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Obit watch: March 18, 2025.

Tuesday, March 18th, 2025

Group Captain John A. Hemingway (RAF- ret.) died on Monday. He was 105. NYT. BBC.

Gp Capt Hemmingway was the last known survivor of the Battle of Britain. He flew Hurricanes.

Flying over France, Britain and Italy in World War II, Mr. Hemingway was shot down four times between 1940 and 1945. He received Britain’s Distinguished Flying Cross in July 1941 for downing and damaging German planes.

…

He first saw combat in the spring of 1940 when he flew in support of the British Expeditionary Force’s ultimately futile quest to turn back the German invasion of France. He shot down a German bomber in May, but the next day he had to make a forced landing when his plane was hit by antiaircraft fire.

…

Flying afterward in defense of Britain, Mr. Hemingway was intercepting German bombers over the English Channel on Aug. 18 when his Hurricane was shot up.
“Somebody clobbered me,” he told The Daily Mirror in 2018. “They hit me in the engine. It covered the inside of the cockpit with oil, and things got very smelly and hot. I had no hope of getting to England, so I bailed out and landed in the sea.
“There were jellyfish everywhere,” he continued. “I started swimming. Two hours later, a rowboat from a lightship bumped into me.”
He climbed aboard, grabbed an oar and helped the crew return with him to England.
Later in August, Mr. Hemingway survived a third close call, this time while pursuing a German bomber over southeastern England. As he told The Daily Mirror: “I got a Dornier in my sight and started to pull around and have a second go. That was it — ‘bang, bang’. There was smoke everywhere.” He bailed out. “I landed in the Pitsea marshes, where I faced the local Home Guard,” he said.
He added wryly, “I could speak reasonable English, so they didn’t shoot me.”
Mr. Hemingway was an Allied flight controller during the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The next year, in April, he was a squadron commander in Italy when his Spitfire fighter was downed by the Germans. He bailed out again and was rescued by farm workers, who disguised him in peasant clothing and smuggled him to the British lines.

…

In its statement, the R.A.F. said of Mr. Hemingway, “He never saw his role in the Battle of Britain as anything other than doing the job he was trained to do.”

(Hattip: Borepatch, who actually beat me to an obit for once.)

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 15, 2025.

Saturday, March 15th, 2025

I lost pretty much the entire day yesterday to various things. I didn’t even get any pie.

One of the things that went by the wayside was obits, so here’s a quick and lazy roundup from the past few days. I have to rush off in a little bit to a wedding shower, and I’m not sure when I’m going to be back.

John Feinstein, sports writer and author. The only one of his books I’ve read is The Punch, which I wrote about a while back and thought was pretty good.

Chris Moore, artist. He illustrated quite a few SF books, and also did album covers for Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart.

Carl Lundstrom, who was one of the people behind the Pirate Bay website, died in a plane crash on Monday.

Ron Nessen, Gerald Ford’s press secretary, and one of the 892 Saturday Night Live hosts who have not committed murder. (I think that count is right, but it may be a little out of date.)

Larry Buendorf, retired Secret Service agent. He’s the guy who wrestled the gun away from Squeaky Fromme.

“Squeaky was back in the crowd, maybe one person back, and she had an ankle holster on with a .45,” he said, referring to a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. “That’s a big gun to have on your ankle. So, when it came up, it came up low, and I happened to be looking in that direction, I see it coming, and I step in front of him, not sure what it was other than that it was coming up pretty fast, and yelled out ‘Gun!’ When I yelled out ‘Gun!’ I popped that .45 out of her hand.”
He added: “I got a hold of her fingers, and she’s screaming — the crowd is screaming — and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t have a vest on, I don’t know where the next shot is coming from,’ and that I don’t think she’s alone. All of this is going on while I’m trying to control her.”
“She turns around, and I pulled her arm back and dropped her to the ground, and agents and police come from the back of the crowd” as Ms. Fromme shrieked in disbelief, he said.
“She’s screaming, ‘It didn’t go off!’” he continued. “I had it in my hand. I knew what she was doing, she was pulling back on the slide, and I hit the slide before she could chamber a round. If she’d had a round chambered, I couldn’t have been there in time. It would’ve gone through me and the president.”

If the Times account is to be trusted, she had four rounds in the magazine and the hammer cocked, but she hadn’t chambered a round.

Kevin Drum, leftist political blogger.

He also invented Friday cat blogging.

Alan K. Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming.

He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of frostbite to his left foot about five years ago that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.

Raul M. Grijalva, current Democratic House rep from Arizona.

Mr. Grijalva (pronounced gree-HAHL-vah) disclosed last year that he had lung cancer and would not run for a 13th term in 2026. He died of complications of his treatment, his office said. He was absent from Washington for nearly a year, missing hundreds of votes in the narrowly divided House.

Posted in 1911, Art, Books, Guns, Heroism, Obits, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 11, 2025.

Tuesday, March 11th, 2025

Jessie Mahaffey (Boatswain’s Mate Second Class, United States Navy – ret.) passed away on March 1st. He was 102.

Mr. Mahaffey served on the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

In December, Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS-TV of Shreveport, La., that Dec. 7, 1941, had started as a quiet Sunday.
He and five other sailors were chatting as they scrubbed the deck of the Oklahoma when they “heard a siren, saw planes and smoke,” he said, adding, “It must have only gone on for 45 minutes, but it was crazy.”
The Oklahoma was struck by as many as nine torpedoes. Within minutes, the battleship capsized, trapping hundreds of men below deck. “It didn’t take that long to come back to the other side,” he said. “It turned upside down and we had to slide over the bottom of the ship into the water.”
He managed to swim to the U.S.S. Maryland, another battleship that was moored at Pearl Harbor.
In total, 429 crew members from the Oklahoma were killed in the attack, which left more than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians dead and nearly 1,800 wounded.

He went on to serve on the U.S.S. Northampton, which was sunk by the Japanese on November 30, 1942.

“The ship was sunk at midnight, and we had to stay on rafts the whole night,” Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS.

…

When he turned 100, in 2022, Mr. Mahaffey told KPLC-TV of Lake Charles, La., about the day he married Joyce Inez Mahaffey. “My best day would be marrying that little gal that just turned 18 years old,” he said. “Me, her and her brother went to that church.”
Ms. Mahaffey died in 2003. His survivors include his sons George and Clarence; several grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.
After he was discharged from the Navy, Mr. Mahaffey returned to Louisiana, where he worked for Southwestern Bell, the regional phone company, for at least 30 years, his grandson said. Mr. Mahaffey, who was 5-foot-3, was a pole climber who refused to accept jobs that would require him to work indoors, John Mahaffey said.“They kept trying to give him promotions, to come inside, to take a desk job or to run the crews or to be a supervisor, and he would never take it,” he said.

…

In an interview on Sunday, John Mahaffey, his grandson, said that Mr. Mahaffey would talk about his time in the Navy only when his relatives would ask him about it, which they did often.

According to the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, there are 14 remaining Pearl Harbor survivors.

John Mahaffey said his family had been told that his grandfather was one of just two or three remaining survivors from the U.S.S. Oklahoma.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 5, 2025.

Wednesday, March 5th, 2025

Congressman Sylvester Turner (Dem. – Houston).

Turner took over the seat of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee in January after serving two terms as mayor of Houston from 2016 to 2024. He was born and raised in Acres Homes, Houston, and attended the University of Houston and Harvard Law School.

…

Turner will be remembered for his decades-long service to Houston and its residents. He has represented his community at Houston City Hall and the Texas House of Representatives, notably fighting for the people of Houston’s historically black neighborhoods. Turner represents Texas’ 18th Congressional District, a historically significant seat once held by civil rights icons such as Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland, Craig Washington and Sheila Jackson Lee.

…

In 2015, Turner was elected the 62nd Mayor of Houston and was re-elected in 2019. Turner forged a path forward for Houston during some of the city’s most turbulent times, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey.

Lawrence.

Edited to add: The NYT did not have a story up when I posted, but they do now. I don’t see any coverage in the WP.

Edited to add 2: WP coverage, but it really doesn’t add anything.

James Harrison, big damn hero.

…Mr. Harrison was one of the most prolific donors in history, extending his arm 1,173 times. He may have also been one of the most important: Scientists used a rare antibody in his plasma to make a medication that helped protect an estimated 2.4 million babies in Australia from possible disease or death, medical experts say.

…

Mr. Harrison’s plasma contained the rare antibody anti-D. Scientists used it to make a medication for pregnant mothers whose immune systems could attack their fetuses’ red blood cells, according to Australian Red Cross Lifeblood.
Anti-D helps protect against problems that can occur when babies and mothers have different blood types, most often if the fetus is “positive” and the mother is “negative,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. (The positive and negative signs are called the Rhesus factor, or Rh factor.)
In such cases, a mother’s immune system might react to the fetus as if it were a foreign threat. That can lead babies to develop a dangerous and potentially fatal condition, hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn, which can cause anemia and jaundice.

…

In Australia, scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne are working to create a synthetic version of the drug using what some have called “James in a Jar,” an antibody that can be made in a lab.
But for now, human donors are essential: The anti-D shots are made with donated plasma, and Mr. Harrison was one of about 200 donors among the 27 million people in Australia, Lifeblood said.
“It wasn’t one big heroic act,” Jemma Falkenmire, a spokeswoman for Lifeblood, said in an interview as she reflected on Mr. Harrison’s 64 years of donations, from 1954 to 2018. “It was just a lifetime of being there and doing these small acts of good bit by bit.”

FiveThirtyEight.

According to the Journal, the entire site is being axed and all 15 of its employees will be handed pink slips.

Selwyn Raab, journalist and author. He did a lot of reporting on the Mafia, and on people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes.

One was George Whitmore Jr., who had been imprisoned for the 1963 murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, roommates in an Upper East Side apartment — “career girls,” as the tabloids called them.
Mr. Raab, working first for the merged newspaper The New York World-Telegram and The Sun and then for NBC News and the New York public television station WNET-TV, uncovered evidence showing that Mr. Whitmore was elsewhere on the day of those murders and had no part in an unrelated attempted rape with which he was also charged.
Mr. Whitmore said that the police had beaten him, and that he had no lawyer during the interrogation. In 1996, his case was cited by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, the landmark ruling that upheld a suspect’s right to counsel.
Mr. Raab wrote a book about the case, “Justice in the Back Room,” which became the basis for “Kojak,” the CBS series about a police detective, played by Telly Savalas, which ran for five years in the 1970s. “I’m not a detective,” Mr. Raab said. “I just look for the most reasonable approach to a story.”
He joined The Times in 1974 and worked there for 26 years. Reporting for the paper, he uncovered evidence that helped free Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, the middleweight boxer who was imprisoned for 19 years in the 1966 shooting deaths of three people in a bar in Paterson, N.J.
The Carter case was another instance of police coercion and prosecutorial overreach, one that also led to the conviction of another man, John Artis. Mr. Carter, who died in 2014, became something of a folk hero, his cause championed in a 1976 Bob Dylan song, “Hurricane,” and in a 1999 film, “The Hurricane,” in which Mr. Carter was played by Denzel Washington.

Posted in Books, Heroism, Law, Obits, Politics, Texas, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 25, 2025.

Tuesday, February 25th, 2025

Clint Hill.

You may not recognize the name, but I think you’ll recognize him from the photos.

He was the Secret Service agent who jumped on the back of the limo when JFK was shot, and kept Mrs. Kennedy from falling out.

Thirteen days after the assassination, in a ceremony attended by Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Hill received the highest award bestowed by the Treasury Department — the agency that oversaw the Secret Service at the time — for his “extraordinary courage and heroic effort in the face of maximum danger.”

…

When he retired from the Secret Service in 1975, he was the assistant director responsible for all protective forces.
In December 2013, the Secret Service honored him at its James J. Rowley Training Center in Maryland, erecting a bronze plaque next to a street it named Clint Hill Way.
But the accolades and his ascendancy in the agency could not overcome Mr. Hill’s feelings of guilt. He blamed himself for not reacting a split second faster to the sound of gunfire, becoming convinced that he had missed a chance to save President Kennedy’s life. His emotional turmoil resulted in his retirement in 1975 at age 43, at the urging of doctors.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | 3 Comments »

Bagatelle (#126).

Friday, February 7th, 2025

I don’t know how many of my readers are familiar with the story of “The Man Who Rode The Thunder”, Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin.

I know Lawrence is, because we’ve talked about it before. FotB RoadRich may know the story as well.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, here’s a good brief overview from Dr. Dabbs. Elevator pitch: LTC Rankin was forced to bail out of his F-8 Crusader…into a thunderstorm.

I have a paperback copy of The Man Who Rode the Thunder in a box somewhere, but I don’t remember it being in my elementary school library. If it had been, I would have been all over that like flies on a severed cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation.

Posted in Bagatelle, Books, Heroism, Planes | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 6, 2025.

Thursday, February 6th, 2025

In honor of Valérie André, I am declaring a moratorium on French and French Army jokes for the next 72 hours.

She became a brain surgeon, a parachutist and a helicopter pilot who was said to be the first woman to fly rescue missions in combat zones for any military force. She was also the first Frenchwoman to be named a general and was a five-time winner of the Croix de Guerre, for bravery in Indochina and Algeria.

…

In 120 combat missions in the early 1950s in the dense jungles and soggy rice paddies of Indochina, where the French were trying without success to repulse Communist guerrillas, Dr. André flew 168 wounded soldiers from the battlefields to hospitals in Hanoi — including enemy soldiers, when there was room on the two litters mounted on her single-seat Hiller chopper.
She later flew 365 missions into combat zones in North Africa, where Algerians were seeking independence from France. In 1976 she was promoted to general, the first woman to be elevated to that rank in the French Army.

…

According to the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, she was one of the first 12 women in the world to receive a helicopter pilot rating and the first woman to fly a helicopter into combat zones.

She was 102 when she died.

Posted in Helicopters, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: February 5, 2024.

Wednesday, February 5th, 2025

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Stewart Jr. (USAF – ret) has passed away. He was 100.

He was one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen who saw combat during WWII. (That’s the way the paper of record phrases it. I wondered about that phrasing, but according to Wikipedia (I know, I know):

On February 2, 2025, Lt Col. Harry Stewart Jr. died, thus leaving Lt. Col. George Hardy as the last surviving member of the original 355 Tuskegee Airmen who served in World War II. James H. Harvey, III, who did not serve in combat during World War II but who did later manage to be a member of the USAF’s inaugural “Top Gun” team in 1949 and serve in combat missions in the Korean War, lives as well, as does Lt. Eugene J. Robertson, who also did not serve in World War II combat missions.)

He flew 43 missions — almost one every other day — from late winter 1944 into the spring of 1945.
On one mission, to attack a Luftwaffe base in Germany, Lieutenant Stewart and six other American pilots were baited into a dogfight with at least 16 German fighter planes. Firing his machine guns and performing risky aerial maneuvers, he downed three enemy aircraft in succession, fending off a potential rout.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, cited for having “gallantly engaged, fought and defeated the enemy” with no regard for his personal safety.

Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, also known as The Aga Khan IV.

Urbane, cosmopolitan and often media-averse, the Aga Khan — born Prince Karim Al-Hussaini — rejected the notion that expanding his personal fortune would conflict with his charitable ventures. He said his ability to prosper complemented his duty to enhance the lives of Ismaili Muslims, a branch of the Shiite tradition of Islam with a following of 15 million people in 35 countries.

…

His projects included developing the island of Sardinia’s ritzy Costa Smeralda resort area, breeding thoroughbred racehorses and establishing health initiatives for the poor in the developing world.

…

Even though he had no inherited realm in the manner of other hereditary rulers, the Aga Khan’s fortune was variously estimated at $1 billion to $13 billion, drawn from investments, joint ventures and private holdings in luxury hotels, airlines, racehorses and newspapers, as well as from a kind of Quranic tithe levied on his followers.

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, Planes | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 30, 2024.

Monday, December 30th, 2024

I have been running around with Mike the Musicologist, and will be continuing to do so through the first of the year. So I’m a little behind in obits, but I’m trying to catch up.

Warren Upton. He was 105.

Mr. Upton was the oldest living Pearl Harbor survivor, and the last remaining survivor of the Utah.

Mr. Upton was serving as a radioman aboard the U.S.S. Utah on Dec. 7, 1941. He was below deck, reaching for his shaving kit, when the Utah was struck in quick succession by two torpedoes at about 8 a.m.
“It was quite an inferno,” Mr. Upton, a resident of San Jose, Calif., told the San Francisco TV station KTVU in 2021. “I went over the side then,” he added, “and slid down the side of the ship as she rolled over.”
The ship began capsizing within minutes. Mr. Upton and others left the ship and swam to Ford Island, adjacent to the row of battleships in Pearl Harbor. Along the way, he helped another shipmate who couldn’t swim.

The NYT quotes the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors as stating there are 15 remaining survivors.

Former president Jimmy Carter, for the historical record: NYT. WP. I don’t have a lot to say about this, and it has been thoroughly covered elsewhere. But: I am excited that we’re going to get a new stamp.

Linda Lavin. I don’t know how many people realize she had a considerable Broadway career in addition to “Alice”. Other credits include “Harry O”, “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, and “The Muppets Take Manhattan”.

Olivia Hussey. Other credits include voice work in “Pinky and the Brain”, “Death on the Nile”, and “Black Christmas”.

Posted in 1970s, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, Politics, Theatre, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 24, 2024.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2024

Col. Perry Dahl (USAF – ret.). He was 101.

Col. Dahl shot down nine planes during the Pacific campaign in WWII.

Colonel Dahl was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and needed extra seat cushions to reach the pedals of his plane. But his exploits brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.

…

He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.

He also served honorably during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts before his retirement in 1978.

Art Evans, actor. Other credits include the original “Fun with Dick and Jane”, the original “Death Wish”, and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”.

Lawrence sent me an obit a few days ago for writer Barry Malzberg. I couldn’t do anything with it, because it was on Facebook and wouldn’t even come up for me unless I signed in with my (non-existent) Facebook account. None of the usual sources has published an obit yet, but Michael Swanwick put up a tribute at his blog.

Sophie Hediger, Swiss snowboarder and member of their Olympic team. She was 26, and was killed in an avalanche.

Burt, the crocodile from “Crocodile Dundee”.

The 1986 movie stars Paul Hogan as the rugged crocodile hunter Mick Dundee. In the movie, American Sue Charlton, played by actress Linda Kozlowski, goes to fill her canteen in a watering hole when she is attacked by a crocodile before being saved by Dundee.
Burt is briefly shown lunging out of the water.
But the creature shown in more detail as Dundee saves the day is apparently something else. The Internet Movie Database says the movie goofed by depicting an American alligator, which has a blunter snout.

Update to my Party City obit: while Part City as a chain is shutting down, there are at least two stores in Austin that are independent franchises, and those stores are planning to stay open.

They will still be party supplies stores, but exact logistics are unknown. The stores opened before the Party City company formed.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Heroism, Movies, Obits, Planes, Reptiles, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 16, 2024.

Monday, December 16th, 2024

Robert Fernandez. He was 100.

Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.

In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”

…

In his recollection of the attack, Mr. Fernandez said in the video that he had awakened that morning feeling excited to go dancing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with his friends that night.

That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.

The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”

Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.

Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.

Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.

In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.

…

“He’s a horseman,” Steven Levy wrote in a profile of Jenkins in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977. “A rider might get over a fence, but a horseman will make the horse jump, as if it’s a birthright to leap like a cheetah and land on the run. A horseman does it because the animals and he are on the same wavelength.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Armistice Day.

Monday, November 11th, 2024

I apologize. I have been more than a little distracted, with recovery from the previous eye surgery and planning for the next eye surgery (which is tomorrow). So I haven’t really had a chance to write anything special for Armistice Day.

In lieu of something from me, I’m going to point you to this recent article/book review from American Handgunner: “Fearless: The Adam Brown Story“.

I had not heard of Adam Brown before reading this, but cheese louise, what a guy.

One year after losing his eye, Adam completed Navy sniper school, shooting left-handed and using his left eye. Adam once again graduated at the top of his class.

…

…here’s a man who lost his dominant eye, re-trained himself to shoot weak-handed, to the rigorous standards of a top-tier anti-terrorist unit, and completed the tough physical standards with reattached fingers and one eye.

Since there’s not a link in the article, if you want to read Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, you can find it at the above affiliate link.

Posted in Heroism, History | 2 Comments »

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