Care as Currency

In the end, the court ruled that my great-great-grandmother, Blanche Wetherill Walton, was to receive damages in the amount of $70,000 ($2 million in today's dollars). It was the second-highest wrongful death award at the time and for the worst train disaster in New York State history.

Still, no plaque was installed to commemorate the Park Avenue Tunnel Collision of 1902, which killed her husband Ernest Walton and 16 other New York Central Railroad passengers as a southbound train missed a switch signal and barreled into the last car of the train ahead. Instead, an 80 million dollar ($2 billion in today's dollars) Tiffany glass-embellished and gold-trimmed Beaux-Arts limestone monument was eventually erected above the tragic accident scene — that monument was an entire building called "Grand Central Terminal."

The settlement funds allowed Blanche, aged 30 at the time, to raise two daughters, survive the stock market crash of 1929, and afford a life of modest luxury until the magnificent age of 91 — but nothing could ever console her over the loss of Ernest.

As a woman of the Quaker faith, she believed that having wealth was fine as long as it was used to help people prosper. "Care as currency appreciates" was a Blanche-ism often quoted by family. In addition to establishing a settlement house, she regularly made contributions to women's suffrage associations and funded a daycare for African-American single mothers in San Juan Hill. Blanche also advanced the abstract music movement by hosting salon concerts at her Upper West Side apartment and providing financial aid to the movement's avant-garde forefathers, including Henry Cowell, Charles Seeger, Bela Bartok, Carl Ruggles, and Ruth Crawford.

Yet throughout her inspiring life, she perpetually longed for a way to memorialize my great-great-grandfather, who perished that snowy January morning. It was a vile and excruciatingly painful death. The coroner reported that Ernest asphyxiated from the steam boiler's explosion, and his face was scalded beyond recognition.

Witnesses on 42nd Street said they heard tortured shrieks from below as the train telescoped and the Park Avenue Tunnel filled with steam and smoke. Could Ernest have survived if help had arrived sooner? If he had not recently sold his interest in The Tinkham Cycle Company and purchased a seat at the New York Stock Exchange, would he have taken a later train? Such questions tormented my poor great-great-grandmother for the remainder of her life.

In a showy effort for the press as the chaos ensued, railroad magnate William Vanderbilt himself attempted to descend a ladder from a manhole on 42nd Street in a top hat and tails but was ultimately denied entry. Firefighters were too franticly digging through twisted metal, cracked woodwork, and shattered glass, searching for dead bodies to accommodate a wealthy businessman's photo opportunity in the tunnel.

As powdery snow blanketed Midtown, the wounded were transported to the hospital, and the dead and their effects were transferred to the local Flatiron District police precinct. The dead were laid out in a holding cell for identification. A steady stream of panicked relatives moved through the rows of bodies throughout the day, praying they would not find (or, god forbid, find) their loved ones or their belongings.

Back in New Rochelle and desperately seeking updates, Blanche joined the hundreds of neighbors at the local telegraph office. Meanwhile, her two little girls, Dorothea, age 4, and Marion, age 2, played with Christmas presents with a nanny. The dreadful news that Ernest was amongst the dead collapsed her in shock, but Blanche swiftly steadied herself and boarded the train to New York City to make his funeral arrangements.

In the weeks leading up to the trial to set damages, Blanche discovered that engineer William Wilgus presented a track electrification proposal to the New York Central Railroad board of directors — almost two years before the accident. An electrified third-rail upgrade would avoid more accidents and deaths caused by steam-obscured signals altogether. The board, which comprised Vanderbilt and notably John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, refused to fund the investment.

On trial day, my great-great-grandmother Blanche stared Mr. Vanderbilt down in court. Although the newspapers portrayed her as the "stoic dutiful widow" with two mannerly toddlers in tow, she was privately enraged, convinced that the Vanderbilts had stolen the love of her life for monetary gain. Why would millionaires, who could have undoubtedly afforded the upgrade, avert future liability, and who would have relished in the PR, discard the electrification proposal? Blanche had several conspiracy theories percolating around Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Morgan, but she couldn't prove them.

Mrs. Dimon, Walton's friend, and neighbor was a trial witness. She was the wife and widow of Ernest's seatmate Henry and had been at the New Rochelle station that morning to see him off to New York City on the 7:48 Express. "There was a kind of a men's club of regular commuters who synchronized their schedules to share stock tips and political rants, and they always sat in the last car together," Dimon said. She remembered Ernest Walton handing a package wrapped in brown paper and twine to another commuter friend, Charles Mars, as they got onto the train, and she could tell by Mr. Mars' reaction that the package was unexpected.

The railroad's defense team tried to insinuate that perhaps this was evidence that an explosive had been detonated as a defiant act of sabotage against the Vanderbilt family, but results from the wreckage investigation dispelled their proposal, and the mysterious package was never referred to again.

At the trial, what wasn't shared was that a man named James Maloney had been arrested in the precinct's holding cell for trying to pick-pocket the deceased accident victims. The authorities discharged him the next day because all he had in his possession when searched were two tickets from a seedy pawnshop in Midtown, aptly named "QuickBux on 42nd Street."

Charles Mars' grieving father, a retired veterinarian, arrived to retrieve his son's body from the precinct. According to him, his son had just received his salary the day before. "There should have been $40 more in his wallet!" Mr. Mars protested through anguished tears.

The police couldn't explain the missing $40. Blanche pieced it all together on her own: As a stock trader, her Ernest had become the de facto financial advisor to the New Rochelle group of straphangers on his hour-long commute. He had encouraged them to invest in gold, and they tasked him with acquiring it. A few months earlier, Ernest had written Blanche's father, Edward Wetherill, in Philadelphia and asked him to purchase a few of the newly Philadelphia-minted 1901 Liberty Head $20 Double-Eagle Gold Coins and give them to Blanche on her next trip through.

When she returned to New York, Ernest had locked them in his safe, but on the morning of the accident, he must have wrapped the two coins in a box to give to Charles Mars at the station as a surprise. Charles could have reimbursed Ernest $40 for them as they rode on the train, explaining his wallet's discrepancy. But where were the coins?

A few years later, public outrage fueled the passage of a law banning steam engine-operated locomotives in the city and finally prompted a massive reconstruction of the new fully electrified "Grand Central Terminal" at 42nd Street. When the Terminal opened for business, it became very apparent why the electrification was initially rejected. If the tycoons just waited for the eventual steam engine ban to go into effect rather than escalate an upgrade, they would have a tax credit and a multi-year head start selling "air rights"; that is, the real estate above the newly electrified tracks.

And sell they did — to the tune of 80 million dollars ($2 billion in today's dollars). "Air rights" paid for the new station and produced an astronomical windfall — Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Morgan staying true-to-greedy-form until the very end.

It wasn't much, but Blanche felt the least she could do was to search for the last items Charles Mars and Ernest held in their hands. On a trek through Manhattan one afternoon after the trial, Blanche located the two gold coins gleaming in a glass display case front and center at QuickBux on 42nd Street.

The disparity between classes couldn't be more evident in Midtown. Blanche recognized the irony: whether it was a pawn shop broker or a railroad tycoon, it all came down to making "Quick. Bucks." One man traded goods for profit and the other traded people's lives for profit.

James Maloney must have robbed Charles Mars as he lay dead inside the tunnel, pawned the two coins, and then proceeded to the precinct later in the day to search for more treasure among the deceased. Lucky for him, he was apprehended with nothing incriminating on his person.

Mr. Mars was especially touched that Blanche had pursued her hunch and was extremely appreciative to have the keepsake to remember his son but insisted the young mother keep one of the coins since she had children to support.

In 1963 when my great-great-grandmother passed away, her youngest daughter, Marion Walton Putnam, found the gold coin in a jewelry box, set it on a chain, and wore it in remembrance of her parents. Having had a moderately successful career as a sculptor, studying with Giacometti and Picasso, Marion became quite the socialite in New York City, hosting book launch parties for her husband, James, the executive editor for MacMillan Publishing & Company. Leading authors, artists, and politicians of the day with new books to promote graced the halls of their townhouse frequently. The guestbook signatures ranged from Georgia O'Keefe and John Singer Sargent to J. Edgar Hoover and Eleanor Roosevelt.

On one momentous evening in 1975, during one of her soirees, Marion recounted the story behind her gold coin necklace to the guest of honor — Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Jackie was an editor for Double Day at the time. She was also working with The Municipal Art Society, which fought to enact the Landmarks Preservation Act after Penn Station was razed. Jackie was concerned Grand Central Terminal was slated for the same fate since a new office tower project threatened its destiny.

After decades of neglect, the Terminal was dilapidated, depressing, and covered in nicotine soot; it needed to be restored to its former glory. "If we don't care about our past, we can't have very much hope for our future," Mrs. Onassis later said at a press conference at Grand Central's famed Oyster Bar.

Marion was so profoundly moved by Jackie's commitment to preserving art and architecture that on the spot, she decided to donate the coin to the "Save Grand Central Terminal Fund" and handed Mrs. Onassis the necklace (worth $2000 today). Onassis, who obviously had lost a husband in a dramatic event a few years earlier, could relate. She was deeply touched by Marion's gift but primarily by her story; Marion's regret of never knowing her father and how her heartbroken mother Blanche died knowing that her beloved Ernest's life was cut short for other people's power, greed, and "air rights."

Most Grand Central Terminal historical tour guides will point out the beautiful zodiac map that was accidentally laid in reverse perspective on the ceiling. Some guides will point out the little black area by the crab constellation in the northwest corner that was left post-restoration intentionally. Some guides will even attribute that original idea to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — the notion that "one must leave a piece of the past exposed" to remind people of how filthy things can get due to greed, neglect, and irreverence. What they don't know is that my great-great-grandparents will forever hover above Grand Central Terminal. Embedded in that black spot is a 1901 Liberty Head $20 Double-Eagle Gold Coin, and etched in the soot are the tiny words: "Receipt from Ernest Forster Walton and Blanche Wetherill Walton, January 8, 1902: $20 for Air Rights."