THE NEW YORK TIMES

Time Square, New York, N.Y.

Lackawanna 4-1000

April 11, 1938

 

Mr. Leo V. Zimmermann

624 North Water Street

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

 

Dear Mr. Zimmermann:

 

Your letter of April 1, 1938 cheered me up a lot, for I had run into one of those periods when my efforts to develop research had run into doldrums. Now the stuff has begun to pour in from a number of sources in answer to my inquiries.

 

The arrangement you suggest for my getting at your material on the TUSCANIA sounds excellent. I shan’t call upon you for any effort, like indexing or Photostatting, or writing more letters to survivors, etc., however, until I have talked with the prospective publisher.

 

I have a few little items you might be interested in. One is the enclosed copy of that TUSCANIA incident which I now have from the Red Cross files at Washington. It is for your files.

 

Another is the report, received from his former partner in business here, that Lt. James Jeffers of the Red Cross, who was active in the rescue work on Islay after both the TUSCANIA and OTRANTO disasters, died suddenly a month ago. I had counted upon getting much material from him.

 

Last week I returned from a trip across the country in a plane, which I was fortunate enough to get a chance to make in connection with my newspaper job. I was talking with another newspaper man about the TUSCANIA disaster, which he vaguely recalled, when a man sitting ahead of us cocked an ear and said:

 

“I recall that very well, I was on the Baltic when it happened. We didn’t know exactly what had taken place, but we knew something bad was in the air. We saw destroyers circling around the TUSCANIA and we saw a few lights on her. Irvin S. Cobb was aboard our ship, and he was running around frantically trying to find out from the Baltic’s officers just what had happened. The incident was right down his alley and in sight of the convoy, and yet he couldn’t get much information.”

 

That’s all for the present. I’ll write when something turns up.

 

Sincerely,

 Paul Frederickson

 PAUL FREDERICKSON

 

2005 - Information Contributors:

From the Edward T. Lauer collection

Article Submitted by Tim Epps - Islay, Scotland