Nikola Tesla FBI Files - Page 145

DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION → 266 January 1, at the request of author Louis Adamić, Mrs. Roosevelt had promised to ask the President to write to Tesla and said that she herself would call on him on her next trip to New York. The second note is headed, "Memo for Mrs. Roosevelt" and is signed FDR: "I was having this looked into but the papers yesterday carried the story that Dr Tesla had died. Therefore I am returning the enclosures herewith." A third note of January 11 from Eleanor Roosevelt to Adamić forwards the President's message and adds her sorrow at learning of the Inventor's death. Adamić wrote a moving eulogy to Tesia that was read by New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia over station WNYC on January 10." Meanwhile the extreme tensions between Serb and Croat factions in the United States were making the planning of funeral services difficult. The body lay in state but, according to an unpublished letter of O'Neill's, "only twelve people, some of whom were newspaper sporters," came to view it. When state services were held at four o'clock on January 12, in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, however, more than two thousand people crowded in. Serbs and Croats were seated on opposing sides of the cathedral, Bishop William T. Manning having exacted from both factions a promise of no political speeches. The service was begun in English by Bishop Manning and concluded in Serbian by the Very Reu Dusan Sukletović. Among Balkan diplomats present were Ambassador Fotić, the Governor of Croatia, a former Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, and the Minister of Food and Reconstruction. In the front row with Kosanović, chief moumer and head of the important new trade mission, sat Swezey Dr. Rado had been too ill to attend as an honorary palibearer. Figures important in American science and industry who did attend as honorary pallbearers included Professor Edwin H. Armstrong, Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson of General Electric, Dr. Harvey Rentschler of Westinghouse, engineer Gano Dunn, and W. H. Barton, curator of the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History Newbold Morris, president of the New York City Council, headed this group. When word of Tesla's death spread abroad to war-stricken Europe, telegrams of tribute and sorrow began pouring in from scientists and governmental leaders alike. In the United States three Nobel prizewinners in physics, Millikan, Compton, and James Franck, joined in a eulogy to the inventor as "one of the outstanding intellects DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION →→→→ 267 of the world who paved the way for many of the important technological developments of modem times." The President and Mrs. Roosevelt expressed their gratitude for Tesla's contributions "to science and industry and to this country" Vice-President Wallace, in the spirit of the new Yugoslavia, declared that, "In Nikola Tesla's death the common man loses one of his best friends." Although Louis Adamić wrongly eulogized Tesla as one who had cared nothing for money, he could not have been more accurate when he said that Tesla was not really dead: "The real, important part of Tesla lives in his achievement, which is great, almost beyond calculation, and an integral part of our civilization, our daily lives, our curent war effort.... His life is a triumph...."ª Among the honors that had come to Teala in his life were many academic degrees from American and foreign universities; the John Scott Medal, the Edison Medal, and various awards from European governments. In September 1943 the Liberty ship Nikola Tesla was launched, an honor that would have pleased the scientist. But not undli 1975 was he inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Eight months after Tesla's death, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the decision that he had been confident would come eventually-ruling that he was the inventor of radio. His body was taken to Femcliffe Cemetery at Ardsley-on-theHudson in the deep cold of the winter aftemoon. In the car that followed the hearse rode Swezey and Kosanović. The inventor's · remains were cremated and his ashes later returned to the land of his birth. In almost every nation in the world, the fighting and dying continued. *Charlotte Muzar, formerly secretary to Sava N. Kosanović, carried Tesla's ashes to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade in 1957. Throughout the years Kosanović had spoken of leaving the ashes in America and had hoped an appropriate memorial to the inventor would be raised in the United States as their meting place. -Archives. Tesla Memorial Society Shi