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Obit watch: October 16, 2024.

Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

Megan Marshack passed away earlier this month at the age of 70.

That’s a name that might ring a bell with the old people in my audience. You younger folks never heard of her.

Ms. Marshack was “with” former vice-president Nelson Rockefeller when he died on January 26, 1979.

I use “with” above because the circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death were and are unclear.

The initial account of Mr. Rockefeller’s death was supplied by Hugh Morrow, his longtime spokesman, after midnight on Jan. 27. He told The New York Times that Mr. Rockefeller had died instantly, at 10:15 p.m., while he was in his office, alone with a bodyguard, “having a wonderful time” working on an art book he was writing.
The next day, The Times began deconstructing the official story. The paper reported that someone called 911 to report Mr. Rockefeller’s death an hour after he was reported to have died; that Mr. Rockefeller was not at his office but rather at a brownstone he used as a clubhouse; and that at the time he was with Ms. Marshack, who was identified as a research assistant.
A drip-drip of revelations ensued. First The Times reported that it was Ms. Marshack who called 911; then the paper said that the caller had actually been a friend of hers, who lived in the same apartment building as Ms. Marshack, down the block from Mr. Rockefeller’s brownstone. It also turned out that Mr. Rockefeller had given Ms. Marshack the money for her apartment, a loan amounting to $45,000 (about $200,000 in today’s money), which he forgave in his will, along with other loans to top aides.

…

The circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death remain mysterious. One account said that he was found dead wearing a suit and tie and surrounded by working papers; another said that he was nude, amid containers of Chinese food. Several credible sources indicated that he did not actually die at his brownstone but rather at Ms. Marshack’s apartment. The cause of death is generally understood to have been a heart attack.
Aside from minimal statements confirming that she had indeed been with Mr. Rockefeller when he died — released to The Times by Mr. Morrow immediately after Mr. Rockefeller’s death — Ms. Marshack never publicly commented on any of the accounts.
“My understanding is that, after he passed away, she signed a nondisclosure agreement with the family at their request, and that’s why she never spoke of it,” Ms. Marshack’s brother said in an interview. “I think she had a desire to tell the story all along but held on to her obligation.”

Ms. Marshack left behind an obituary that she wrote herself.

Ms. Marshack’s self-written obituary disclosed some previously unreported details about her association with Mr. Rockefeller but did not mention a romance — although it ended suggestively, quoting from the 1975 musical “A Chorus Line.” Ms. Marshack wrote that she “won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”

And another historical footnote: Richard V. Secord, of Iran-Contra fame.

Paul Lowe, photojournalist.

Mr. Lowe’s work as a photojournalist encompassed several conflicts and major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian invasion of Grozny in Chechnya. His best known photographs emerged out of the siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the longest sieges of a capital in modern history.

He was stabbed by his 19-year-old son, who was apparently suffering a mental health crisis.

Posted in History, Obits, Photography, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 11, 2024.

Friday, October 11th, 2024

Ethel Kennedy.

Thomas Rockwell, author. His most famous book is perhaps How to Eat Fried Worms.

He was also Norman’s son.

Posing for a painting that depicted him rummaging through his grandfather’s overcoat pocket was one of his favorite childhood memories, he told Cobblestone, a children’s magazine, in 1989. That image appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1936.
“I had to stand on tiptoe while reaching into the overcoat, which was hung on an easel,” Mr. Rockwell said, describing how his father had composed the painting. “My father gave me a present for posing, and I remember feeling so proud and pleased that I’d helped him with his work. I know I’ve never enjoyed any gift as much as that one.”

This one goes out to great and good FotB pigpen51: Greg Landry, quarterback.

He wore the Lions’ Honolulu blue and silver for 11 seasons, tallying 12,451 yards and 80 touchdown passes.
In 1971, his first year as a starter, Landry passed for 2,237 yards and 16 touchdowns, earning a first-team All-Pro nod and his only trip to the Pro Bowl. He was the last Lions quarterback to earn that distinction until Matthew Stafford was named an alternate for the 2014 Pro Bowl.

…

Unusual for an era marked by pocket passers, Landry did damage with his legs as well as his right arm: He rushed for 2,655 yards over his career, which concluded with stints with the Baltimore Colts and the Chicago Bears. In both 1971 and 1972, he ran for more than 500 yards.

…

But with Landry, who was physically imposing at 6-foot-4, the Lions designed running plays for him, as would later be the case with current dual-threat quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills. The Lions even took a page from college football playbooks and drew up option plays, in which the quarterback has the option to carry the ball himself after the snap or pitch it to a running back, a rarity in the N.F.L.
Landry showed off his burst early in his career, during the Lions’ rout of the Green Bay Packers in the opening game of the 1970 season. Closing out the game in relief of the starter Bill Munson, Landry called a quarterback sneak on third down with two yards to go at the Lions’ 13-yard line. Instead of gutting out a few yards for a first down, he burst through the Packers’ defense and galloped for 76 yards — the longest run for a Lion since 1951.

Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Nobuyo Oyama, Japanese voice actress.

For about 25 years, Ms. Oyama was the voice of Doraemon, a character that first appeared in a manga created in 1969. Doraemon is a robot from the future, sent by its owner to the present day to help his great-great-grandfather solve his childhood problems and change his family’s fortunes.
The plump, earless, catlike robot typically helped the boy, Nobita Nobi, using gadgets from the future that he kept in his magical pocket. His deepening friendship with Nobita and his family was part of what made “Doraemon” one of the longest-running shows in Japan and beyond.

Posted in Art, Books, History, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 3, 2024.

Thursday, October 3rd, 2024

Jay J. Armes passed away on September 19th. He was 92.

I had been thinking about him recently, wondering if he was still around and enjoying a comfortable retirement, or if he was still working.

I’m not sure how many people remember him, but he was a pretty famous private investigator in El Paso.

Described as “armless but deadly” by People magazine, Mr. Armes appeared to live the life of a superhero. In the 1970s, the Ideal Toy Corporation even reproduced him as a plastic action figure, with hooks like those he began wearing in adolescence after an accident in which railroad dynamite exploded in his hands.

…

In May 1946, Julian and an older friend were horsing around one afternoon with a teenager who had a pair of railroad blasting caps. Julian was holding them when they blew up, shooting him into the air, mangling his hands and nearly killing him.
A few months later he was fitted with prosthetic hooks.

He tried acting for a bit, but went into PI work.

Mr. Armes (pronounced arms) catapulted to investigatory stardom in 1972 after Marlon Brando hired him to find his 13-year-old son, Christian, who had been abducted in Mexico. Working with Mexican federal agents, Mr. Armes said he found the boy in a cave with a gang of hippies.
He told other daring tales of triumph: flying on a glider into Cuba to recover $2 million for a client; helping another client escape from a Mexican prison by sending him a helicopter, which he said inspired the 1975 Charles Bronson movie “Breakout.”

He was a self-promoter. Perhaps a bit too much of one.

After Newsweek, People and other national publications chronicled his adventures, the Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright went to El Paso to write a profile of Mr. Armes. His article — headlined “Is Jay J. Armes For Real?” — is widely regarded as a classic of magazine writing.

The Cartwright article is linked from the obit, but Texas Monthly is kind of skirty about reading without a subscription. Here’s an archived version. Brutally summarizing (you should really read the whole thing), Mr. Cartwright found a lot of inconsistencies between what Mr. Armes claimed and what could be documented.

Mr. Armes’s son said in an interview last week that Mr. Cartwright’s article was a “hatchet job” and that it was retaliation for his father’s unsuccessful campaign for sheriff of El Paso County against a friend of the writer. Mr. Cartwright died in 2017.
In 2016, the public radio program “Snap Judgment” revisited the Texas Monthly article and the puzzle of Mr. Armes.
The private eye couldn’t tolerate even hearing Mr. Cartwright’s name.
“He’s got a wilted hand, and I guess he had an inferiority complex,” Mr. Armes told “Snap Judgment.” “He saw Jay Armes had accomplished all this. So, he had to write a cutthroat story. Don’t tell me about anything about this corrupt Gary Cartwright. Don’t even mention his name to me.”

…

He told interviewers that he appeared in more than three dozen movies and television shows. But he is credited as an actor with just one TV appearance on the Internet Movie Database — a 1973 episode of “Hawaii Five-O” in which he played an assassin.

“Hookman”, season 6, episode 1. He was a violent criminal who was out for revenge against the four cops that caused him to lose his hands…one of whom was Steve McGarret. I admit, I haven’t seen every episode of the good “Hawaii Five-O”, but I have seen this one, and I would agree it is one of the best of those I’ve seen. Mike Quigley seems to agree with me.

(It was remade for the bad “5-0” (season 3, episode 15), but without Mr. Armes.)

He had some notable successes and seemed to earn enough money to support his lifestyle. In 1991, he was credited by authorities with tracking down the body of Lynda Singshinsuk, a Northwestern University student who had gone missing. Mr. Armes also persuaded the suspect, Donald Weber, to confess to killing her.
“Without Mr. Armes’s assistance, there is a significant possibility that Mr. Weber would not be brought to justice,” a prosecutor told The Chicago Tribune.

I found two action figures on eBay. One is $61.19 and it doesn’t look complete. The other one is $149.99. I can’t tell how complete it is, but it does have the “briefcase” with the various “hands”.

In other news, Masamitsu Yoshioka has passed away. He was 106.

His death was announced on social media on Aug. 28 by the Japanese journalist and author Takashi Hayasaki, who spoke with Mr. Yoshioka last year. He provided no other details.

He was “the last known survivor among some 770 crew members who manned the Japanese airborne armada that attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941”.

He explained last year in an interview with Jason Morgan, an associate professor at Reitaku University in Kashiwa, for the English-language website Japan Forward, “I’m ashamed that I’m the only one who survived and lived such a long life.”
Asked in that interview if ever thought of visiting Pearl Harbor, he at first replied, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” He then added: “If I could go, I would like to, I would like to visit the graves of the men who died. I would like to pay them my deepest respect.”

This made me snort:

He participated in the attack on Wake Island on Dec. 11, 1941, and a raid in the Indian Ocean early in 1942. (As Professor Morgan put it, he “was involved in many additional campaigns for the liberation of Asia from white colonialism.”) But when Emperor Hirohito announced his nation’s surrender, Mr. Yoshioka was on an air base in Japan.

“…the liberation of Asia from white colonialism”.

The Rape of Nanjing.

“Now I think of the men who were on board those ships we torpedoed. I think of the people who died because of me,” Mr. Yoshioka said. “They were young men, just like we were. I am so sorry about it; I hope there will not be any more wars.”

Bob Yerkes, stuntman. IMDB.

His backyard was equipped with rigs for high falls, mats to practice flips and a springboard powered by compressed air that launched people end-over-end. He is said to have invented the airbag for stunt use.
“There will never be another backyard like Bob’s where you could train for free or even live for free if you needed a place to stay,” Williams wrote.

Posted in 1970s, History, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: October 2, 2024.

Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

John Amos. NYT (archived). Other credits include “The Rockford Files: Shoot-Out at the Golden Pagoda”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Hunter”.

Frank Fritz, of “American Pickers”.

Burning in Hell watch: Song Binbin, commie.

A daughter of a prominent general in the People’s Liberation Army, Ms. Song was enrolled at Beijing Normal University Girls High School when she and classmates responded to Mao’s call for young people to turn against intellectuals, educators and others who supposedly held bourgeois values.
On Aug. 5, 1966, students attacked Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old mother of four who headed the school. She was kicked and beaten with sticks spiked with nails. After passing out, she was thrown onto a garbage cart and left to die.
Her death has been widely described as the first killing of a teacher during the Cultural Revolution, a violent spasm establishing Mao’s cult of personality, with masses waving his Little Red Book of his writings.

…

Two weeks after Ms. Bian’s death, more than one million young Red Guards thronged Tiananmen Square, where Ms. Song had been selected to pin a red armband around Mao’s left sleeve as they stood atop the towering Gate of Heavenly Peace. A photograph of the moment appeared across the country. Praised by Mao, Ms. Song, at 19, became a kind of celebrity in China.
But the whirlwind of the Cultural Revolution soon turned on Ms. Song’s family. Her father, Song Renqiong, was purged from the Communist Party in 1968, and Ms. Song and her mother were put under house arrest. The Cultural Revolution ended only when Mao died in 1976.

…

On Jan. 12, 2014, Ms. Song visited her old school and expressed remorse, bowing before a statue of Ms. Bian and delivering a 1,500-word speech. “I am responsible for the unfortunate death of Principal Bian,” she said, according to The Beijing News. (Ms. Bian’s title was officially deputy principal, but she was referred to as the principal because she was serving in that role at the time in an acting capacity.)
In 2004, Wang Youqin, a schoolmate of Ms. Song’s who later became a historian at the University of Chicago, published “Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” a book that included a description of the death of Ms. Bian and of Ms. Song’s role in the turmoil at the girls’ high school.
After Ms. Bian’s death, Ms. Wang wrote, “Every school in China became a torture chamber, prison or even execution ground, and many teachers were persecuted to death.”
Ms. Song denied that she had participated directly in the beating; she said, in fact, that she had tried to stop others who did. But she acknowledged that she and a fellow student were Red Guard leaders and that they were among the first to post so-called big-character posters — publicly displayed signs handwritten in a large format — denouncing teachers.

…

Some commenters stressed that Ms. Song should bear a greater burden because of her prominence among the Red Guards. “It’s meaningless to say you witnessed a murder and then say you don’t know who the killers were,” said Cui Weiping, a retired professor of literature who writes about China’s past, as quoted by The New York Times in 2014.
One person who was unsatisfied was Ms. Bian’s widower, Wang Jingyao. He had taken photos of his wife’s battered body after her death as well as of the posters that her tormentors had hung in their apartment after breaking in. One sign threatened to “hack you to pieces,” another to “hold up your pigs’ ears.”
“She is a bad person, because of what she did,” Mr. Wang told The Times in 2014, when he was 93. “She and the others were supported by Mao Zedong. Mao was the source of all evil. He did so much that was bad.”

Posted in 1970s, History, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 16, 2024.

Monday, September 16th, 2024

Dr. George Berci, Holocaust survivor, violinist, and big damn hero, passed away on August 30th. He was 103.

Dr. Berci was one of the pioneers of minimally invasive surgery.

Dr. Berci brought a precise eye and an inventor’s zeal to innovations that enabled doctors to better visualize the bladder, colon, esophagus, prostate, common bile duct and other body parts. Until earlier this summer, he was the senior director of minimally invasive surgery research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he had worked since 1969.
His innovations were critical to the revolution in minimally invasive endoscopies and laparoscopies, which dramatically reduced the need for surgeons to make large incisions.
In endoscopies, doctors use a flexible tube with a light and a camera to examine the upper and lower digestive system. Dr. Berci focused mainly on the area around the throat and vocal cords.
In laparoscopies, surgeons place a thin rod with a video camera attached at the end through a small abdominal incision. Carbon dioxide is then used to inflate the space to give doctors enough room to use small instruments to, among other things, remove gallbladders, cysts, tumors, appendixes and spleens; diagnose endometriosis; and repair hernias.

…

“It is unlikely that there will ever be another surgeon who so single-handedly impacts an entire field of surgery as Dr. Berci did,” said Dr. Brunt, the producer of the documentary, who is a professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “He understood the potential for laparoscopy and its applications long before most surgeons saw any value in it.”

Tito Jackson. THR.

Herbie Flowers, session musician who played bass on “Walk on the Wild Side”.

Tommy Cash, Johnny’s brother, but he had a music career of his own. THR.

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

Obit watch: August 28, 2024.

Wednesday, August 28th, 2024

Things have been kind of slow on the obit front. I don’t know if it just too hot for people to die, or what’s going on, but it just doesn’t seem like there’s been a lot to report.

I have had this one in my pocket for a few days now. I’m wondering if it will ring a bell with any of my readers: Mitzi McCall.

Ms. McCall was a pretty successful entertainer. She had a comedy act with her husband, Charlie Brill.

They got a big break on the night of February 9, 1964. They were booked to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. The lists of acts that night included:

…Fred Kaps, a Dutch magician; the cast of the Broadway musical “Oliver!” (which included a then-unknown Davy Jones, soon to be a member of the Monkees); the impressionist Frank Gorshin; the music-hall singer and actress Tessie O’Shea; and, finally, McCall & Brill.

Oh, yeah, there was one other act booked that night: a group of obscure British musicians that called themselves the Beatles.

In their sketch, Mr. Brill played a producer casting a young actress for a new movie. Ms. McCall played his secretary and three other roles: a nervous former Miss Palm Springs, a pushy stage mother and a Method actor. The sketch fell with a thud, except for some chuckles when Ms. McCall tossed in an ad lib as the stage mother.
“My little girl was waiting outside, you know,” she said. “She used to be one of the Beatles.”
“Oh, what happened?” Mr. Brill asked.
“Somebody stepped on her.”

They bombed. Their agent didn’t call them for six months. But they recovered:

They performed their act — which Mr. Brill said was influenced by the comedy of Mike Nichols and Elaine May — until the mid-1980s, opening for Ann-Margret, Ella Fitzgerald and Marlene Dietrich. They had a recurring role as the bickering “Fun Couple” on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”; appeared on many variety and talk shows, and on game shows like “Tattletales”; and portrayed a detective and his fun-loving wife on the crime drama “Silk Stalkings” in the 1990s.

Ms. McCall was 93. Her husband, Mr. Brill, survives her.

On her own, Ms. McCall was seen on numerous sitcoms, including “Maude,” “Roseanne” and “Ellen,” and wrote episodes of “One Day at a Time” and “ALF.”

She was also the dry cleaner’s wife in that “Seinfeld” episode. Other credits include “Twilight Zone” (both the original and the 1986 revival), “The Jim Backus Show”, “The Dennis O’Keefe Show”, the 1990 “Dragnet”, and “Madman of the People”.

Posted in 1970s, History, Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Short random gun crankery.

Friday, August 16th, 2024

I am hoping to be able to get back to gun crankery (and gun book crankery) next week. I expect things to be a little less busy (famous last words). And I have a hysterical historical letter coming from Colt about another old gun (though not quite as old as the last one) so I want to put up a post about it.

In the meantime, I wanted to highlight this: “Killing Lincoln: John Wilkes Booth’s Philadelphia Deringer” by Dr. Dabbs. Greg Ellifritz had this in his weekend link dump (which you should really be reading: I resisted for a long time, even though Karl regularly linked to it, and now I regret not reading it) but I probably would have gotten to it eventually since I subscribe to American Handgunner.

I note this for two reasons:

1) The blog’s ongoing interest in presidential assassination weapons, which appears to be shared by Dr. Dabbs.

B) “The tiny little pistol pushes a 143-grain lead ball to around 250 feet per second when charged atop 25 grains of FFFG black powder. I used mine to shoot an eggplant, because I hate eggplant.”

Posted in Bagatelle, Guns, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 13, 2024.

Tuesday, August 13th, 2024

Captain Paul Bucha (United States Army – ret.).

Captain Bucha received the Medal of Honor for actions between March 16 and 19th, 1968. His citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Capt. Bucha distinguished himself while serving as commanding officer, Company D, on a reconnaissance-in-force mission against enemy forces near Phuoc Vinh. The company was inserted by helicopter into the suspected enemy stronghold to locate and destroy the enemy. During this period Capt. Bucha aggressively and courageously led his men in the destruction of enemy fortifications and base areas and eliminated scattered resistance impeding the advance of the company. On 18 March while advancing to contact, the lead elements of the company became engaged by the heavy automatic-weapon, heavy machine-gun, rocket-propelled-grenade, claymore-mine and small-arms fire of an estimated battalion-size force. Capt. Bucha, with complete disregard for his safety, moved to the threatened area to direct the defense and ordered reinforcements to the aid of the lead element. Seeing that his men were pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire from a concealed bunker located some 40 meters to the front of the positions, Capt. Bucha crawled through the hail of fire to singlehandedly destroy the bunker with grenades. During this heroic action Capt. Bucha received a painful shrapnel wound. Returning to the perimeter, he observed that his unit could not hold its positions and repel the human wave assaults launched by the determined enemy. Capt. Bucha ordered the withdrawal of the unit elements and covered the withdrawal to positions of a company perimeter from which he could direct fire upon the charging enemy. When one friendly element retrieving casualties was ambushed and cut off from the perimeter, Capt. Bucha ordered them to feign death and he directed artillery fire around them. During the night Capt. Bucha moved throughout the position, distributing ammunition, providing encouragement, and insuring the integrity of the defense. He directed artillery, helicopter-gunship and Air Force-gunship fire on the enemy strong points and attacking forces, marking the positions with smoke grenades. Using flashlights in complete view of enemy snipers, he directed the medical evacuation of three air-ambulance loads of seriously wounded personnel and the helicopter supply of his company. At daybreak Capt. Bucha led a rescue party to recover the dead and wounded members of the ambushed element. During the period of intensive combat, Capt. Bucha, by his extraordinary heroism, inspirational example, outstanding leadership, and professional competence, led his company in the decimation of a superior enemy force which left 156 dead on the battlefield. His bravery and gallantry at the risk of his life are in the highest traditions of the military service. Capt. Bucha has reflected great credit on himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

He was a West Point graduate:

He was soon appointed commander of the last rifle company to be formed during an Army expansion — one that left him with a collection of the least coveted recruits: men who had flunked basic infantry tasks, former prisoners and “guys with master’s degrees in Elizabethan literature,” Mr. Bucha later recalled to the National Purple Heart Honor Mission, a veterans group.

…

In April 1970, around the time his tour of duty ended, Mr. Bucha returned to West Point to teach social science. But in 1972, he was one of 33 highly qualified young officers teaching at the military academy to resign over 18 months. Their resignations, to seek other professional opportunities, were reported on the front page of The New York Times.

Ross Perot hired him.

Mr. Bucha rose to become the executive in charge of foreign operations for Mr. Perot’s best-known company, Electronic Data Systems, which provided information technology services.

…

Mr. Bucha later openly criticized Mr. Perot for exaggerating stories about his career and traveled around the country on behalf of President George H.W. Bush’s campaign for a second term. In 2008, Mr. Bucha was a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
There was a point of consistency across his political stances, Ms. Whaley, his daughter, said: “He was a person who valued character and integrity.”

He served as president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society from 1995 to 1999.

Though Mr. Bucha became well known for his Medal of Honor, he often appeared publicly without it.
“I never wear it if I’m giving a speech that might get political,” he told the Purple Heart Mission. The medal, he said, belonged not principally to him but to the men he had fought alongside, and he did not want to say anything while wearing it that they might have disagreed with.

Statement from the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. According to the society, there are 60 surviving recipients.

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

Obit watch: August 9, 2024.

Friday, August 9th, 2024

Jacques Lewis has passed away. He was 105.

Mr. Lewis is believed to have been the last surviving French soldier who went onshore at Normandy on D-Day.

In 1944, Mr. Lewis was a member of the Free French Forces, the army that Gen. Charles de Gaulle had assembled in exile in London after Germany invaded and occupied France in 1940. Fluent in English, he was assigned as a liaison officer attached to the U.S. Army’s 70th Tank Battalion as the D-Day landings approached.
Mr. Lewis was not just an interpreter; he was a soldier, and thus well-suited to take on a vital role after the invasion. The Americans needed someone with military experience to link up with French villagers and French guerrilla resistance fighters known as the Maquis to help guide U.S. troops past German positions inland to reach the small rural town of Carentan and relieve members of the U.S. 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, who had earlier parachuted in, behind enemy lines.
In an interview with the French television channel TF1 in 2019 on the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings, he recalled approaching Utah Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944. It was the first time he had spoken about the war, even to his family, he said.
“We were crouched behind the ramp of our landing craft, and when the ramp went down, I saw my country, France, which I’d wanted to help liberate for so long,” he said. “It was very moving. But then I saw the stretchers carrying wounded or dead American soldiers — being carried down the beach to get into our landing craft to be taken back to England. I realized that many of the first wave of my American comrades had already died on the beaches to liberate my country.”
He waded ashore, his rifle over his head, under heavy German gunfire. In the TF1 interview, he displayed a military identification bracelet that he wore on his left wrist that morning (comparable to the dog tags his American comrades wore around their necks). Pointing to his military number, FFF 55770, he said, “That was so that they knew I was a French soldier if I died.”
Allied casualties on Utah Beach — 197 killed or wounded — were relatively light compared with the 2,400 or so recorded at Omaha Beach to the east. By nightfall on D-Day, more than 10,300 allied troops had been killed or wounded across Normandy.

…

After Mr. Lewis crossed Utah beach unscathed, his first task was to help the Americans reach Carentan. Consulting with resistance fighters and French residents, he mapped out routes that the Americans could take and then joined them. Along the way, they were greeted as saviors.
“The locals appeared at their windows or emerged from their doors,” he recalled. “They gave us wine, and my American colleagues gave the kids chocolate. They were so happy to see the Americans and surprised to realize I was French.”

…

On June 8, less than two months before he died, Mr. Lewis insisted to his caregivers that he be taken in his wheelchair to greet President Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France at a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Mr. Biden thanked him for his work with American forces as they had moved inland from Utah Beach to drive the Germans out of France.

Chi Chi Rodriguez, noted golfer.

Rodriguez was 5-foot-7 and about 120 pounds. But he used his strong hands and wrists to get off long low drives, and he was an outstanding wedge player, offsetting his sometimes balky putting game. “For a little man, he sure can hit it,” Jack Nicklaus told Sports Illustrated in 1964, relating how Rodriguez often outdistanced him off the tee on flat, into-the-wind fairways.
Rodriguez won eight tournaments on the PGA Tour, then became one of the top players on the Senior (now Champions) Tour, capturing 22 events, including two majors: the 1986 Senior Players Championship and the 1987 Senior PGA Championship. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.

…

After draining a difficult putt, Rodriguez would also turn his putter into a simulated sword being unleashed on a bull, then wipe imaginary blood from it and place it in an invisible scabbard.

Kevin Sullivan, professional wrestler.

Known early in his career as “The Boston Battler,” Sullivan was inspired by the heavy metal acts of the 1970s and ’80s like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to become the “Prince of Darkness,” a demonic rival of some of the stars of that era, including Dusty Rhodes, the Road Warriors and Hogan, according to W.W.E.
Among the crews he led in the ring were the Army of Darkness; The Varsity Club, a group of college buddies; and Dungeon of Doom, W.W.E. said. Also known as “The Taskmaster,” he painted black X’s and lightning bolts on his forehead, wore leather body armor and chains and stuck out his tongue like Gene Simmons of Kiss.
“During their heyday, Sullivan’s cult came to the ring with either Jeff Beck’s ‘Gets Us All in the End’ or Deep Purple’s ‘Nobody’s Home’ blaring behind them and a series of black-cloaked and corpse-painted minions who usually brought with them boa constrictors of varying colors and sizes,” according to a 2015 editorial about Sullivan on the website Metal Injection. “Add in a half-naked Fallen Angel, then you’ve got a good idea of just how much of a spectacle Sullivan’s Army of Darkness was.”

…

“The money is better than in anything else I could do,” Sullivan told The New York Times in 1989. “I’ll tell you what I like the most about it. I get to live in a beach house in Daytona Beach, Florida, that’s completely paid for. Now, that’s nice.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

Quick random book post.

Tuesday, August 6th, 2024

I was busy all this past weekend, and will be busy all of this coming weekend. I’m hoping to get a gun book post up sometime between Wednesday and Friday, but I’m not sure if that’s going to work out. I did want to get this post up today, though, for obvious reasons.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Exhibition Guide. No author and no publishing information given. I think this is about 68 pages.

There are two sections to this, which are actually printed reversed (as you might gather from the index: apologies for the lousy picture, but I couldn’t get this to sit flat easily). One covers “The Reality of the Atomic Bombing” and “Damage From Radiation” along with introductory material (“Hiroshima Before the Bombing”, “The Atomic Bombing”, “A Lost Way of Life”). The other covers “The Dangers of Nuclear Weapons” and “Hiroshima History”.

This was a gift from my beloved and indulgent sister, who was able to tour Japan recently and brought this back for me.

Posted in Books, History | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: August 2, 2024.

Friday, August 2nd, 2024

Major General Joe Engle (USAF – ret.), astronaut. He passed away on July 10th, but the obituary didn’t run until yesterday (and if it was reported elsewhere previously, I missed it). He was 91.

Mr. Engle was the last surviving X-15 pilot.

He flew 16 X-15 missions.

He earned his astronaut wings on June 29, 1965, when he took the X-15 to an altitude of 280,600 feet, or 53 miles, at 3,431 m.p.h.

He was selected for Apollo, and scheduled to fly on Apollo 17. But he was replaced on that mission by Harrison Schmitt, and moved to Apollo 18. Apollo 18, of course, was cancelled.

In 1981, Mr. Engle, by then an Air Force colonel, went back to space as the commander of the second flight of the shuttle Columbia with the pilot Richard Truly. They demonstrated that the Columbia could be reused, but they had to return three days early because of a fuel cell failure. (Mr. Truly died in February.)
Four years later, Mr. Engle was the commander of the shuttle Discovery, which deployed three communications satellites and fixed an existing one.
He retired from the Air Force in 1986 and was promoted to major general, having flown more than 180 types of aircraft and logged more than 14,000 flight hours.

Quote of the day:

“If you lie down and let someone put a water-soaked bale of hay on your head and try to lift it,” he said, “that’s the feeling you have when gravity is pulling.”

NASA tribute page.

Quote of the day 2:

“I never met an airplane I didn’t like. Some of them are less relaxing and less enjoyable and less fun to fly, and some of them are a lot more work to fly than others, but they’ve all got their own characteristics, they’ve all got their own personality, and I really, really enjoy any new airplane, any airplane.”

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 1, 2024.

Thursday, August 1st, 2024

Greenspoint Mall in Houston.

At one point, it was the largest mall in Houston until the Galleria mall surpassed it with multiple expansions in the late 1980s and early 2000s.

That was the mall for my family for a long time. We saw “Star Wars” at the theater there, and I spent a lot of time as a teen in that mall. But Willowbrook Mall opened up closer to our house, and that became the mall of choice (unless there was some compelling reason to go to Greenspoint).

After we all moved away, the mall and the area around it went into decline. Crime got so bad, the mall was nicknamed “Gunspoint Mall” by locals.

Part of the area’s expansive campus will be transformed into a new apartment complex called Summit at Renaissance Park, developed by the Zieben Group. It will replace a vacant Sears Auto Center.

I’m sorry. Did someone say “Sears Auto Center”?

(I thought about putting a language warning on this, but: it’s Ron White. If you need a language warning on Ron White, well, welcome to our universe, I hope you enjoy your stay here.)

(And both Lawrence and I would be firmly in the “fark Sears Auto Center” camp, if Sears Auto Center still existed.)

I haven’t watched all of this yet, but here’s a “Dead Malls” YouTube video on Greenspoint:

This one’s for Mike the Musicologist: Richard Crawford.

“He was a pioneer who shaped the scope of American music research,” Mark Clague, a musicologist and professor at Michigan who studied with Mr. Crawford, said in an interview. “It wasn’t about celebrating an unchanging canon, but about opening up the magic of musical experience.”
While studying at Michigan in the early 1960s, Mr. Crawford began examining a trove of papers that had been acquired by the school’s library concerning the 18th-century musician Andrew Law, who taught singing and compiled hymnals in Connecticut. The study of American music was a marginal subfield at the time; most scholars considered music history to be about the European classics. (The “American” part of the American Musicological Society, founded in 1934, referred to the nationality of its members, not their subject of inquiry.)
Whereas Mr. Crawford’s adviser, H. Wiley Hitchcock — also a major force in American music studies — had traveled to Europe for his doctoral research on Baroque opera, Mr. Crawford preferred not to uproot his young family.
So despite the potential career risk, he wrote his dissertation — and then a 1968 book — on Law, becoming one of the first scholars to dedicate his life’s work to music of the United States.

…

“Americanists set out, by turning our full attention to music in our own backyard, to prove the musicological worth of American studies,” he wrote in the journal American Music in 2005. The value was not in discovering an American Bach or expanding the classical canon, but instead shifting focus, as he once described it, “from Music with a capital M to music-making.” For Mr. Crawford, musical history was about process, not just product; performance, not just composition.
“They pointed not to beauty, not to excellence, not to the music that had survived, but to all the music whose existence in America could be documented,” he wrote of his generation of Americanists. “Only by reconstructing that totality could the life — the beating heart, we might say — of a forgotten or moribund tradition be glimpsed and a true image of historical ‘shape’ imagined.”
Thus, his magnum opus, the 2001 book “America’s Musical Life: A History,” presented not a parade of major composers and their masterworks but instead a rich musical tapestry, beginning with Native American songs and colonial psalms and continuing through African-American spirituals, Civil War anthems, Tin Pan Alley and Philip Glass. With clear, matter-of-fact prose, Mr. Crawford placed economic and artistic developments in popular, folk and classical music side by side.

Posted in History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

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