Like Robert Ruark, I have a certain sentimental attachment to the Coast Guard. (Unlike Ruark, I didn’t grow up around the water, and nobody ever let me chase a rum-runner on a Coast Guard cutter.)
I have some more pictures of the Cleveland Fallen Firefighters Memorial in the tubes, but not all of them came out as well as I would have liked. I was trying to get some closeups of the memorial that would allow folks to actually read the names on it.
I’m waiting until I get back to edit and post photos. (As a side note, geotagging photos is a PITA on Ubuntu, compared to Apple’s iPhoto.)
We (that is, my mother, aunt, uncle, and I) were trying to get a good view of the tall ships at the Port of Cleveland. Which we couldn’t do yesterday, because the good views required $10 a car for parking plus $14 a person. However, my mother and I went back downtown today and took some photos.
I’ve been thinking a lot about firefighters recently. There was the West incident, and then the Houston Fire Department lost four people fighting a fire in a crack motel. Then there was Arizona. And it isn’t clear to me if any firefighters were lost in Quebec.
We stumbled across this yesterday while we were out, and I wanted to go back and photograph it. I’m happy with the way this photo came out.
Cleveland Fallen Firefighters Memorial, Cleveland, Ohio.
Interesting thing about this memorial: it was designed by Luis Jiménez, who also started building the sculpture. Mr. Jiménez was a popular and well-regarded sculptor. While he was working on the Firefighters Memorial, he was also working on the “Blue Mustang” sculpture for the Denver International Airport. In the process of building that sculpture, part of it fell and fatally injured Mr. Jiménez, and the memorial was completed by other people.
The Statesman and other papers are reporting that 14 people are confirmed dead in West.
The Waco paper is maintaing a list.
Volunteer Fireman’s Monument, Texas State Capitol
Detailed article on the Dumas-Sunray disaster from Industrial Fire World.
For the record, your General Norman Schwarzkopf obits: NYT. LAT. WP.
I saw this a few days ago and intended to make note of it, but the holidays interfered. Donnie Andrews has also died.
Andrews was a legendary Baltimore stick-up man and all-around crook, who reformed later in life. Omar Little (of “The Wire”) was based on Andrews:
The NYT would like for you to be concerned about the poor show ponies, who are frequently drugged to make them easier to handle. What makes this interesting, to me, is that yesterday the NYT ran an article praising Tattler’s Jet and his trainer; Tattler’s Jet was running his 460th and final harness race, in spite of an inflamed hoof. So. Running a horse for 14 years and 460 races, good; sedating show horses, bad.
Charles Durning, war hero and noted character actor.
They don’t make them like that anymore.
I’m just a little too young to remember “The Odd Couple” well (except for the theme), but “Quincy, M.E.” was right in my wheelhouse for the first several seasons. At some point, I’d like to do a longer post about the “NBC Sunday Mystery Movie” and all the great stuff that came out of it, but for now, let me say that I was an avid Quincy fan when I was a kid; at least, until the series turned into Jack Klugman’s cause of the week.
I did sort of keep up with Klugman after the series went off the air, and was sad when he came down with throat cancer. That’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and I can’t imagine what it was like for an actor. Happily, he was able to do some acting after that. (It brings a smile to my face to see that he did a guest stint on “Crossing Jordan”, the “Quincy” of the 2000 era except that it sucked.)
(And I have, but have not watched, the Criterion “12 Angry Men
I’ve written previously about the case of Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, who was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in combat. Sgt. Peralta’s family, and other folks, believe Sgt. Peralta should receive the Medal of Honor for his actions.
Updating this story, the Secretary of Defense has declined to award Sgt. Peralta the Medal of Honor. Former secretary Gates initially ruled against awarding the MoH to Sgt. Peralta, but current secretary Panetta was asked to reconsider the decision, and chose not to overrule Gates.
All that airline stuff reminded me of a story I’d read a long time ago in Reader’s Digest.
I ended spending far more time than I needed to trying to track down that story (in part because I had both the title and the author’s name mangled). So just in case I want to refer to it in the future, and for the benefit of my readers (full-service blogging experience here, people; also, I think Frankie Housley should not be forgotten):
Wikipedia entry for Frankie Housley.
Knoxville “Metro Pulse” article on Frankie Housley (by way of the Wayback Machine).
Master Sergeant John Franklin Baker Jr. (United States Army -ret.)
In November of 1966, then Private Baker’s company was tasked with rescuing another company that was pinned down by Viet Cong troops.
Baker was promoted to sergeant, and received the Medal of Honor for his actions.
Today’s NYT has an interesting article about an attempt to unearth and recreate the tunnel system used in Stalag Luft III.
It turns out that the team was unable to excavate “Harry”, but they did manage to dig down to “George”. They also constructed a new tunnel called “Roger”, “but in a trench just beneath the surface; anything deeper was deemed too dangerous”. (The original tunnels ran 30 feet below the surface.)
I am looking forward to this documentary showing up on PBS. (At least, I’m hoping it will show up on PBS instead of The Hitler History Channel.) I think this is a review of it from the Telegraph. Here’s a link to an older NOVA documentary. For any of my younger readers who are unfamiliar with the story, here’s the Wikipedia entry to use as a starting point. The Great Escape
Dakota Meyer has been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Meyer is credited with killing at least eight attackers despite being wounded in his arm by shrapnel.
By the way:
Meyer also recovered the bodies of four friends killed in action.
At the time of his actions, Meyer was a corporal. He
(Post title borrowed from LaRue Tactical.)
Sergeant Petry, who was with the 75th Ranger Regiment at the time of his actions, became engaged in a firefight during a raid on an insurgent compound in Paktia. During the course of the firefight, Sgt. Petry was shot through both legs. Another Ranger near Sgt. Petry was hit in his body armor; Sgt. Petry led the other Ranger to a safe position behind a chicken coop and then re-engaged with the enemy.
I thought about including this in the previous round of random notes, but on second thought it deserves a post by itself. Here are two epic tales from bloggers that I admire (though I have not met either of them):
Ambulance Driver and his buddy, Too Old to Work, Too Young to Retire, bring a woman back from the dead while on vacation.
Ken over at Popehat talks about a day in the glamorous life of a defense lawyer.