor to Sunnyside. It’s presence smacks of modernism in conflict with the peaceful, timeless beauty of the surrounding waterfront countryside — a railroad. And Washington Irving, the most famous American author of his age, was powerless to stop it.
While about halfway through the numerous repairs, additions, and renovations to his riverfront paradise, the Hudson River Railroad formed in 1847 and began the process of eminent domain against Irving’s Sunnyside. In 1851, the railroad created land between Irving’s sandy Hudson Riverside beach (which the author had painstakingly installed a short time before) by building a berm with landfill, laying down tracks, and starting to run trains from New York City to Albany. Soon, massive iron horses belching thick black coal dust rumbled through the estate at the pace of several times per hour. Irving was furious, of course, fuming that they’d build a railroad through heaven if they could. The “iron horse” of Irving’s era has today been replaced by less interesting engines of the Hudson Line known as the “Metronorth” and the riverside further marred by the erector set style iron towers and power lines that motivate them. These trains rumble noisily past the estate several times per hour.
When the line was first put into use, the train would stop to let Irving board or debark, and when passing would blow the whistle in acknowledgment of the famous author’s house. The relatively meager stipend the author received for the forced easement allowed him to construct a cottage addition know as the Spanish Tower, influenced by the Spanish monastic architecture he witnessed in his travels and later wrote about extensively. It added four bedrooms to the house. Despite the hourly distraction, Irving managed to continue writing and entertaining at Sunnyside. But it just goes to show you that even though you’re a 19th century rock star, you still can’t fight city hall.

The “Family Affair” Curse, Part 2

Al Hunter — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:08:37 +0000

Family Affair was one of the most successful family comedies of the 1960s. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five for three of those five seasons. In 1969, the show hit number 1 in the ratings, turning fraternal TV twins Buffy and Jody into household names. Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, became the best-selling doll in America. Buffy’s likeness was everywhere: paper dolls, puzzles, coloring, comic and cookbooks, clothing and lunch boxes, not to mention movies and TV commercials. Everybody knew Buffy, but not many knew her alter-ego, Anissa Jones.
Anissa was born in Lafayette on March 11, 1958. She was cast in the role of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis Jones on Family Affair in 1965 at the age of 8. During filming, she attended school on the studio lot alongside many other child actors. However, a significant amount of her free time was spent promoting the show. She posed for still photos, went on promotional trips, appeared on other series including Laugh-In and an episode of To Rome with Love (as Buffy Davis). Her image was marketed in every conceivable way. In short, she knew life more as Buffy then Anissa.
In 1969, while Family Affair was still in production, Jones was cast alongside Elvis Presley in the movie The Trouble With Girls (and how to get into it.) It was one of Elvis’s last films featuring one of the most diverse casts ever assembled: Vincent Price, John Carradine, Dabney Coleman, the voices of Velma and Fred from “Scooby Doo” and baseball great Duke Snider. For once, Anissa was seen without her trademark Buffy pigtails. Ironically, also appearing (without credit) was Susan Olsen, who would herself become a Buffy clone on The Brady Bunch three weeks after the film hit the theatres. Despite her grueling work schedule and a rocky family life, 12-year-old Anissa was adjusting to her fame quite nicely.
In 1971, the show’s ratings fell out of the top 30 and CBS abruptly canceled it. The network was changing its image to more adult-oriented fare. Family Affair was still popular, with rumors of a switch from CBS to ABC, but in the end ABC decided that having The Brady Bunch was enough and nixed the deal. Far from lamenting the loss of her fame and fortune, Anissa was excited at the prospect of being unemployed. She had been working in show business almost nonstop since the age of 5 and now came an unexpected opportunity for Anissa to be a regular kid. For five years, she worked (often seven days a week), ate, studied (she attended school on set) and sometimes slept at the television studio. All the while tending to her little brother Paul at her own insistence.
Although canceled, CBS almost immediately sold the show into syndication keeping Buffy ever present in the public’s consciousness. Initially, Jones went to school and attempted a normal life, though her acting career was still garnering interest in Tinseltown. She auditioned for the role of satanically possessed Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (the polar opposite of Buffy) but ultimately Linda Blair was cast.
Brian Keith asked her to work with him again on The Brian Keith Show, in which he played a Hawaiian pediatrician, but she declined the part. Amazingly, she was offered the role of Iris “Easy” Steensma in Taxi Driver, but turned it down. Only Jones knows why she didn’t take the part. It seemed to be just the sort of edgy, alternative work she was searching for in the wake of Mrs. Beasley and those pigtails. Instead, the role went to Jodie Foster, who was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her portrayal. Anissa seemed content to busy herself with school and friends.
She was offered the controversial role of a child prostitute in the film Pretty Baby, a film set in the brothels of New Orleans, whose key role was that of a 12-year-old girl. It seems that every young actress in Hollywood was connected to that film. Tatum O’Neal, Jodie Foster, Linda Blair, Kristy MacNichol and Dana Plato all allegedly turned it down. While others like Diane Lane, Michelle Pfeiffer, Melanie Griffith, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Laura Dern, and Helen Hunt auditioned for it. Sadly, Anissa would be dead before filming began. The role ultimately went to Brooke Shields whose career skyrocketed from it.
Friends and family later said that Anissa made a decision to quit acting after Family Affair ended in 1971. They claim that she auditioned only because she was collecting unemployment which required her to go to three auditions to receive benefits. After her unemployment ran out Anissa never went to another audition. Anissa walked away from fame, money and success with hope of becoming a regular kid.
In the months after the show ended, Anissa’s relationship with her divorced mother continued to deteriorate. For a time, Anissa and her brother Paul moved in with their father. But he died and the children moved back with their mother. Anissa’s grades at Westchester High School in L.A. began to slip and, rather than fighting it out with her mom, she began to couch surf at friend’s houses instead. Her mother reported her as a runaway and Anissa was sent to juvenile detention jail for a short time. Upon her release, Anissa again began hanging out at the beach, drinking and using drugs. Her life was spiraling out of control and any traces of Buffy seemed to be washing away like footprints in the sand.
Her mother kicked her out and cut off all support. Hoping to make ends meet until she turned 18 and royalties from Family Affair kicked in, Anissa took a job at Winchell’s Donut Shop in Playa Del Rey. After her eighteenth birthday, Anissa would receive her $63,000 trust fund and $107,800 in U.S. Savings Bonds (actual cash value of $75,000.00) from her Family Affair earnings (the average household income in 1976 was $11,172 per annum). When Anissa turned 18, she and her brother Paul moved into an apartment together. Anissa bought herself a brand-new Ford Pinto and her brother a loaded Camaro that cost twice as much as her own car.
With newfound freedom, recent wealth (nearly three quarters of a million dollars in today’s money), and more drugs than she knew what to do with, Anissa embarked on the final role of her life. She began seeing Allan Kovan, a local partier heavily involved in the L.A. drug scene. Anissa’s substance abuse problem escalated from smoking weed and binge drinking to taking large doses of Quaaludes, angel dust, cocaine, and barbiturates. She was in serious trouble and Uncle Bill, Jody, Cissy and Mr. French were nowhere to help.
On August 28th, 1976, while attending a party at a friend’s house, Anissa consumed a potent cocktail of barbiturates, phencyclidine, cocaine and methaquaalone. Boyfriend Kovan later said he checked on her around 9:30 that morning and she was fine. Later, sometime between 11:00 to 11:30 a.m., her friends found Anissa lying in bed nude and unresponsive. After dressing her in a pair of boxer shorts, they called the paramedics an hour later at 12:29 p.m.
Paramedics and firemen were on scene at 12:34. Anissa was found face up, covered by a blanket and a sheet. At 4’ 11” and 85 lbs, one of the paramedics mistook her as a much younger girl and frantically tried to resuscitate her even though the arm, neck and face were already in rigor. They attached the electrodes and difib’ed her once but it was clearly useless, and the order was given to cease resuscitation efforts. Anissa died from what the coroner, who placed the time of death somewhere between 4:30-6:30 a.m., said was “one of the most massive overdoses I’ve ever seen”. She was just 18 years old.
Friend, fellow student and partygoer Steve Hanford recalled later, “The night Anissa died was weird. She wasn’t being very social. She and some other kids stayed in a bedroom taking angel dust and coke. When Anissa came out of the bedroom she said she and some friends were going down to Oceanside to visit her friend Helen Hennessey. The next thing I heard about Anissa was that she was dead. It blew my mind because I thought she was too smart to destroy herself with drugs. She didn’t seem depressed the week before she died.”
Her body was taken to McCormick Funeral Home in Inglewood and then to the Pacific Crest crematory in Redondo Beach for cremation. There were no official services held for her and on September 1, 1976 her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean. But the story doesn’t end there. For years after Anissa’s death, one of the very first in a long line of tragic TV child star premature deaths, became an urban legend known as the “Curse of Family Affair.”
Sebastian Cabot was forced to leave the series for an entire season after being stricken with bleeding ulcers. He had to be replaced by another actor until his return, several months and some 40 pounds lighter. In 1977 Cabot suffered a stroke, his second in three years. He died on August 22, 1977 at the age of 59. His death coming less than a year after Anissa’s. Like his diminutive pig-tailed costar, he was cremated.
Before the show aired, Brian Keith suffered the real life loss of a child when his 8-year-old son Michael died from a sudden case of pneumonia. Keith’s stepmother was Peg Entwistle, a well-known Broadway actress who committed suicide by jumping from the “H” of the famous Hollywood Sign in 1932. In later life, Keith suffered from emphysema and lung cancer despite having quit smoking 10 years earlier. On June 24, 1997, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Malibu, two months after his daughter Daisy committed suicide. Keith left a handwritten note in which he wrote “The end is here. I’m finished. The pain is too much. Now it’s time for me to join our little Daisy. She needs me. She didn’t want to be without me here, so she’ll have me again over there. Don’t be sad. This had to come soon.”
Johnny Whitaker fell into drug and alcohol abuse for nine years during the 1980-90s before an intervention led him to a 12-step program. He has been clean and sober for 17 years. Eight years after Anissa’s accidental overdose, her brother, Paul, would also die from a drug overdose. The host of the party at which Anissa attended that fateful night was a 14-year-old girl who lived at the house with her divorced father. This girl died at age 34 in a violent car crash in Keaau, Hawaii in 1996.
Today, Anissa Jones is entertaining a whole new generation of children whose parents, many of whom grew up watching her, show them TV Land reruns and DVD episodes of Family Affair. All five seasons are available on DVD. They are a delightful piece of entertainment for young and old. The story of Anissa Jones is a sad one, but her legacy still shines through the innocent countenance of freckle-faced, pig-tailed little Buffy Davis.

The “Family Affair” Curse, Part 1

Al Hunter — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:08:07 +0000

My wife and I went to an antique mall the other day. As we walked in the door I couldn’t help but notice an odd little doll staring back at us from behind a glass case in the entryway. I don’t usually notice dolls but this one looked strangely familiar. It stood about 2 feet tall dressed in a blue and white polka dot dress with yellow fringe. Her blonde hair was bobbed short and her bright blue eyes were peering out front behind square eyeglasses. I asked my wife Rhonda why this doll looked so familiar to me and she quickly answered, “Oh, that’s just Mrs. Beasley. You know, from Family Affair.”
Family Affair? I remember that TV show. Most of all, I remember the owner of that little doll; Anissa Jones. But before I get ahead of myself, for those of you who need a refresher course. Family Affair told the story of a handsome New York City bachelor who becomes the guardian of his nieces and nephew when their parents suddenly die in a car accident. William Davis (a.k.a. “Uncle Bill” played by Brian Keith) is the head of an engineering firm who finds that he has to put his playboy lifestyle on hold to raise these kids. At first he believes it will only be a temporary position, but by the end of the first episode he comes to adore the children and enlists his butler Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot) as their co-protector. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five rated programs on TV for three of those seasons.
Maybe you’re visualizing that doll, Mrs. Beasley. Maybe the theme song is weaving a path through your head like an ear worm …”da da da dun dada da dun dun, da da da dun dada da dun dun.” Or maybe, like me, you remember Buffy — Anissa Jones. Did you know she was from Indiana? Ironically, on the show, the three kids were born and raised in Terre Haute when they moved to Manhattan to live with their Uncle Bill.
Mary Anissa Jones was born in West Lafayette, Indiana to Purdue faculty member Dr. John Paul Jones and his wife Mary “Paula” Tweel on March 11, 1958. Paula was of Lebanese descent and the child’s middle name (pronounced Ah-NEE-Sah) meant “little friend” in Arabic. A little over a year later, a baby brother, Paul, arrived. (More about him later).
The family moved to Playa del Rey, California while the children were still toddlers but the parents soon divorced in 1965. The divorce undoubtedly affected Anissa adversely and contributed to her precociousness. The most immediate change in behavior was that Anissa and her baby brother Paul became inseparable.
Anissa’ s mom was a school teacher; her dad, a well paid engineer for Hughes Aircraft. But Anissa’s dad has been described as a deadbeat who abandoned his family. Dr. Jones was court ordered to pay $80 per child per month in support. He eventually fell over $10,000.00 behind in child support. This delinquency caused the family car to be repossessed and the family home to go into foreclosure. Despite these terrible family setbacks, Anissa’s career was just starting to take off.
Paula enrolled Anissa in dance class at the tender age of four. Her troupe was asked to perform on The Art Linkletter Show, and 7-year-old Anissa was singled out to do a cartwheel. She failed the first time, landing on her rear end instead, and the audience roared with laughter. Anissa picked herself up and tried it again, this time she nailed it. Although the audience loved it, Anissa was mortified by her initial failure and cried all the way home.
An agent was in the audience that night and he immediately contacted her mother to sign Anissa to a contract. Soon, Jones began landing jobs in television commercials, appearing in close to two dozen commercials before the age of eight. Television producer Don Fedderson was putting together the cast for a new series called Family Affair. The show needed a 15-year-old girl (Cissy), an 6-year-old boy (Jodie) and another 6-year-old girl (Buffy). Although 8 years of age, Anissa auditioned for and won the part of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis thanks to her youthful look, charming personality and above-average acting talent.
Series star Brian Keith suggested Fedderson consider a little boy he’d recently worked on in the film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming who had the ability to cry on cue. Redheaded 6-year-old Johnnie Whitaker’s casting as Jodie required a shift in the concept. He and Jones were written as fraternal twins, with Cathy Garver cast as their 15-year-old sister. (Garver was nearly 21 at the time!)
In another case of life imitating art, Anissa’s parents bitter divorce caused upheaval in her home life which transferred well to her orphan TV character being shuttled here and there under traumatic circumstances. Anissa didn’t have to stretch to obtain the forlorn, dejected qualities that Buffy initially displayed on the show. The first couple of episodes of Family Affair highlighted the adjustments to this newly formed unconventional family unit and the misunderstandings that were sure to arise when a confirmed bachelor takes on three youngsters. This theme, perhaps commonplace by today’s standards, was considered edgy and controversial for the 1960s.
Eventually, the TV quintet solidified into a warm family unit dealing with the regular sort of issues befalling any family. Rotund Sebastian Cabot portrayed the fastidious, efficient British butler whose household and lifestyle are upended as much as his employer’s by the arrival of the children. His exasperation eventually melted into affection and the vision of this large man with a tiny twin on each side became a favorite TV image. At first, Anissa called him “Mr. Cabot,” but as their relationship grew closer she began calling him “Sabby.” When her cat Tiger (a gift from Brian Keith) had kittens, she named one of them Sabby in his honor.
Admittedly, the series was often over-produced and overly sweet, but it was also pleasant, charming, tender, amusing and most of all, cute. The premise of a sitcom featuring an unconventional family was considered innovative but Family Affair opened the door for future shows like Nanny and the Professor, The Brady Bunch, Diff’rent Strokes, and Who’s the Boss to be accepted and believable. The character of Cindy on The Brady Bunch (played by Susan Olsen) was in fact based on Anissa Jones’ Buffy character in both appearance and demeanor.
No doubt about it, Anissa Jones was cuter-than-cute. Her natural precocious manner along with her thoughtful freckle-faced visage and sweet plaintive voice made her

The Day Babe Ruth Came to Indianapolis

Al Hunter — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:08:13 +0000

All through the summer of 1946, the mighty Babe Ruth had a severe pain over his left eye that would not go away. At first he thought it was a sinus infection, then a toothache. Whatever it was, it wasn’t getting any better. It eventually caused so much pain that Ruth admitted himself to a New York hospital on November 26. By then the entire left side of his face was swollen, his left eye closed shut, and he couldn’t eat solid food. Doctors removed three bad teeth, then pumped the Bambino full of penicillin and other drugs. By Christmas, Ruth was still in pain and back in the hospital.
Babe Ruth had cancer but the doctors never told him. They had discovered a malignant growth wrapped like a vine around a major artery in the left side of his neck. In the operation that followed, nerves were cut and the artery tied off. Not all of the cancer could be removed. Babe’s wife Claire said she was eventually told, but Babe remained in the dark until the very end. The surgery was on January 5, 1947. In the month that followed, Babe remained confined to the hospital in a state of near constant pain and depression. His hair began to fall out and he lost a lot of weight (estimated at between 80 to 128 pounds). It seemed that the Babe was just waiting to die.
Thousands of telegrams poured in every week from former teammates, sports luminaries (Connie Mack and Jack Dempsey among them), and average everyday fans. Claire read as many of letters as she could out loud to the Babe. On February 6 he celebrated his 52nd birthday in the hospital with Claire, Julia, and their dog, Pal. On February 15, Ruth left the hospital and wept unashamedly as he saw the throngs of admirers gathered outside as he was led to a waiting car. His natty camel’s hair overcoat and matching cap couldn’t hide the fact that Babe Ruth was a shadow of his former self.
Although weak and sickly, Ruth instinctively knew that he was back in the public eye. Extremely conscious of his debt to the “kids of America,” to whose loyal support he attributed his success, Ruth decided to apply himself to child welfare programs after his discharge from the hospital. He was engaged by the Ford Motor Company as a consultant in connection with its participation in the American Legion junior baseball program. In May 1947, he established and made the first contribution to the Babe Ruth Foundation. Inc., an organization whose name soon became synonymous with youth baseball.
The ravages of his illness left little of Ruth’s once robust physique. The Babe now appeared gaunt, bent and vulnerable. His once resonant voice was reduced to only a rasping whisper. The Migthy Ruth continued to astound his physicians by tackling his new job with all his old-time vigor. “They call me a consultant,” said Ruth, “but I want to tell you that I plan to work hard at this job — just as hard as my health permits. The possibilities are unlimited and I won’t be happy until we have every boy in America between the ages of 6 and 16 wearing a glove and swinging a bat.” He logged more then 50,000 miles in support of the program, appearing on diamonds all over the U.S. in front of thousands of youths.
Treatment with an experimental drug beginning in late June improved Ruth’s health tremendously. Throughout that summer of 1947 Ruth became the official ambassador of the American Legion baseball program. One of his stops while on the American Legion Goodwill Tour that summer was at the original Victory Field, home of the Indianapolis Indians on 16th Street. Ruth appeared at the August 5, 1947 American Legion Junior All-Star game. The Sultan of Swat appeared on the field, shook hands with players and coaches and posed with local youngsters. He signed autographs for the fans and each All-Star player received an autographed baseball from Ruth. Two of the players in that game were future big leaguers Don Zimmer and Jim Frey representing the Robert E. Bentley Post #50 out of Cincinnati.
The Indianapolis news reported: “Ruth thrilled the crowd when he was introduced during the intermission between the Legion game and the Indianapolis Indians’ game with Milwaukee. Ruth sat through the Legion game and several innings of the Indians game, but his ill health began to take its toll and he had to leave. Earlier in the day, he conducted an hour-long press conference, a pair of radio broadcasts and attended a luncheon in his honor. Once a hefty 278 pounds, Ruth’s weight had dropped to 193. He was coming off an illness that almost cost him his life and had just undergone a blood transfusion three days prior.”
The news spoke to one of the kids after the game about meeting the Babe, “His voice was deep and raspy, he coughed quite a bit, but it was the thrill of a lifetime,” said the unnamed player. The young athlete was surprised to see the once-robust Ruth in such failing health, but impressed that he would spend time with them. Babe Ruth breezed through Indianapolis like an aging movie star unveiling their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was gone as fast as he came. It would be nearly 40 years after Ruth’s visit before my dad, Robert E. Hunter, Arsenal Tech class of 1954, sat beside me at old Victory Field and dreamily stated, “You know I was here when Babe Ruth came through in 1947. I was selling peanuts here in the grandstands.” Strangely, he could rattle off the names of all those Pittsburgh Pirates minor league players on that team but couldn’t recall much about the Babe’s visit that day.
Ford renewed Ruth’s contract in early 1948, “not only because he was an inspiration to every American boy but because of the excellent results of his efforts last season.” The ex-slugger’s salary was not revealed but Ford announced that it “ranks him high on the list of baseball’s top money-earners.” As long as his strength permitted, Ruth continued to make appearances on behalf of the Junior Baseball program. It was to be only a temporary reprieve. At his last appearance in June 1948, before 16,000 youngsters in St. Louis, he was too weak to wave a bat for photographers.
The remaining piece of the tumor was growing, and soon morphine was the only thing that could stop the discomfort. Babe still tried to live his normal life of golf outings and devouring steaks, but now the drives fell far short off the tee and the meat had to be served chopped up for him. Soon even biting down on the white of an egg caused excruciating pain for the once mighty “Sultan of Swat.” Despite the pain, Babe wrote in the closing of his autobiography, The Babe Ruth Story that hopeful summer of 1947: “I’ve got to stick around a long, long time. For above everything else, I want to be a part of and help the development of the greatest game God ever saw fit to let men invent-Baseball.”
Ruth bravely attended the Dodgers-Yankees World Series that fall and in December dressed up as Santa Claus to entertain young polio victims. Babe may not have known or wanted to believe it, but his own time was growing short. On July 26, the Ruths went to the New York City premiere of The Babe Ruth Story, but as his daughter Julia Ruth Stevens recalled, “he was so sick and so medicated that I’m not even sure he knew where he was.”
Babe and Claire left shortly after the picture started and checked into Memorial Hospital for the last time. Babe Ruth struggled to answer letters and meet with visitors right up until August 15, 1948, barely a year after he graced the diamond of Victory Field in Indianapolis. Babe Ruth died in his sleep at 8:01 p.m. on Aug. 16, 1948. His last conscious act was to autograph a copy of his autobiography for one of his nurses. It was only after the great man’s death that the newspapers announced the cause of death as throat cancer.
A long line of mourners encircled Yankee Stadium to pay their respects as Ruth’s body lay in state. During the next two days, more than 100,000 passed his open casket inside the ballpark. They were men, women, and children of all races and ages; from uniformed Little Leaguers to old men in derby hats. The crowd of worshipful mourners rivaled only the display of grief for President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. Vendors sold hot dogs and photographs of the Babe to those waiting their turn in line. As crass as that might sound, the Babe would have loved it.

Indianapolis: The Great Flood of 1913, Part 2

Al Hunter — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 05:08:40 +0000

Last week, we left Greenfield on March 25th, 1913, underwater. The “Black Night of Terror,” the “March Flood,” or the “Great Flood of 1913″ had come and gone through the Hancock County seat, leaving devastation in its wake. And it was headed straight for Indianapolis. On Tuesday the National Weather Bureau sent out the following warning: “Below Indianapolis the river will rise rapidly and the public should prepare for higher stages than have been experienced for many years. Every precaution should be taken by those living along the lower course of he river, as the rise will be unusually rapid and will reach a point several feet above the danger line.” Late that Tuesday morning, the first levee failed, flooding Indianapolis via the White River and Eagle Creek.
Fortunately, most Hoosiers heeded the warnings, gathered their families, belongings and pets and fled to higher ground, saving countless lives. Witnesses on the west side of Indianapolis claimed they saw a wall of water more than two stories high when the White River levee burst at Morris Street. Indianapolis’ tranquil Eagle Creek, normally 64-feet-wide at best, spread to an angry class five rapid half a mile wide. Astonished bystanders watched as the White River tore through its levees at many points. Around noon on Tuesday, Fall Creek jumped its banks, flooding a large part of the city’s north side residential district, ending streetcar service and putting the water works and other public utilities out of commission. Many families living in homes in the danger zones packed valuables into wagons and carried furniture up to the second floors and attics of their homes.
By 3 p.m. the muddy water was beginning to trickle down the levee. Whenever a leak appeared, a brace of men rushed over to plug it using bags of sand and bales of straw jammed in place by telephone poles. Around 4 p.m., as the men were busy shoring up the levee north of the Morris Street bridge, water unexpectedly broke through the sandbags piled on the other end of the bridge at the western corner of Morris and Drover streets. The break was not a massive wall of water as some claimed, but rather a steady flow as if a massive spigot had been opened allowing thousands of gallons of water to pour through the breach while gradually enlarging the opening as each frantic moment trickled past. Now, people abandoned their wagons and tied what valuables and food they could gather into bundles, grabbed their children, and began to flee across the Morris Street Bridge. The evacuation proceeded in agonizing slow motion; the water first rising past their ankles, then up to their knees, finally settling around their waists.
Still, the White River kept rising. By 6 p.m. the river burst through the base of the levee about four hundred feet upriver of the bridge. By early evening, Indianapolis was flooded east of Harding Street, in some places the water crested as high as 15 feet. By Wednesday, the Washington Street Bridge was destroyed, cutting the main artery between the Circle City and all points west and taking the railroad tracks with it. The recently created suburb of West Indianapolis and valley of West New York Street were the hardest hit areas; a region principally populated by railroad and stockyard workers. Created as one of the city’s first suburbs, the southwest annex was roughly bounded by the White River to the east, the Pennylvania Railroad line to the north, Eagle Creek to the west, and Raymond Street to the south. The residents never knew what hit them.
The first floor of the newly opened St. Vincent’s hospital at Fall Creek and Illinois flooded and Sister Mary Joseph and her staff moved their patients to the second and third floors for safety. Articles titled “$500,000 Loss at Peru,” “Over the Muncie Levee,” “Boats in Carmel Streets,” “Danville Cars Stopped,” “Bloomington is Cut Off, ” and “Shelbyville Levee Breaks” appeared on a single page of The Indianapolis News Wednesday edition. The flood crested in Indianapolis on the morning of Thursday, March 26th. As the water receded, the damage was unveiled and the residents were left to comb over the debris of the worst flood the state ever saw. A six-square mile area was destroyed, displacing 4,000 Hoosier families. Because of the early warning, the loss of life was tallied at five known fatalities; however, witness stories swear that total had to be much higher.
It was Easter week and Indianapolis was not alone in their soggy sorrow. Levees burst all around the state — on the Mississinewa River in Marion, on the White River in Muncie, on the Wabash River in Lafayette, and on the Ohio River in Lawrenceburg — flooding the cities they were supposed to protect. In the southern part of Kokomo, Wildcat Creek flooded over its levee to saturate city streets with eight feet of water. Thousands of telephone and telegraph poles and wires were downed by the flood, making an orgnaized relief effort nearly impossible. To obtain the necessary food, shelter, and medical supplies for the injured and suddenly homeless, Governor Sam Ralston appealed for help to cities around Indiana as well as to other states. Donations of money, blankets, food, and even coffins poured in just as quickly as the water poured out.
Indianapolis was not only the geographical center of the Midwest’s monumental winter storm system in March of 1913, with a population of 235,000, it was also the single largest city affected by the natural calamity. So what kind of storm caused the Great Flood of 1913? It began like any other normal Midwestern winter storm, but soon developed special characteristics conducive to flooding. A strong Canadian high with its accompanying windstorm stalled off Bermuda, thus halting the normal eastward travel of its trailing low bringing all the rain. Then another Canadian high moved in from the west, squeezing the low into a long, low-pressure trough between the two highs, its center stretching diagonally from southern Illinois, across southern and middle Indiana, and across northern Ohio. Up that diagonal path, at least two lows moved in fast succession, the rain of one merging together into the next. But nothing in the weather observations or theories of the day prepared the U.S. Weather Service, or any other body, for the unprecedented volume of water that fell out of the sky during those four days of March 1913.
Regardless of how the flood waters had arrived, and receded, perhaps the true horror of the Great Flood of 1913 was the aftermath. The flood waters were now stagnant pools of sick water filled with raw sewage, rotting food, dead pets and livestock, bugs, snakes, and disease carrying rodents. Day after day, Hoosiers were bombarded with newspaper headlines warning of looting and arrests, waterborne disease wielding parasites, guards posted to keep away opportunistic invaders, health agencies warning of the dangers to unsuspecting children and dangerous symptoms caused by clogged drains. For a time, the city was under siege. Luckily, the flood brought about changes in national weather forecasting by identifying the presence of stalled lows as the major factor in localized flooding, local government with the passage of stricter code enforcement in response to the flood’s aftermath, and the resurgence of the Red Cross as a National relief agency. Statewide, more than 90 people drowned and at least 180 bridges were destroyed when up to 11 inches of rain fell across the state in a five-day period.

Greenfield: The Great Flood of 1913, Part 1

Al Hunter — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 05:08:57 +0000

Oh, how it rained! For 48 straight hours, it rained. Martha Duncan stood on the porch of her house, located on the north side of Fourth Street between State and Pennsylvania, wondering if it was ever going to stop. It was Monday March 24th, 1913 in Greenfield, Indiana, nearly 60 degrees outside and the normally shallow waters of nearby Potts Ditch were creeping closer and closer by the minute. By eleven o’clock that night, she was moving furniture and rolling up carpet. By one o’clock the water was within a few inches of the floor. She managed to save everything but her piano before the Fourth Street bridge over Potts Ditch was swept off its moorings and floated downstream.
On State Street, the large front yard of the John Ward Walker home, known as Walker’s Hill, was now a lake. Walker was a prominent local merchant and one of the founders of the Greenfield Banking Company in 1871. The Vawter and Selman homes, properties adjoining Potts Ditch, had to be evacuated and were quickly overtaken by flood waters. The Selman barn looked like an island in the newly created waterway.
The great flood of 1913, or “March Flood” to locals, became the worst flood in Indiana history. In Greenfield, James Whitcomb Riley’s storied Brandywine Creek flowed over the National Road like a raging river; it’s branches, like Potts Ditch, spread water through town, ripping away all but one bridge, the East South Street bridge, the town’s newest created just the year before.
In March of 1913, Greenfield was a small agricultural community located at the headwaters of the White River’s East Fork. The news of the year was the purchase of a 156-acre tract of land one mile west of Greenfield by the Eli Lilly Biological Laboratories. In time, Spanish-style structures would start popping up all over the property. When completed, the snow-white, red-tile roofed buildings awaited the arrival of test animals to be quartered within them in preparation for the manufacture of antitoxins and vaccines. In the original buildings, there would be space for 30 horses, 18 calves, 3,000 guinea pigs, 500 rabbits and many other small animals. Eventually, the site would grow until it had 70 buildings on 800 acres. Soon, by late 1913, immunization of horses and calves would begin.
But on March 24, 1913, the flood was the big news in Hancock County. Greenfield residents stayed up all that Monday night to watch as the river steadily breached the banks. In 1913 farmers pastured their cattle in many places along the town’s waterways and undoubtedly many were lost in the rushing torrents. With every passing hour, the Brandywine rose higher and higher as the rain mercilously poured down. A little past eleven o’clock on that “Black Night of Terror,” a train passed over the Brandywine via the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge. A short time after the caboose crossed safely over, a lone watchman held his red lantern over the chasm now formed in the dark void where the bridge had stood just moments earlier. The bridge had been carried away by the raging flood waters.
The rain did not stop until 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 25th, but the Brandywine continued to rise perilously minute by minute until it crested at 6:30 a.m. The arch bridge at Fifth Street was now underwater and the flood poured over it, flooding barns and chicken houses between Fifth and State streets. The employees of the four-story Columbia Hotel, built in 1885 at 118 East Main Street and considered the town’s most luxurious, were now furiously bailing water out of the basement while pacifying nervous guests. The newly built Greenfield Hotel and nearby Hinchman wagon store were dealing similarly. Soon, Bert Orr’s grocery, the Monger garage, the Clayton & Davis cement works and the South Street Methodist Church (now the Trinity Park Methodist Church) were soaking in muddy water.
Although the new East South street bridge survived the floods, it was for a time under more than a foot of water. According to the April 3, 1913 Greenfield Republican newspaper, 25-year town resident John Mulvihill said that he’d never seen the water so high. Mulvihill pointed to a corn crib in the Henry Fry barn on East Main Street that had been built above all previous high water marks that was now underwater. Another local farmer, J.P. Knight, whose farm was on the banks of the Brandywine south of the National Road, said he lost all of the grain stored in his barn and a pile of gravel worth an estimated $300 (2026: 10,222) when both were washed away downstream.
The railcars on the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Evansville railroad, known popularly as the “Interurban line,” now lay stranded at different points along the road between Greenfield and Richmond. In addition, the traction line bridges were washed out at many points. Travel, phone service and mail delivery ceased and for awhile, Greenfield was cut off from the outside world. To make matters worse, just hours after the rain stopped, the temperature dropped by over 20 degrees and it began to snow. By the 27th, two days after the devastating flood waters ceased, there was 1.5 inches of snow on the ground in Greenfield.
An estimated 5 to 8 inches of rain fell in a 48 hour period. It was late March in Indiana. The winter of 1913 had been particularly harsh in the Hoosier state. The spring thaw was slow in coming and the water that rained down on Greenfield that weekend fell on frozen earth with no place to go. No place to go but downstream; to Indianapolis.

Next Week: Part 2, Indianapolis

James Brown’s Hair

Al Hunter — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 05:08:03 +0000

James Brown is remembered as the “Godfather of Soul” for his many contributions to music made during a six-decades-long career. Brown’s influence is a little more complicated than that. Truth is, not only was Brown a music legend, he was a civil rights pioneer. For a time in the 1960s, Brown was among the most important voices in the black empowerment movement. Not only did he change the culture in terms of music but also in terms of civil rights. Everything we now know about funk and hip-hop we learned from James Brown.
During the sixties, Brown’s music served as message of black empowerment and helped keep the peace during that tumultuous decade. Brown embraced the civil rights movement with the same energy and dynamism he devoted to his performances. In 1966, the song “Don’t Be a Drop-Out” urged black children not to neglect their education. In the same year, he flew down to Mississippi to visit wounded civil rights activist James Meredith, shot during his “March Against Fear.”
During that period Brown often provided nighttime performances to ease tensions when the Civil Rights Movement leadership was fracturing and threatening to break apart. As the civil rights leaders were embroiled in internal conflict, Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, ‘You guys can stay here and argue if you want to, I’m going to go watch James Brown.” Brown recorded hits like “Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door and I’ll Get it Myself)” that embodied the positive spirit of the Civil Rights Movement in a way speeches, protests and marches never could. Brown later attested those songs “cost me a lot of my crossover audience,” but they shined the light on African-American nationalism and became unifying anthems of the age.
By 1968, James Brown was much more than an important musician; he was an African-American icon. He often spoke publicly about the pointlessness of rioting. In February 1968, Soul Brother No. 1 informed Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown, “I’m not going to tell anybody to pick up a gun.” Brown often canceled his shows to perform benefit concerts for black political organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1968, he initiated “Operation Black Pride,” and, dressing as Santa Claus, presented 3,000 certificates for free Christmas dinners in New York City’s poorest black neighborhoods. He also started buying radio stations.
On April 5, 1968, African Americans rioted in 110 cities following Dr. King’s assassination the day before. Like Robert F. Kennedy’s speech in Indianapolis the night of the assassination, James Brown hosted a free citywide concert at Boston Gardens aimed at avoiding another racially-charged riot. In the midst of that famous Beantown concert, with Boston on the verge of going up in flames, Brown said, “I used to shine shoes outside a radio station. Now I own that radio station. That’s black power.” Many Bostonians credit James Brown for keeping the peace in their city by the sheer force of his music and personal charisma.
However, there was a moment during the show when tensions could have boiled over. As a handful of young black male fans tried to climb on stage, white Boston policemen began forcefully pushing them back. Sensing the volatility of the moment, Brown urged the cops to back away from the stage, then addressed the crowd. “Wait a minute, wait a minute now WAIT!” Brown said. “Step down now, be a gentleman. Now I asked the police to step back, because I think I can get some respect from my own people.” Brown successfully restored order and continued the successful peacekeeping concert in honor of the slain Dr. King.
James Brown had three noteworthy phases in his career: from 1962–66 he was “Mr. Dynamite,” from 1967–70 he was “Soul Brother No. 1,” and from 1970 and beyond he was the “Godfather of Soul.” Sadly, casual fans remember James Brown for three things: his 1985 Rocky IV anthem “Living in America,” his brushes with the law, and his hair. The Rocky song is a classic and his cameo in the film allowed viewers a glimpse of the legend that was James Brown. His brushes with the law always seemed a bit overblown to me. After all, he WAS James Brown. His hair, well that’s another story altogether.
James Brown’s concert contract called for a steam iron, ironing board, deli tray with assorted meats and cheeses, coffee, tea, soft drinks (Coke products), Gatorade, champagne (Cristal or Dom), 1 electric golf cart and a hooded hair dryer. Yes, one of those table-model hair dryers like our moms and grandmothers used at the local hair salon. The ones that fit completely over the head like a space helmet. It took hours of painstaking hair engineering to create that unnatural helmet of hair.
Except for a brief period during the mid-1960s when Brown wore his hair in a traditional afro as a temporary form of protest, for most of his career, James Brown had his hair “marceled” a.k.a. straightened or conked. The conk (derived from congolene, a hair straightener gel made from lye) was a hairstyle popular among African-American men. This hairstyle transformed naturally “kinky” hair by chemically straightening it with a relaxer (sometimes the pure corrosive chemical lye), so that the newly straightened hair could be styled in specific ways.
Often, the relaxer was made at home, by mixing lye, eggs, and potatoes, the applier having to wear gloves and the receiver’s head having to be rinsed thoroughly after application to avoid chemical burns. Conks were most often styled as large pompadours although others chose to simply slick their hair back to lie flat on their heads. Conks took a lot of work to maintain: a man often had to wear a do-rag of some sort at home to prevent sweat or other agents from causing his hair to revert to its natural state prematurely. Also, the style required repeated application of relaxers; as new hair grew in, it too had to be chemically straightened.
In the African American Community of the early 20th century, the conk hairstyle served as a rite of passage from adolescence into adulthood for males. Because of the pain involved in the process, and the possibility of chemical burns and permanent scarring, the conk represented masculinity and virility.
Chuck Berry, Louis Jordan, Little Richard, James Brown, and The Temptations, were well known for sporting the conk hairstyle. The style fell out of popularity when the Black Power movement took hold, and the Afro became the symbol of African pride. Malcolm X, although a conk enthusiast in his youth, condemned the hairstyle as black self-degradation in his autobiography. He decried the conk’s implications about the superiority of a more “white” appearance. The conk is all but extinct as a hairstyle among African-American men today, although more mildly relaxed hairstyles such as the Jheri curl and the S-curl were popular during the 1980s and 1990s.
On December 23, 2006, Brown arrived at his dentist’s office in Atlanta, Georgia for dental implant work. Brown’s dentist observed that he looked “very bad … weak and dazed.” Instead of performing the work, the dentist advised Brown to see a doctor right away about his medical condition. Brown went to the hospital the next day and was admitted for observation and treatment. Brown had been struggling with a noisy cough since returning from a November trip to Europe. Brown had to cancel upcoming concerts in Waterbury, Connecticut and Englewood, New Jersey but was confident he would recover in time for scheduled New Year’s Eve shows at the Count Basie Theatre in New Jersey, the B. B. King Blues Club in New York and performing a song live on CNN for the Anderson Cooper New Year’s Eve special. Brown wasn’t called the hardest working man in show business for nothing.
Brown remained hospitalized and his condition worsened throughout the day. On Christmas Day, 2006, Brown died at approximately 1:45 a.m. at age 73. The official cause was congestive heart failure, resulting from complications of pneumonia. Brown’s last words were, “I’m going away tonight,” before taking taking three long, quiet breaths before dying.
James Brown wore his hair in a conk pompadour until the day he died. After Brown’s death, a public memorial service was held at the Apollo Theater in New York City and another at the James Brown Arena in Augusta, Georgia. Brown’s memorial ceremonies were elaborate, complete with costume changes for the deceased and videos featuring him in concert. His body, placed in a Promethean casket — bronze polished to a golden shine — was driven through the streets of New York to the Apollo Theater in a white, glass-encased horse-drawn carriage.
While plans were being made for the funeral, Brown’s family was contacted by Michael Jackson, a lifetime fan and friend. Michael had flown in from Bahrain, where he was living following his 2005 child molestation trial, and he asked to see the Godfather of Soul one last time. Reverend Al Sharpton, who officiated at Brown’s funeral, recalled, “I got a call from the mortician and he asked me if it was alright if Michael Jackson could come by the funeral home and see James Brown’s body. I said, ‘But Michael’s in Bahrain’. And he said, ‘No, he’s here’. A couple of hours later, I called and the mortician said, ‘He just left. He was here (for) about an hour and he was re-combing Mr. Brown’s hair. He felt that I had combed the hair wrong. People didn’t realize he was really into James and he actually styled his hair the way it was buried.”
Sharpton was insistent on making sure Michael stayed in town long enough to rightfully pay respects to the music legend, legal questions notwithstanding. Sharpton added, “I think his plan was to come in the middle of the night, see the body – because James Brown was his idol – and he was going to leave. No one had really seen him since the trial… but we convinced him to stay for the funeral. I told him, ‘Michael, you gotta stay. You’ve gotta re-emerge one day in public.” So in short, the King of Pop was the last person to attend to the Godfather of Soul. Michael would follow his idol to the grave less than three years later.