Happy Birthday Brooklyn Bridge
May 24, 1883
Freeporter Escorts President Across the New Bridge
Source: Nassau County Review. 13 June 1913, p. 1.
On Thursday, May 24, 1883 at the formal opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, the parade across the bridge was led by President Chester A. Arthur, escorted by Charles L. Wallace. Charles was there to see and report the event in which, besides the President, Cabinet officers, Governors of states and officers of many municipalities participated. Various individual members of the reception committee had been designated to escort the dignitaries in the formal parade across the bridge, but the police failed to control the crowd at the entrance and some failed to reach their place in line. With true newspaper instinct to “get there” under any circumstances, and there seeming to be hesitation as to who was to escort President Arthur, Charles Wallace rose to the emergency, and no one seemed to realize that he was not the designated one to escort the President. He had a large fund of humor and greatly enjoyed the incident. A picture published in Leslie’s Weekly at the time shows President Arthur and Charles L. Wallace leading the procession.