Ashes of famous space writer hired by Walt Disney found in Upper West Side co-op basement
UPPER WEST SIDE (WABC) -- A building super made an intriguing discovery while cleaning out the basement of an Upper West Side building.
The super came across a can containing the remains of Willy Ley, who passed away in 1969.
An internet search revealed Ley was a science writer credited with introducing the idea of space travel to the American public.
So, how did his remains end up in a basement on the Upper West Side?
Michael Hrdlovic describes the basement at 2 West 67th Street as 'the dungeon.'
He finally decided to clean it out at the end of last year and that's when he made the unusual discovery.
"I saw a can. And I studied a little closely. And then I realized these are ashes of a person," Hrdlovic said.
He immediately notified the co-op president, Dawn Nadeau.
"I had to see it for myself. I said, are you sure? And we looked at it as like, oh, my God. And I thought, wow, this is a responsibility I have to take on," Nadeau said.
The name on the label said Willy Ley, cremated on June 26, 1969.
Nadeau learned that Ley was a pretty impressive man, a science writer who predicted space travel.
He died just days before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
"As we all know people are going into space now regularly and it was something that he posited that people thought was true insanity at the time but turned out to be really ahead of his time," Nadeau said.
"It was an amazing discovery because essentially I held somebody's life in my in my hands. You know, let alone somebody so famous and somebody a pioneer, if you will," Hrdlovic said.
But how Ley ended up in the basement of a prewar building on the Upper West Side remains a mystery.
He has no immediate survivors except a distant relative in Mississippi.
"My paternal grandfather, Hugo Ley, was Willy's cousin," distant relative Dr. Phillip Ley said.
Dr. Ley was heartened to learn that the goal is now to get Willy's ashes to space.
"I mean, I don't want his ashes up on my fireplace mantle. I think they need to be in space or at the museum or all those places. They need to be everywhere. I mean, that that would be the natural extension of his life is to is to be in all those places," Dr. Phillip Ley said.
There's even a crater on the moon named for Ley.
Thanks to the careful hands of this co-op, he could one day end up there.
In 1954, Walt Disney hired Ley as a consultant due to his imagination and creativity on rocket ships and space.
Ley even helped Walt Disney design space-themed rides at Disneyland.
From the TV series Disneyland, "Man in Space," released in 1955, which featured Ley, was the first of the Tomorrowland specials, looking at the history of rocketry and the many challenges of space exploration and travel.
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