by Kimberly Janeway
In the autumn of 1940, Edward W. Henry was 76 years old. And that’s when the Hastings resident caused a stir in the village by trying to register for the draft. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed the Selective Training and Service Act into law that September, the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. Men 21 through 35 were required to register with local draft boards as the armed forces prepared for the world war they would fight.
But Henry was told he was too old to serve. The same thing happened when he applied for an appointment in the Foreign Service. Henry disagreed and in an interview in December 1940, the Yonkers’ Herald Statesman described him as “seventy-six, but hale, hearty and full of patriotism.” Henry, a veteran of the 1898 Spanish-American War, told the paper he would not give up and said, “I’ll see the president,” meaning Henry would take up the matter with his friend, President Roosevelt.
At the time of the draft, Henry published seven Westchester weekly papers, including The Hastings Press. Next door to his office was his gas station, and in between editing stories and printing papers, he pumped gas. And that’s where Henry met Roosevelt.
When Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor stopped by to refuel, Henry, a Southern-born Democrat, chatted with the couple. Roosevelt was governor of New York from 1929 through 1932, so maybe they discussed the Depression and its devastating effects across the country. And perhaps the two men swapped seafaring stories. Roosevelt had a passion for sailing and ships, and when Henry was just 11 years old he joined the crew of a merchant ship and sailed the blue waters for years.
What you need to know about Henry is that he dreamt big and used his newspapers to champion his ideas. There was the time he missed a wedding dinner in Rockland County because the Hudson had frozen over and the ferries weren’t running – the G.W. Bridge wouldn’t open until 1931. Some people might have been quietly disappointed, while others cursed loudly. But Henry? He began a campaign in 1927 to build a bridge that linked Westchester and Rockland counties. One of the early advocates, he wrote weekly editorials and articles and worked his connections, arguing that Hastings was the most logical place for a bridge to Rockland since the river was much narrower here, making the bridge easier and less expensive to build. But it wasn’t until 1955 that the Tappan Zee opened, long after Henry had died.
By the late 1930s Henry was also leading another campaign. “Patriotic demonstrations in Hastings in recent years reached a new high under the leadership of Mr. Henry,” said The Herald Statesman. “Huge parades have honored Admiral David Glasgow Farragut.”
Born in Tennessee in 1801, Farragut was a Unionist Civil War hero and the first American to receive the rank of admiral. Farragut was living in Norfolk when the Virginia Convention voted to secede from the Union in April 1861. Farragut told his wife, a Norfolk native, that he must “stick with the flag.” She chose to move north and they brought their son, settling in Hastings. Farragut was at sea most of that time, and after the war ended in April 1865 the family moved to Manhattan.
Henry and other veterans named their newly formed American Legion in honor of Farragut in 1937. But Henry dreamt bigger: The Hartford, Farragut’s Civil War flagship, served the country between 1859 and 1926. Henry hoped that the Navy would restore the rotting wooden warship, and he formed a committee that campaigned to bring the ship to our village and moor it in the Hudson. By late August 1938 American Legion members had collected 2,000 signatures from residents supporting Henry’s idea.
When Navy Department officials couldn’t give Henry any assurances, he went straight to the top, and arranged a meeting with his pal from the gas station, President Roosevelt. Henry and other local veterans brought a gift when they met with Roosevelt at his Hyde Park home on September 8, 1938. Henry knew that the president collected ship models, and it helped that a Delano ancestor of the president was involved in building the Hartford.
The delegation met with the president for about 30 minutes. Roosevelt told them that Hastings, Washington, DC and Hartford, Connecticut wanted the ship, and that Congress and the Navy Department had the final say, according to The Herald Statesman. The men returned to Hastings and continued their campaign, and Roosevelt focused on Hitler and Nazi Germany.
For years, Congress procrastinated as to what to do with the Hartford – the Navy Department wanted it scrapped. Henry died in 1942, at age 78, and as the years passed, the ship’s condition worsened and when the pumps failed, the Hartford sank in 1956. It was towed to a wharf in the Norfolk Navy Yard, and a year later what remained of the ship was burned.
The Hartford vanished from sight, but not from history, and the same can be said of Henry and his ambitious dreams.
Kimberly Janeway is a writer and has lived in Hastings since 1995. She is a trustee of the Hastings Historical Society.
