23 year old Evelyn McHale, of Long Island, became engaged in early
1947. On April 30th, she took the train to Easton, PA to spend her
fiance’s birthday with him at his college dorm. They planned to be
married that June. She boarded a 7:00 AM train back to New York the
following morning but never did make it home.
Upon her arrival in New York City, she checked into the
Governor Clinton Hotel on 31st Street, where she composed a note, and
tucked it into her purse. From there, she went to the 86th floor
observation deck of the Empire State Building. Just before 10:30 am, on
May 1, she calmly, and neatly, folder her coat, placing it against the
guard railing alongside her purse and her makeup bag. She then flung
herself off the building, falling more than 1,000 feet and landing
squarely on the roof of a 1947 Cadillac parked on the street below.
The note that Evelyn left in her purse read: “I don’t want anyone in or
out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by
cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or
remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t
think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off
without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”
Ironically, for someone who wanted to throw herself into obscurity,
never to be remembered, a nearby photographer captured this image within
minutes of her demise, and by the following week it appeared as a full
page print in Life Magazine. The image of her lifeless body lying
gracefully, and peacefully, atop the wreckage, immortalized forever.
Sometimes you can simply never get what is that you want in life, even in death.
