This morning a Facebook friend posted: hey rockers Gleasons Drifts new cd gets two thumbs up from this critic its a must buy.I was curious as to who Gleasons Drift was and found this recent article about them. It turns out that they are from the region where I grew up and I know a few of the band members. In the article, one of the band members talked about a song he wrote called Evelyn. From the article:
"(The song) 'Evelyn' is partly inspired by this photo I saw of a woman named Evelyn McHale who took her life by jumping off of the Empire State building. There was a photographer right there when it happened and he was able to snap some pictures," he said. "It's not a gory photo like you think it would be, it's actually bizarrely beautiful. Check it out."
I learned that on May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death.
The photo ran a couple of weeks later in Life magazine accompanied by the following caption:
On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure.What are the odds that someone, jumping from 1,000 feet above, could land so perfectly atop a parked limousine, and look so beautiful in death?
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