Letters to the Editor

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun
NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Fernando Ferrer’s Next Move


John P. Avlon’s piece “The Coming Ferrer Surge” is right on the mark [Opinion, September 16, 2005]. Even this conservative Republican can glean from Mr. Avlon’s observations that the mayor has a daunting road ahead of him.


The mayor is running with no slate, either city-wide or on the council district level. Who or what is the Republican candidate for public advocate or for city comptroller? Do you mean to tell me that there is no major city-based Republican personality of some note, talent, and renown who is willing to stand by the mayor as other mayors have had in the past?


Even John Lindsay had a viable Republican running mate in 1969, Sanford Garelick, who actually won a city-wide race as a Republican, even as Lindsay was winning on the liberal line that year!


Methinks that Mr. Avlon wrote the sacred script for November, and for the mayor to ignore it is to do so at his and our party’s peril. Next year may prove to be enough of a debacle to look forward to thanks to the sleepwalking of our party’s state “leadership.” Let this year at least prove to have a little nachas.


ALAN JAY GERBER
Cedarhurst, N.Y.


Judge Crater Mystery


Precisely what happened to Joseph Force Crater II on Wednesday night, August 6, 1930, is a matter of clear public record: He was secretly assassinated in a house in Yonkers [“Unsolved Mystery, William Bryk, Arts & Letters, August 23, 2005].


He was not “the son of Irish immigrants.” He was a son of the American Revolution on both sides of his family. He was the namesake of his paternal grandfather whose mother’s maiden name was Rachel Force or Vors. The Craters were Mennonites. They had been kicked out of the Palatinate in 1750.


Crater’s mother, Lelia Virginia Montague Crater, could trace her family history back in an unbroken line for a thousand years to Drogue Montagu, “boon companion to William the Conqueror,” whose name came from his place of birth, the Mont Aigu of Normandy (the mountain peaks).


Crater was directly descended from the Earl of Salisbury. He did not open a law office after working his way through Columbia University Law School by tutoring in the law. He became legal secretary to New York State Supreme Court Justice Robert Ferdinand Wagner Sr. After writing all of Wagner’s briefs, including the one that was to give Wagner a national reputation in labor law, he became associated with Wagner in the practice of law as his law partner.


The features of Joseph Force Crater II were not “fleshy” nor did he have “iron gray hair” that “made him seem older” than he was. His hair was almost black, unusually dark, his complexion being unusually light. His duties as president of Healy’s Cayuga Club were, to quote newspapers of the day, “perfunctory.”


Crater did not go with his wife, Stella, to their camp in Belgrade, Maine, in June 1930. He and his wife were secretly estranged. He had been living with his mistress since 1923. His wife had refused him a divorce. Divorce in New York State in those days was very difficult to obtain. No phone calls were made from a Belgrade, Maine, drugstore. Block that anachronism!


Crater removed no papers from his files to be put in briefcases, which were locked and conveyed to his apartment by Joseph Mara. Nor did Crater, after dining with friends, hail a passing cab and wave “his Panama out the window.” These accounts are refuted by newspapers of the day.


Crater was seen on Wednesday night, August 6, 1930, with Healy and another man at Pomerantz’s Restaurant on Broadway in the ’90s. He was seen there by many people well acquainted with him.


The courts “remained one justice short” on August 25, not on September 3. District Attorney Crain impaneled a grand jury on August 4, not on September 3. A cousin who was a handwriting expert determined that a note found in a manila envelope in 1931 was a forgery. It was not his will.


The story of the Libby Hotel is a red herring. Crater did not “auction the building.” He was declared legally dead in 1937, not in 1939.


People have long thought Joseph Force Crater II may have absented himself. “Judge Crater disappeared to escape imminent public censure,” posterity says. Why perpetuate this myth? Why scorn the victim of a tragedy? Why this indifference to his fate? Why “stand idly by while your brother’s blood is shed”? As Emily Dickinson said, “Truth is so rare / That it is delightful to tell it.”


MRS. RICHARD D. AMELAR
Chester, N.Y.



Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@nysun.com, facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007.Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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