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Obit watch: May 11, 2022.

Wednesday, May 11th, 2022

Alfred Baldwin, unindicted co-conspirator.

Mr. Baldwin was the lookout for the Watergate burglars.

During the first break-in, in late May, the burglars installed two listening devices, Mr. Baldwin said in his interview. He was stationed across the street at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, from which he eavesdropped on the phone taps. He had logged about 200 calls by the time Mr. McCord realized that the bugging devices weren’t working properly and decided to stage a second incursion on June 17 to adjust them.
It was not clear at what point Mr. Baldwin saw that the police had arrived on the scene. A 2012 account in Washingtonian magazine said that at the time he was “glued to the TV watching a horror movie, ‘Attack of the Puppet People,’ on Channel 20 — oblivious to the situation developing across the street.”
But that account was wrong, Mr. Baldwin said. He said he had turned on the television to cover up the sound of his walkie-talkie, which he was using to communicate with the burglars.

…

In short order, uniformed police swarmed the scene, and the jig was up. E. Howard Hunt, one of the conspirators who had slipped out of the Watergate, rushed over to Mr. Baldwin’s motel room, told him to pack up the surveillance equipment, take it to Mr. McCord’s house and then disappear.
“Does that mean I’m out of a job?” Mr. Baldwin said he asked Mr. Hunt. But by then Mr. Hunt was out the door.

Mr. Baldwin rolled on the burglars and avoided charges. According to the NYT, he actually passed away in 2020, but his death only became known recently.

Posted in History, Nixon, Obits | Comments Closed

More things I did not know.

Friday, May 6th, 2022

I was reading an article on Damn Interesting the other night, and it set me on a wiki wander.

1. The Damon Runyon Cancer Fund still exists, but it is now known as the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. And it has a four star Charity Navigator rating.

2. You can buy Broadway tickets through the foundation.

How it works: Tickets go on sale on the first business day of each month for performances taking place the following month (for example, our June tickets go on sale May 1). The ticket price is typically twice the box office price, half of which is a tax-deductible donation. You will receive an email voucher to present at the theater box office on the day of the performance.

3. “Runyon died in New York City from throat cancer in late 1946, at age 66. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered from a DC-3 airplane over Broadway in Manhattan by Eddie Rickenbacker on December 18, 1946. This was an infringement of the law, but widely approved.”

I like the way they put that: “an infringement of the law, but widely approved”. (Also: Eddie Rickenbacker for the win.)

4. Jackie Chan’s “Miracles” is an adaptation of “Lady for a Day” and “Pocketful of Miracles” (both directed by Frank Capra), which in turn were based on Runyon’s story “Madame La Gimp”. According to Wikipedia, Chan added “several of his trademark stunt sequences”.

5. I don’t remember the 1980 remake of “Little Miss Marker”, and if I did, it probably would have made me gag when it came out. But: Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis, Julie Andrews, and Bob Newhart?

6. We should probably watch both “A Slight Case of Murder” (Edward G. Robinson!) and “Stop, You’re Killing Me” (the remake with Broderick Crawford and Margaret Dumont).

Posted in History, Movies, Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 3, 2022.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022

I know this sounds like the setup to a joke, but it isn’t: Ric Parnell has passed away.

Mr. Parnell was perhaps best known as “Mick Shrimpton”, one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers.

Parnell played in multiple bands, including Horse, Atomic Rooster, Nova and Stars. He claimed he declined invitations to play in Journey and Whitesnake, but is credited with playing drums on Toni Basil’s song “Hey Mickey” in 1981.

David Birney.

Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”
Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.

…

Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.

He also did a lot of TV work, including a recurring role on the first season of “St. Elsewhere”. Credits other than “Bridget Loves Bernie” include one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “FBI: The Untold Stories”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, Serpico on the “Serpico” TV series, “McMillan & Wife”, and “The F.B.I.”

Ron Galella, photographer and historical footnote. He was one of the early “paparazzi” – indeed, it seems to me that he was one before the term came into common use.

He was perhaps most famous for relentlessly photographing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Mrs. Onassis waged a running court battle with him throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, testifying in one court hearing that he had made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable, with his constant surveillance.” Mr. Galella in turn claimed the right to earn a living by taking pictures of famous people in public places.
In 1972, a judge ordered him to keep 25 feet away from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet away from her children. A decade later, facing jail time for violating the order — hundreds of times — Mr. Galella agreed never to take another picture of them. And he never did.

…

Reviewing “Smash His Camera,” a 2010 documentary about Mr. Galella, the critic Roger Ebert articulated the ambivalence many felt toward him, whether or not they knew the name of the photographer behind the memorable pictures he took. “I disapproved of him,” Mr. Ebert said, “and enjoyed his work.”

Posted in 1970s, History, Law, Movies, Obits, Photography, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Things I was going to do, but decided against.

Saturday, April 9th, 2022

I was going to blog that NYT article about Russian soldiers in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, with some snarky commentary about how “We told them not to do it, that it was dangerous, but they ignored us” sounds like some places I’ve worked.

Then I went searching for an image to insert, and instead found this:

Which is why I’m not linking the article, and linking Nuclear Katie instead.

Posted in Geek, History, Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 3, 2022.

Sunday, April 3rd, 2022

In no particular order of importance:

Bill Fries, also known as “C.W. McCall”. He’s been reported dead before, but this time it seems to be confirmed.

Mr. Fries was working as an ad executive at Bozell & Jacobs in Omaha in the 1970s, when he helped to create a series of television commercials for Metz Baking Company about a trucker named C.W. McCall hauling Old Home bread in an eighteen-wheeler and a gum-snapping waitress named Mavis at the Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep On A-Truckin’ Cafe.
The ads — including one that ended with the tagline “Old Home is good buns” — became wildly popular and helped pump up Old Home bread sales as they told the story of a diesel-scented romance between Mavis and C.W., who spoke in a formidable twang voiced by Mr. Fries.

…

With a record deal from MGM, Mr. Fries spawned a cultural phenomenon with “Convoy,” an ode to renegade truckers driving across the country, written with Chip Davis, who had also written the music for the Old Home bread ads and who went on to found the group Mannheim Steamroller, known for its Christmas music.
Crackling with CB radio lingo, the song tells the story of the truckers Rubber Duck and Pig Pen who are “puttin’ the hammer down” as they thumb their noses at speed limits, industry rules and law enforcement officers — “bears” and “smokies” in CB parlance. Along the way, they end up leading 1,000 trucks and “11 longhaired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.”
Originally recorded merely as an album filler, “Convoy” tapped into the surging popularity of trucker culture and CB radio, which truckers used to communicate during long, lonely hours on the open road. It was part of a boom in trucking-themed country songs like “Roll On Big Mama” by Joe Stampley and “Willin’” by Little Feat.
“Convoy” spent six weeks at the top of the country charts and crossed into the top of the pop charts for a week, according to The World-Herald. More than 20 million copies of the single have been sold, according to Bozell. In 1978, Mr. Peckinpah turned the song into a movie, “Convoy,” starring Kris Kristofferson as Rubber Duck.

People who know me well know this story. For the rest: when I was younger (around the time “Convoy” was a hit) I owned a 45 RPM record (kids, ask your parents about 45 RPM records) of “Convoy” that I literally wore the grooves off of. (Kids, ask your parents about record players, needles, and grooves.)

We also owned an 8-track tape (kids, ask your parents…) with that song on it, that had the track break conveniently located at about the 2:27 point in that video.

Estelle Harris. Other credits include “Once Upon A Time In America”, “Mrs. Potato Head” in the “Toy Story” sequels, a guest appearance on a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, and “Futurama”.

Thomas F. Staley, who built up the Harry Ransom Center.

Dr. Staley, a scholar of James Joyce, arrived at the university in 1988. Over the next 25 years, he brought a literary sensibility and a competitive zeal to acquiring collections — and keeping them from going to universities like Harvard and Yale.
Stephen Enniss, who succeeded him as the Ransom Center’s director, said Dr. Staley had been adept at persuading university administrators, donors and the public at large to preserve literature that he saw as of lasting value.
“Tom’s enthusiasms became everyone’s enthusiasms,” Dr. Enniss said by phone.

…

Not long after being hired to run the Ransom Center, Dr. Staley learned that the archives of Stuart Gilbert, Joyce’s translator and friend, were available. According to The New Yorker, the papers, which cost the Ransom Center $265,000, came with an unexpected find: Joyce’s handwritten edits of the first chapter of “Finnegans Wake.” Dr. Staley estimated that those pages alone were worth $750,000.
In the 25 years that followed, he acquired the papers of dozens of literary luminaries, including Doris Lessing, Jorge Luis Borges, J.M. Coetzee, Penelope Lively and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as the archives of Robert De Niro and the Life magazine photojournalist David Douglas Duncan. Dr. Staley also continued to teach English.
When Dr. Staley visited the playwright Tom Stoppard at his home in England, he found his papers scattered in his study and in another building on his property. As Dr. Staley recalled to The Times, Mr. Stoppard told him, “What you want is mostly stuff I would throw away: notes on this and that.” But there were also drafts of his plays, notes on revisions and drawings of stage sets.
On another trip, to Arthur Miller’s house in Connecticut, Dr. Staley learned that in a box Miller thought had been filled with roofing nails, he had discovered valuable notebooks and a short story — the very type of items that help fill an archive. Although parts of Miller’s archive had been at the Ransom Center for decades, a formal deal to acquire the collection, for $2.7 million, was not made until 2017.

General Charles G. Boyd (USAF- ret.).

In 1966, General Boyd, who was a captain at the time, volunteered for a dangerous mission in Vietnam — attacking surface-to-air missile sites around Hanoi. After repeated passes through enemy fire, his F-105D plane was hit and set ablaze. He had to eject, and, shortly after landing in a rice paddy, he was captured.
He spent the next 2,488 days enduring torture, isolation, malnutrition and interrogation in various squalid prisons, including the so-called Hanoi Hilton; for 18 months, he was imprisoned in a cell next to the Navy flyer John S. McCain, who would go on to become a United States senator and presidential candidate.

After his release…

He swiftly ascended in the Air Force chain of command, becoming the only former prisoner of war from the Vietnam conflict to achieve four-star rank. He also served as director of plans on the Air Force staff and as commander of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He finished his much-decorated 36-year Air Force career as deputy commander in chief of the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, where he helped oversee the drawdown of forces at the end of the Cold War.
After he retired from the Air Force in 1995, he took on several civilian roles that built on his expertise in homeland security and foreign policy.
Among the most notable was his tenure as executive director of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission, headed by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Barely eight months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the commission warned — in a report that was largely ignored — that the gravest threat to the United States was the likelihood that a terrorist attack would take place on American soil and would kill large numbers of people.

Barrie Youngfellow, TV actress. (“It’s A Living”. Other credits include some cop shows, “Fernwood Tonight”, “Emergency”, and “WKRP In Cincinnati”.)

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 14, 2022.

Monday, March 14th, 2022

William Hurt. THR. Variety.

Tova Borgnine, Ernest Borgnine’s fifth wife and cosmetics magnate.

Lawrence sent over a nice obit for Anne Beaumanoir. She spent a long time as

…director of the department of clinical neurophysiology and epileptology at the Geneva University Hospitals. She became noted for many papers on epilepsy and its treatment. In retirement, she lived between homes near her birthplace in Brittany and in the Drôme area of southern France.

Before that, she was part of the Algerian resistance.

Practicing as a neurophysiologist in the southern French city of Marseille in the 1950s, she became a porteur de valise, a suitcase carrier, as well as a chauffeur for the Algerian resistance members inside France as part of what became known as the Jeanson network, which was also supported by intellectuals including the writer/philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Convicted in Marseille for 10 years in 1959, she was released into house arrest the following year because she was pregnant, escaped and found her way across the Mediterranean — first to Tunisia and later to Algeria. After France conceded independence to Algeria in 1962, she worked for the ministry of health under that country’s first independence president Ahmed Ben Bella and was granted Algerian citizenship. (Dr. Beaumanoir remains revered in Algeria for her supportive role, as a Frenchwoman, in the fight for independence.)

Before that, she was part of the French resistance.

In early 1944, Dr. Beaumanoir helped save two French teenagers of Polish origin whose father, Ruben Lisoprawski, ran a bakery in Paris. Like most of his family, he had been taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland and never seen again. But his children Daniel Lisoprawski, 14, and Simone, 16, survived in part because Dr. Beaumanoir learned that the Gestapo was planning a raid on a Paris apartment where the teens were being hidden by a Frenchwoman.
Dr. Beaumanoir went to the apartment to warn them and take the teens to a resistance safe house. That house was also soon raided by German soldiers, but a resistance leader managed to flee with the children over the rooftops of Paris to another safe place.
Eventually, Dr. Beaumanoir spirited them to her parents’ restaurant and home in Dinan, Brittany, where they remained hidden, moving among friendly locations during German house-to-house searches, until the end of the war in 1945. Afterward, the Beaumanoir family brought them up as if their own children.
In 1996, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, named Dr. Beaumanoir as well as her parents among the Righteous Among the Nations, a designation for non-Jews who rescued Jews, for their role in helping the Lisoprawski family.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

Today is the 106th anniversary of Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico (also known as the Battle of Columbus).

KXAN has offered us a nice summary of the commemorative events going on in the area.

Short summary: Villa was bouncing around during the revolution, had just lost a battle, and his army was short on everything. He thought it would be a swell idea to do a cross-border raid, especially when he was told there were only about 30 soldiers in Columbus.

There were actually about 350 soldiers in Columbus. Villa sent “about 600” of his people (since he didn’t have enough supplies and ammo for everyone) and his troops had the initial advantage of surprise. However, the American forces rallied and drove off Villa’s forces.

In addition, many of the townspeople were armed with rifles and shotguns.

Armed citizens for the win!

In spite of Villa proclaiming that the raid was a success by evidence of captured arms and equipment from the camp, which included over 300 rifles and shotguns, 80 horses, and 30 mules, the raid was a tactical disaster for him with ill-afforded casualties of 90 to 170 dead from an original force that had numbered 484 men, including at least 63 killed in action and at least seven more who later died from wounds during the raid itself. Of those captured during the raid, seven were tried; of those, one sentence was commuted to life in prison; and six were convicted and executed by hanging. Two were hanged on June 9, 1916; four were hanged on June 30, 1916.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve liked Jeff Guinn’s other books, so I’ll mention War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion (affiliate link), which comes out in trade paperback in May.

Posted in Books, History | Comments Closed

Random gun crankery (plus: musical interlude!)

Friday, March 4th, 2022

I’m 99 44/100ths percent sure this is the gun I was talking about in yesterday’s post:

More from the museums.

I’ve been feeling like a little musical interlude is in order. So here you go:

Posted in Guns, History, Music | Comments Closed

Historical note. Parental guidance suggested for use in schools.

Monday, February 28th, 2022

Twenty five years ago today, at about 9:17 AM Pacific Time, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. and Decebal Ștefan Emilian “Emil” Mătăsăreanu attempted to hold up a Bank of America branch, located at 6600 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood.

Phillips and Mătăsăreanu were not, to borrow a memorable term from John Hearne, “crackheads with Ravens“. They had previously robbed two other BoA branches and two armored cars. They’d spent a lot of time scoping out the bank and were armed illegally with fully automatic weapons: “two Norinco Type 56 S rifles, a fully automatic Norinco Type 56 S-1, and a fully automatic Bushmaster XM15 Dissipator”. As I understand it, all of these were semi-automatic rifles that had been purchased and then modified to fire full-auto.

They also wore body armor and took drugs before the robbery. These guys were motivated and prepared. They’d taken $1.5 million in the two previous bank robberies, and expected to take about $750,000 in this one.

Sometimes you just get unlucky. The bank had changed procedures and schedules, and there wasn’t as much money there as they expected. Phillips got ticked off and shot up the vault, destroying even more of the money that was there. Then he tried to loot the bank’s automatic teller machine…but, due to a procedural change, the bank manager wasn’t able to open it. (“In the end, the two left with $303,305 and three dye packs which later exploded, ruining the money they stole.”)

They also thought they had eight minutes to pull off the robbery, given their observations of LAPD radio transmissions. However, a patrol unit was actually driving by the bank, saw Phillips and Mătăsăreanu go in, and put out a “211 in progress” radio call. By the time Phillips and Mătăsăreanu finished and went to exit the bank, they were facing multiple LAPD patrol cars and unmarked detective units.

LAPD at the time was armed with 9mm pistols and .38 Special revolvers. (Wikipedia says they were Beretta 92F and 92FS pistols and S&W Model 15 revolvers. However, the LAPD detective in the podcast linked below says he and his partner were carrying S&W 9mm pistols.) There were also some shotguns in the patrol cars, but LAPD wasn’t issuing patrol rifles at the time. So when Phillips and Mătăsăreanu started shooting, and LAPD started shooting back, the police rounds weren’t making it through the crook’s body armor. Phillips and Mătăsăreanu were doing a good job of laying down covering fire, and the ranges involved were fairly long, making it hard for the police to go for head shots.

I find the whole thing – the geometry and much of the sequence of events – hard to visualize, in terms of who was where and what the ranges were. Quoting Wikipedia, which has some diagrams:

Two locations adjacent to the north parking lot provided good cover for officers and detectives. Police likely shot Phillips and his rifle with their handguns while Phillips was still firing and taking cover near the four vehicles adjacent to the North wall of the bank (gray Honda Civic, Ford Explorer, white Acura Legend, and Chevrolet Celebrity). One location that Officer Zielenski of Valley Traffic Division used for cover was the Del Taco restaurant west wall, 351 feet (107 m) from Phillips. Officer Zielenski fired 86 9mm rounds at Phillips and may have hit Phillips at least once. The other location that proved advantageous for the LAPD was the back yard of 6641 Agnes Avenue. A cinder block wall provided cover for detectives who shot at and may have struck Phillips with 9mm rounds from their pistols. Detective Bancroft fired 17 rounds and Detective Harley fired between 15 and 24 rounds at Phillips from a distance of approximately 55 feet (17 m).

Police officers went to a “nearby gun store” (A gun store? In LA?) and obtained some AR-pattern rifles (and, I assume, ammo) which they used to shoot back. LAPD SWAT, who were issued AR-15s, arrived on scene 18 minutes after the shooting started.

Mătăsăreanu took at least three hits, and what sounds like a fourth grazing wound, while he was still in the parking lot. He was able to get into a getaway car, get it started, and pulled out of the lot with Phillips walking alongside, firing a HK-91. At some point, Phillips took a round in the shoulder and his HK-91 was disabled by incoming fire. He grabbed one of the Norincos and apparently went one way on foot, while Mătăsăreanu went another direction in the car.

Phillips went down Archwood Street, hid behind a truck, and fired on the police with the Norinco until it jammed. He then pulled out a Beretta 92FS and continued to fire until taking a round in the right hand, which caused him to drop the gun. He picked it up and shot himself in the head with it: at the same time, one of the police officers shot him and severed his spine. (“Either bullet may have been fatal.”)

Mătăsăreanu’s car was shot to heck and wasn’t driveable. He tried to hijack a Jeep (per Wikipedia: it looks like a pickup, but it may have been one of those Jeeps with a bed), and transferred weapons from the getaway car to the Jeep: however, the driver had deactivated the Jeep before fleeing on foot, and Mătăsăreanu couldn’t get it started. The police showed up:

As KCBS and KCAL helicopters hovered overhead, a patrol car driven by SWAT officers Donnie Anderson, Steve Gomez, and Richard Massa quickly arrived and stopped on the opposite side of the truck to where the Chevrolet was stopped. Mătăsăreanu left the truck, took cover behind the original getaway car, and engaged them in two-and-a-half minutes of almost uninterrupted gunfire. Mătăsăreanu’s chest armor deflected a double tap from SWAT officer Anderson, which briefly winded him before he continued firing. Anderson fired his AR-15 below the cars and wounded Mătăsăreanu in his unprotected lower legs; he was soon unable to continue and put his hands up to show surrender.

“two and a half minutes of almost uninterrupted gunfire“.

EMTs and ambulances didn’t want to come in until the scene was clear. There were reports of a possible third gunman, and it was obviously a pretty chaotic situation. It took about 70 minutes for medical aid to come in for Mătăsăreanu, and by that time he’d bled to death.

Later reports showed that Mătăsăreanu was shot 29 times in the legs and died from trauma due to excessive blood loss coming from two gunshot wounds in his left thigh.

There was a lawsuit from Mătăsăreanu’s family, but the jury hung when it went to trial, and the case was later dismissed.

By the time the shooting had stopped, Phillips and Mătăsăreanu had fired about 1,100 rounds, approximately a round every two seconds.

According to Wikipedia (I know, I know) the department started issuing patrol rifles: first surplus M16s (obtained from DoD) to patrol sergeants, and later as standard issue for all patrol vehicles. They also added Kevlar to the car doors. And, in what seems to me to be an odd development, LAPD also authorized the .45 ACP pistol for general carry. Previously, they’d only been authorized for SWAT. I say “odd” because if 9mm wasn’t getting through the body armor, .45 probably wouldn’t have either, so I don’t understand what difference they thought it would make.

Guns magazine podcast interview with a LAPD detective who was involved in the firefight.

Wikipedia entry. This links to a version of a very detailed memo from (then) Chief Bernard Parks, which is where I think much of the Wiki entry comes from.

National Geographic “Situation Critical” episode:

The LA Police Museum’s North Hollywood Shootout exhibit.

Contemporary news footage from the LA News Archive.

As far as I have been able to tell, there is no good (or even halfway decent) book on the robbery. This seems like a huge gap: some skilled true crime writer is leaving money on the table. If I’m wrong, and someone has done a book, please let me know in comments.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Guns, History, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 18, 2022.

Friday, February 18th, 2022

Jim Hagedorn, House member from Minnesota.

Gail Halvorsen, the original “Candy Bomber” from the Berlin Airlift. Instead of writing a fuller obit here, I’m going to point you to the much better one Borepatch wrote.

For the historical record: NYT obit for Ian McDonald.

Posted in History, Music, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 1, 2022.

Tuesday, February 1st, 2022

Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub (United States Army – ret.) has died. He was 100.

General Singlaub trained resistance fighters in German-occupied France and rescued Allied prisoners of war held by the Japanese during World War II. He conducted intelligence operations during the Chinese Civil War and in the Korean War while assigned to the C.I.A., and he commanded secret Army forays into North Vietnam and neutral Laos and Cambodia during the 1960s to ambush Communist troops.
A sturdy 5-foot-7 with an enduring military brush haircut, General Singlaub seemed fit for combat long after his last war. He was “the kind of guy you’d like to have on your side in a barroom brawl,” Pat Murphy, an acquaintance and the publisher of The Arizona Republic at the time, told The New York Times in 1986.

…

But for all his military feats, General Singlaub’s career ended over issues of grand strategy.Mr. Carter removed him as the military’s chief of staff in South Korea in May 1977 after he told a reporter for The Washington Post that the president’s plan to withdraw American troops there could lead to another North Korean invasion.
General Singlaub later maintained that his remarks were off the record, an assertion disputed by The Post. But Mr. Carter was outraged at what he perceived as a challenge to civilian authority.
His order recalling General Singlaub from Korea was the first action of its type since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the Pacific commander when MacArthur advocated extending the Korean War into China.
After being reassigned to Fort McPherson in Georgia, General Singlaub criticized the Carter administration’s military policies again in April 1978, in a talk before R.O.T.C. cadets at Georgia Tech. He called Mr. Carter’s decision not to produce a neutron bomb “ridiculous” and “militarily unsound” and criticized the administration’s efforts to give up control of the Panama Canal.
The Army ordered him to report to the Pentagon immediately, announcing a day later that it had accepted his request to retire.

He was also involved (as a private citizen) in the “Iran-Contra affair”.

General Singlaub told Congress that Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, while a National Security Council staff aide, had approved of his being highly visible in his support for the contras. The goal, General Singlaub testified, was to take public attention away from the secret government program. Colonel North was eventually convicted of obstructing Congress, destroying official documents and accepting an illegal gift, but the convictions were later overturned on appeal.
General Singlaub, who acted as a private citizen in helping the contras, was never accused of wrongdoing in the investigation. But in his 1991 memoir, “Hazardous Duty,” written with Malcolm McConnell, he bristled at what he considered the defaming of his character.
“For a decade I’d been smeared as a right-wing fanatic, even a crypto-fascist, by some members of the media,” he wrote. “I’d always found this ironic, considering the fact that I was one of a handful of American soldiers who had risked torture and execution by both German and Japanese fascists while serving behind enemy lines in Europe and the Far East.”

Moses J. Moseley, actor. He was a “pet zombie” in “The Walking Dead”.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in History, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 17, 2022.

Monday, January 17th, 2022

Brigadier General Charles E. McGee (USAF – ret) has passed away at the age of 102.

Gen. McGee was one of the Tuskegee Airman. He was promoted to brigadier general by President Trump in 2020.

Captain McGee flew more than 130 combat missions in World War II, and returned to the United States in December 1944 to become an instructor for another unit of Tuskegee Airmen, the 477th Bomb Group, flying B-25 Mitchell bombers out of stateside bases. That group never got into the war. Mr. McGee served at Tuskegee Field until 1946, when the base was closed.

He remained in the military after the war and served with the Air Force flying P-51s in Korea (100 combat missions) and “172 combat missions in McDonnell RF-4 photo-reconnaissance aircraft” over Vietnam.

After other postings in the United States, Italy and Germany, he was promoted to full colonel and retired on Jan. 31, 1973, ending his career with 6,308 flying hours and 409 combat missions, among the most in service history. That three-war total was exceeded only by Col. Harold Snow, who flew 666 missions in those wars, and Col. Ralph Parr Jr., who flew 641, according to Air Force records. Colonel Snow died in 2016 at 93, and Colonel Parr died in 2012 at 88.

I am having trouble determining how many of the airmen are left. The NYT obit says there were nine living (counting Gen. McGee) as of February of 2020. Wikipedia states there were 11 living as of 2019, but does not mention any deaths since then.

John Connolly, “investigative journalist”. He wrote some for “Spy” and various other magazines. He also wrote a book (“with James Patterson”), Filthy Rich: The Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein – The Billionaire’s Sex Scandal (affiliate link).

As an author, Connolly had been working on a new book on infamous LA private eye Anthony Pellicano to be called “The Sin Eater.”

I hope this is completed, as I’d actually like to read that book.

NYT obits for Ralph Emery and Dallas Frazier.

Tributes to Ron Goulart: “Great But Forgotten” on “The Morning Chex Press”, and Michael Swanwick on meeting Ron Goulart’s college roommate.

Posted in Books, History, Obits | Comments Closed

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