In Jewish Waldheim, on the west side of the Des Plaines, stands a towering obelisk commemorating a marine who died in action. Samuel Meisenberg, 18, was one of the first Americans to be killed during the American landings at Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1914.
Meisenberg’s death caused a sensation. In New York, he, and 18 other sailors and Marines killed in the landing, were honored by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson said, “They gave their lives for us, because we called upon them as a Nation to perform an unexpected duty.” Meisenberg’s body then traveled by train to Chicago where it was escorted from the train station to City Hall with a large procession. A crowd of thousands lined the streets. Businesses stopped along the route. The cortege included soldiers, Boy Scouts, Jewish orphans, Gov. Edward Dunne, Mayor Carter Harrison, Sen. Hamilton Lewis and other dignitaries.
As Meisenberg lay in state in City Hall under a purple and black canopy, a crowd of over 5,000 tried to view the body. Women screamed and swooned. There was such a terrible crush of people trying to view the casket that many were injured, some seriously. Additional police had to be called in to control the “riot.”
The dramatics didn’t stop there. Two years later, when the monument to Samuel was being unveiled in Waldheim, his brother, Edward, jumped in front of the crowd of approximately 500, insisting the ceremony be stopped. He accused the organization that had built the monument, the Independent Western Star Order, of not providing promised funds to his struggling parents. He shouted, “I will stop this thing if I have to fight to do it. You can’t use my brother’s grave and body to advertise your society.” The dedication was called off. (The organization claimed that it had never promised money to the parents.)
Born in Russia, Meisenberg enlisted under the name Sammy Martin and operated the wireless telegraph, an early radio.
Many tributes celebrated and highlighted both Meisenberg’s Jewish heritage and the fact that he was born overseas. In his eulogy, Sen. James Hamilton Lewis said, “Behold them! The first four, completing the ever present mystic square, personifying the all: Daniel Haggerty, an Irishman, a descendant of those who marched with Patrick Cladburne (sic) from the South and Phil Sheridan from the North; John Schumacher, the German, the offspring of those who fought for us under Steuben; George Poinsett, of the race of those who marched with Lafayette, and Samuel Meisenberg, the Jew, the child of people without a country, but now a son claimed by a nation.”
At the funeral in Chicago, Mayor Harrison said, “While this foreign boy was giving his life for his country, our representatives in congress were fighting about the immigration bill, some of them wanting to exclude foreigners who could not pass the literacy test. If that test had been in force we would not have had this boy, Samuel Meisenberg, to die for us.”
References: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily Tribune, Under Every Tombstone, Beloit Daily Free Press, The Belleville News-Democrat, The American Presidency Project