For many generations, people will talk about the story of the skull. You know it well. There was a storm the size of Brazil in the mid-Atlantic that hit the Jersey Shore, wiped out Atlantic City, and not to mention turned Staten Island into a marsh while flooding the NYC Subway System, breaching all seven tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn that run underneath the East River (nevermind what it did to the Rockaways).
In New Haven, however, the storm was not as bad. Aside from some Quinnipiac River flooding, and an occasional fallen tree, nobody barely lost power and we made it unscathed. That night, the wind was really howling, and in the morning the sky was nearly clear. We all walked outside that day to assess the damage.
One of the fallen trees happened to be the Lincoln Oak, which was planted on the New Haven Green in 1909 to celebrate the centennial of Lincoln’s Birth. There was even a plaque for it, hanging vertical in the air amid the large chunk of grass and dirt the fallen tree had uprooted. I took a photo and put it on my website as the intro photo to the Hurricane Sandy aftermath article.
What a surprise happened next.
One of the fallen trees happened to be the Lincoln Oak, which was planted on the New Haven Green in 1909 to celebrate the centennial of Lincoln’s Birth. There was even a plaque for it, hanging vertical in the air amid the large chunk of grass and dirt the fallen tree had uprooted. I took a photo and put it on my website as the intro photo to the Hurricane Sandy aftermath article.
What a surprise happened next.
I have two friends that are bone collectors, and they both live on the same street. But they do it for different reasons. One is an art creator; a sculptor. The other is a historian, but a good illustrator in his own right. They both have an interest in bones, although for different reasons.
Their names are Silas Finch and Robert S. Greenberg and they are the most down-to-earth you are ever going to meet. Both extremely talented and cursed by the lock that fate would see their names repeated throughout history. In this case, here was their involvement in the events which shaped a story which reached national news, that a tree, overturned by Hurricane Sandy, would reveal a skeleton on the day before Halloween. How could that not be a story with long term significance?
Many will claim credit for the homeless girl who was mentioned in the news for her discovery. But few, if any, knew of what proceeded in the early hours of the morning after Hurricane Sandy.
Many will claim credit for the homeless girl who was mentioned in the news for her discovery. But few, if any, knew of what proceeded in the early hours of the morning after Hurricane Sandy.
Silas claimed in a conversation with Greenberg that he saw the tree fall, while in the cubby of the Anchor, and he came back the next morning looking to see if the tree had unearthed any of the human remains we all knew were all around the Upper Green. He and Rob both knew the whole Upper Green is full of skeletons, some of which are just feet from the surface. And as pwer Robert’s public relations stunt with Occupy New Haven in March of the same year, I was aware of it too, but fate would decide that I missed all of this action until later.
At 2 in the afternoon, I saw a twitter post by Ben Berkowitz, announcing the discovery of human remains on the Green. He tried to SeeClickFix it, and that’s how I found out. Even though I had gotten there early before the skeleton commotion and not noticed anything. Rob Greenberg got a phone call from Silas Finch, and it probably went something like, “Yo Rob, get down here, we got bones.” And Rob probably asked him “Human or animal?” to which Silas said in all likelihood, “I don’t know, you better get down here quickly,” as he stashed a bone behind a different tree after he had been poking around the roots for hours which were now protruding horizontally in a four foot deep hole in the ground.
But Robert had arrived too late. By the time he got there, the people who he called “ the heathens” (namely the homeless people who had represented as Occupy New Haven just months earlier the same year), despite the months of protesting media and government, were the first to call the police and the news. That ruined it for Robert, because at that point it became a huge commotion with “Crime Scene” tape and a van from the TV station along with a few squad cars. He showed up with his shovel just in time to see Silas getting interrogated for stashing that femur behind a tree. He told the officers he was looking for old pennies.
Robert was eventually called by the police also, but only because the town historian was not available. he went down and met with an officer and provided information about who the dead possibly was, and how they possibly died. That’s where I found Rob, Randomly. I was riding my bicycle past the green when I noticed the blinding floodlights illuminating the “Crime Scene.” I found him describing the scene to a police officer, both poring over historical documents about who was buried where in that particular section of the New Haven Green.
The police officer listened intently to what Robert S. Greenberg was saying, and it became the news, by anyone’s standards. It was quoted in USA Today and misquoted on Saturday Night Live, all in the same weekend. Robert told the officer that I was his cameraman, and let me within a breath’s distance from the forensics expert and the archaeologist, who were exhuming the bodies of men, women and children who in their time while alive probably witnessed America win its independence from Britain.
The reason that Robert was quoted in those articles, and not the town historian, was because everyone after the hurricane had the day off from work, even though we all had electricity and all the flooding had subsided. It wasn’t even rainy the next day. As a consequence, the police called Robert because they needed the historical information for their incident report.
The report made the news, and all of those reports about the potential historical significance of the find were facts that Robert had provided to the police out of his own sense of duty. He also had a three ring binder on hand with all of the information he needed to prove beyond just hearsay what facts he proposed.
Robert pointed to a print-out of all the information in the binder, which had a map in it of all the bodies that were buried in that part of the Green. He personally had deduced that it was during the time of a mass small-pox epidemic, basing this map as his source for that conclusion.
It turns out he was right, because the forensic expert and archaeologist whose home was now that pit had began to notice a redundancy in the types of bones they were finding.
The big question in the life of a man who thinks he’s great is, “Will I be remembered?” Because if not, then surely life was full of self-deception.
I think Robert S. Greenberg will be remembered.
The big question in the life of a man who thinks he’s great is, “Will I be remembered?” Because if not, then surely life was full of self-deception.
I think Robert S. Greenberg will be remembered.
