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Obit watch: April 9, 2024.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2024

Col. Ralph Puckett Jr. (US Army – ret.). He was 97.

Col. Puckett received the Medal of Honor in 2021 for actions on the night of November 25, 1950, during the Korean War. From his Medal of Honor citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:

First Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, Jr., distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving as the commander 8th U.S. Army Ranger Company during the period of 25 November, 1950, through 26 November, 1950, in Korea. As his unit commenced a daylight attack on Hill 205, the enemy directed mortar, machine gun, and small-arms fire against the advancing force. To obtain fire, First Lieutenant Puckett mounted the closest tank, exposing himself to the deadly enemy fire. Leaping from the tank, he shouted words of encouragement to his men and began to lead the Rangers in the attack. Almost immediately, enemy fire threatened the success of the attack by pinning down one platoon. Leaving the safety of his position, with full knowledge of the danger, First Lieutenant Puckett intentionally ran across an open area three times to draw enemy fire, thereby allowing the Rangers to locate and destroy the enemy positions and to seize Hill 205. During the night, the enemy launched a counterattack that lasted four hours. Over the course of the counterattack, the Rangers were inspired and motivated by the extraordinary leadership and courageous example exhibited by First Lieutenant Puckett. As a result, five human-wave attacks by a battalion-strength enemy — enemy element were repulsed. During the first attack, First Lieutenant Puckett was wounded by grenade fragments, but refused evacuation and continually directed artillery support that decimated attacking enemy formations. He repeatedly abandoned positions of relative safety to make his way from foxhole to foxhole, to check the company’s perimeter and to distribute ammunition amongst the Rangers. When the enemy launched a sixth attack, it became clear to First Lieutenant Puckett that the position was untenable due to the unavailability of supporting artillery fire. During this attack, two enemy mortar rounds landed in his foxhole, inflicting grievous wounds, which limited his mobility. Knowing his men were in a precarious situation, First Lieutenant Puckett commanded the Rangers to leave him behind and evacuate the area. Feeling a sense of duty to aid him, the Rangers refused the order and staged an effort to retrieve him from the foxhole while still under fire from the enemy. Ultimately, the Rangers succeeded in retrieving First Lieutenant Puckett and they moved to the bottom of the hill, where First Lieutenant Puckett called for devastating artillery fire on the top of the enemy-controlled hill. First Lieutenant Puckett’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

…

When night came, some 500 Chinese counterattacked in six waves. Lieutenant Puckett moved among his men from foxhole to foxhole, organizing their resistance. But at 2:30 a.m., he was crouched with a radio in his foxhole when it “churned with an explosion,” as he told it in his memoir. He had already incurred a thigh wound. This time mortar or grenade fragments slammed into his feet, buttocks and an arm, leaving him immobile.
“Thinking it meant sure death if I remained in my hole, I struggled my way out,” he wrote in his memoir. “Now on my hands and knees, I saw carnage all around.”
Two Rangers, Billy Walls and David Pollock, shot three Chinese soldiers who were yards from Lieutenant Puckett’s foxhole. As he related it to the Witness to War website long afterward, he told the Rangers, “I can’t move, leave me behind.” But they evacuated him to the Rangers’ rear command post on a trek in which he was carried and sometimes dragged. Despite his desperate condition, Lieutenant Puckett directed massive artillery fire at the Chinese from that post.

The two Rangers received Silver Stars. Col. Puckett spent 11 months in hospitals recovering, but returned to active duty. He went on to serve in Vietnam before retiring in 1971.

In addition to the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest decoration for valor, Colonel Puckett held a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during the Vietnam War, along with two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars and five Purple Hearts in his 22 years of military service.

…

In August 1967, serving as a battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division, he earned the Distinguished Service Cross for having “exposed himself to withering fire” in rallying his undermanned unit to vanquish Viet Cong forces in a firefight near Duc Pho, South Vietnam.

…

In April 2023, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea awarded his country’s highest decoration for bravery, the Taegeuk Order of Military Merit, to Colonel Puckett and two other veterans of the Korean War (one honored posthumously) on a state visit to Washington marking the 70th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korea bilateral alliance.
“If it had not been for the sacrifice of Korean War veterans, the Republic of Korea of today would not exist,” he said.

…

John D. Lock, a retired Army officer and military historian, undertook a campaign dating back to 2003 to have Colonel Puckett’s Distinguished Service Cross, earned in November 1950, upgraded to the Medal of Honor. His efforts succeeded when President Biden presented the medal to Colonel Puckett at a White House ceremony attended by the South Korean president at the time, Moon Jae-in.

Col. Puckett’s book, Ranger: A Soldier’s Life on Amazon (affiliate link).

He was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the Korean War.

His page at the Congressional Medal of Honor website.

There are now 62 living Medal of Honor Recipients today.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 2, 2024.

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024

LTC Lou Conter (USN – ret.) passed away on Monday. He was 102. Internet Archive link.

LTC Conter was the last known survivor of the USS Arizona.

He rejected any notion that the dwindling number of Arizona survivors should be hailed as heroes. “The 2,403 men that died are the heroes,” he said in a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, referring to all the Americans who perished in the Pearl Harbor attack. “I’m not a hero. I was just doing my job.”

…

Mr. Conter, who held the rank of quartermaster, a position assisting in the Arizona’s navigation, was on his shift shortly after 8 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when a Japanese armor-piercing bomb penetrated five steel decks and blew up more than one million pounds of gunpowder and thousands of rounds of ammunition stored in its hull as the ship was moored in the harbor, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“The ship was consumed in a giant fireball,” he wrote in his memoir.
Mr. Conter, who was knocked forward but uninjured, tended to survivors, many of them blinded and badly burned. When the order to abandon ship came, he was knee deep in water. A lifeboat took him ashore, and in the days that followed he helped in recovering bodies and putting out fires. Only 93 of those who were aboard the ship at the time lived; 242 other crew members were ashore.

But wait, there’s more.

Mr. Conter later attended Navy flight school and flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific, some of them involving nighttime dive bombing of Japanese targets. During one three-night period, his crew rescued 219 Australian coast watchers from New Guinea who were in danger of being overrun by approaching Japanese. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for that exploit.

200 combat missions. And the DFC. But wait, there’s more.

Holding the rank of lieutenant, Mr. Conter went on to fly 29 combat missions during the Korean War and serve as an intelligence officer for a Navy aircraft carrier group.

But wait, there’s more.

In the late 1950s, he helped establish the Navy’s first SERE program (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) to train Navy airmen in how to survive if they were shot down in the jungle and captured.

The Lou Conter Story: From USS Arizona Survivor to Unsung American Hero on Amazon.

Barbara Baldavin, actress. Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “Airport 1975”, “McMillan and Wife” and “Columbo”…

…and “Mannix”. (“You Can Get Killed Out There”, season 1, episode 19. “To Save a Dead Man”, season 5, episode 14.)

Vontae Davis, former NFL cornerback. He was 35.

Posted in Heroism, History, Mannix, NFL, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 29, 2024.

Friday, March 29th, 2024

Harvey Elwood Gann (US Army – ret.). He was 103.

Mr. Gann was a flight engineer and top turret gunner with the 449th Bomb Group, 718th Squadron, on B24s. His plane was shot down during a bombing raid and he had to bail out. He was the only member of his crew to survive, but was imprisoned in a German POW camp. He escaped and was recaptured three times: his fourth escape attempt was successful.

He served as a Austin police officer for 38 years, mostly in vice and narcotics according to the online obit. He also wrote a book about his wartime experiences, Escape I Must (affiliate link).

(Hattip on this one to a source who I will leave anonymous for now. While Mr. Gann has an online obituary, my source was informed of this through other non-public channels, and I’m not sure they want to be named right now.)

Louis Gossett Jr.

200 acting credits in IMDB, with 12 more upcoming. They include five episodes of “Hap and Leonard”, “The Rockford Files”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, and “Longstreet”.

NYT obit for Vernor Vinge (archived).

Jennifer Leak, actress. Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “The Delphi Bureau”, and “Nero Wolfe” (the 1981 series with William Conrad in the title role).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Cops, Heroism, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 21, 2024.

Thursday, March 21st, 2024

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Richard C. Higgins, who passed at 102. The NYT also ran a timely obit.

Mr. Higgins was a radioman at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Mr. Higgins, who later in his life often spoke about his experience to schoolchildren and on social media, described in a 2020 Instagram video pushing planes away from each other as bombs fell around him.
“I was moving planes away from ones that were on fire, because when the tanks exploded, they threw burning gas on the others,” he said.

…

After the attack, he said on Instagram, he did not return to his barracks for three days. Instead, he slept on a cot at the plane hangar and worked on “trying to get planes back into commission.”

According to both the NYT and the Columbian obits, it is believed that there are about 22 survivors still living.

M. Emmet Walsh, one of the great character actors. He’s been a personal favorite of mine since I first saw “Blood Simple”. NYT.

Other credits include…just about every damn thing. 233 acting credits in IMDB. Okay, he didn’t do a “Mannix”. But he did do a “Rockford”, “McMillan and Wife”, and “Ironside”. He was part of the ensemble cast of “UNSUB“. He was in the legendary fiasco (which revisionists now say wasn’t) “At Long Last Love“.

And he hates the cans! Stay away from the cans!

Mr. Walsh had confidence in his ability to deliver, and he knew how valuable that was to harried filmmakers. “You’re casting something, and you’ve got 12 problems; if they’ve got me, they only have 11 problems.”
He said that directors sought him out for his ability to elevate subpar material. “They’d say, ‘This is terrible crap — get Walsh. At least he makes it believable.’ And I got a lot of those jobs.”

…

The most enduring praise Mr. Walsh received also came from Mr. Ebert: He coined the Stanton-Walsh Rule, which asserted that “no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”

I always thought he classed up everything he was in. A Walsh sighting, much like a William Boyett sighting, thrilled me a bit.

In a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Walsh said he was asked about Blade Runner more than any other movie he had ever made. “We shot down in [Los Angeles’] Union Station,” he recalled. “They set it all up in a little office over in a corner, and we had to be out by five in the morning because commuters were coming in for the train. I don’t know if I really understood what in the hell it was all about.”
After seeing the finished film for the first time, Walsh realized he wasn’t the only one with that opinion. “We all sat there and it ended. And nothing,” he said, laughing hysterically. “We didn’t know what to say or to think or do! We didn’t know what in the hell we had done! The only one who seemed to get it was Ridley.”

I never met him, but I think I would have liked to. And I have no idea what his politics were, which I still think is a compliment.

Vernor Vinge, SF writer, has passed away. Unfortunately, all the obits I have found so far are from sources I do not trust or link to. The closest thing I have found to something linkable is a nice tribute from Michael Swanwick.

I haven’t read A Fire Upon the Deep or A Deepness in the Sky yet, though they are on my to-read list. I was pretty grandly impressed by “True Names“: I spent a lot of time scouring used paperback stores around UT in the old pre-Internet BBS days to find a copy of Binary Star #5, back in the day when that was the only way to get a copy (before Bluejay reprinted it). You can still get True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier, which also reprints the story, at a not unreasonable price.

Hacker News thread. The comments are worth reading, especially the one that links Vinge’s annotated A Fire Upon the Deep.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 4, 2024.

Monday, March 4th, 2024

Brigadier General John C. Bahnsen Jr. (US Army – ret.) has passed away at the age of 89.

Gen. Bahnsen was a genuine, certified, American badass.

General Bahnsen was among the most decorated combat veterans in U.S. history. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest honor for heroism, behind the Medal of Honor; five Silver Stars; four Legions of Merit; three Distinguished Flying Crosses; four Bronze Stars (three for valor); two Purple Hearts; and the Army Commendation Medal with a “V” device for valor.
He earned most of those awards during the second of two Vietnam tours, when he led a troop in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment that was commanded by Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, the son of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. of World War II fame.

…

Unlike fellow commanders who led from a desk, General Bahnsen led troops from his own helicopter — a tactic that allowed him to coordinate air and ground forces simultaneously, which he did while firing his rifle and dropping grenades from his window.
“We thought he had a death wish sometimes,” Mr. Noe said.
He did, but not for himself.
“The enemy of my country is my enemy, and our mission was to kill them,” General Bahnsen said in a 2013 interview with the American Veterans Center. “You could capture them if you could. We captured a lot of them in my units, but we also killed them. And my feeling was, that’s our job.”
He was unrelenting. He often landed his helicopter to fight alongside his ground troops. One day, he was shot down three times. Each time, he ordered delivery of a replacement helicopter so that he could return to attacking.

…

General Bahnsen was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during a battle in early 1969.After his crew chief was severely wounded amid heavy gunfire at low altitudes, General Bahnsen evacuated him, refueled and rearmed.
“I was mad as hell!” he wrote in his autobiography. “I thought those bastards had just killed my crew chief.”
Not knowing whether the crew chief was alive or dead — he survived but was paralyzed — General Bahnsen returned to the battle site.
“Forcing them to a confined area, he marked their position and directed five airstrikes against them, while at the same time controlling four separate rifle platoons,” his award citation reads.
Enemy fire crippled his helicopter, so he returned to his base and got another.
Upon returning, the citation says, he “landed to guide in the lift ships carrying an additional infantry unit, and then led a rifle platoon through dense terrain to personally capture two enemy who were attempting to escape.”
He ordered the captives to be evacuated by helicopter while he remained on the ground, and led his squad on foot for more than a mile to a safe position.

…

“He is one of those rare professionals who truly enjoys fighting, taking risks and sparring with a wily foe,” General Patton wrote in an evaluation of General Bahnsen, adding that he was “the most highly motivated and professionally competent leader I have served with in 23 years of service, to include the Korean War and two tours in Vietnam.”

Chris Mortensen, ESPN guy.

David Bordwell, film scholar. He did a lot of work for the Criterion Collection.

Among Bordwell’s favorite films, according to IndieWire, were Passing Fancy (1933), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Sanshiro Sugata (1943), Song of the South (1946), Advise and Consent (1962), Zorns Lemma (1970), Choose Me (1984), Back to the Future (1985) and The Hunt for Red October (1990).

Interesting list. I kind of feel like calling “Song of the South” one of your favorite films in this day and age is just setting yourself up for cancellation. But then again, he’s dead, so what does he care if he gets cancelled? (And to be frank, the Criterion Collection could probably do a great job of preserving and showing “Song” in a historical and scholarly context.)

Mark Dodson, voice actor. Other credits include a video game inspired by a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Darkwing Duck”, and “Legend of the Superstition Mountains”.

Posted in Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 26, 2024.

Monday, February 26th, 2024

I was running pretty much flat out from mid-Friday afternoon until late Sunday night, so this is the first chance I’ve had to post anything. But: the NYT finally ran an obit for Chuck Mawhinney. (Previously.)

After graduating from high school in 1967, Chuck wanted to become a Navy pilot. But a Marine Corps recruiter won him over by promising that he could delay his enlistment by four months, until the end of deer season.
The Marines had not had dedicated snipers since World War II, but by 1967 the corps had changed its mind. Mr. Mawhinney was among the first to complete the new Scout Sniper School at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps installation in Southern California. He graduated at the top of his class.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Golden Richards, former Dallas Cowboy receiver.

Richards helped the Cowboys reach Super Bowl X and XII. Against the Broncos in Super Bowl XII, Richards caught a touchdown pass from running back Robert Newhouse (the first touchdown pass thrown in a Super Bowl by a non-quarterback) as Dallas recorded a 27-10 win.

José DeLeón, pitcher.

DeLeón was 86-119 with a 3.76 ERA in 264 starts and 151 relief appearances for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1983-86), Chicago White Sox (1986-87, 1993-95), St. Louis (1988-92), Philadelphia Phillies (1992-93) and Montreal Expos (1995). The right-hander struck out 1,594 in 1,897⅓ innings.

Jackie Loughery, actress (and Jack Webb’s third wife). Other credits include OG “Perry Mason”, “Surfside 6”, and “Marcus Welby, M.D.”.

Charles Dierkop, actor.

Other credits include “Matt Houston”, “Bearcats!” and…two episodes of “Mannix” (“A Penny for the Peep Show”, season 3, episode 6. “Desert Run”, season 7, episode 6).

Eddie Driscoll, actor. IMDB.

Chris Gauthier, actor. Fair number of genre credits, including “Supernatural”, “Watchmen”, and the “Earthsea” mini series.

Kenneth Mitchell, actor. Other credits include “NCIS”, “CSI: Cyber”, and “Detroit 1-8-7”.

Posted in 1970s, Guns, Heroism, History, Mannix, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 16, 2024.

Friday, February 16th, 2024

Both the NYPost (archived for your pleasure) and Task and Purpose are reporting the death of Sgt. Chuck Mawhinney (USMC – ret.).

For those unfamiliar with Sgt. Mawhinney, he is considered to be the most successful sniper of the Vietnam War.

From 1968 to 1969, Mawhinney — still only a teenager — was credited with 103 confirmed kills.
An additional 216 kills were listed as “probable” since the enemies’ bodies were risky to verify in the active war zone.
Mawhinney had confirmed kills over 1,000 yards, with the average kill shot for snipers during the Vietnam War taken at a distance of 300 to 800 yards.

After the war, he kept his head down.

When Mawhinney returned home from the Vietnam War, he saw how veterans were being treated and quietly left his military life behind him. He loved to hunt and trap, and that’s what he did when he wasn’t working.

He worked for the Forest Service for 27 years.

Joseph Ward, one of his spotters, wrote a book in 1991. (Dear Mom: A Sniper’s Vietnam. Affiliate link.) The book didn’t get a lot of attention at first, but people found Ward’s mention of Sgt. Mawhinney’s record, and it rapidly became public knowledge.

Jim Lindsay, author of “The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time,” met Mawhinney in 1979 at the Idle Hour tavern in Baker City, Oregon. Lindsay said that people seemed to not believe Mawhinney, but he confirmed that he did, in fact, have 103 confirmed kills and 216 unconfirmed kills during his 16 months of duty in Vietnam.
“Chuck’s platoon leader had kept track of the kills. He had the kill sheets and verified Chuck’s numbers,” Lindsay said. “So, there was no argument then. His life changed overnight. All of a sudden, everybody knew him.”

The Sniper: The Untold Story of the Marine Corps’ Greatest Marksman of All Time on Amazon. (Affiliate link.)

Peter Senich, a military historian and author specializing in sniping and small arms, went to verify Ward’s claim in the Marine Corps archives and found he was wrong. Mawhinney didn’t have 101 kills — he had 103.
Mawhinney, a man who valued his privacy and was not seeking any fame for his actions in Vietnam, agreed to an interview with Senich in 1997, which was featured in the Baker City Herald.
“It’s an opportunity for me to get some recognition for a lot of the Vietnam vets that didn’t receive any recognition,” Mawhinney said.
“We were all there together. If I have to take recognition for it, that’s OK, because every time I talk to someone, I can talk about the vets. It gives me an opportunity to talk about what a great job they did.”

…

“He was a good man,” said Lindsay in an interview with The Oregonian Wednesday, sharing that Mawhinney never boasted about his kills and said he “did what I was trained to do.”
“He was a good father, a good husband and an asset to the community. He was a pretty cool cat.”

Not a bad way to be remembered.

Posted in Guns, Heroism, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 13, 2024.

Tuesday, February 13th, 2024

Capt. Larry L. Taylor (United States Army – ret.) passed away on January 28th.

I wrote about Capt. Taylor back in September, when he received the Medal of Honor. Capt. Taylor is the guy who flew four men out of a hot LZ, with them hanging onto the sides of his Huey Cobra helicopter.

Bob Edwards, NPR guy. There was a time when I woke up to Bob Edwards in the morning…

Also among the dead Bobs: Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill. I’ve bought and used specialty products from Bob’s, though I never met Bob. 94 is a pretty good run.

David Bouley, prominent NYC chef.

Kelvin Kiptum, marathon runner. He was 24 and died in a car accident in Kenya.

This seems particularly sad. He set the men’s marathon record in Chicago last year: 2:00:35.

It was only his third marathon.

…

With hundreds of Kenyans having been barred from the sport in the past decade because of doping violations, his record drew not only wonderment, but also scrutiny. “My secret is training,” Kiptum, who was never accused of doping and had no drug suspensions, told reporters last fall. “Not any other thing.”

Many people think he had a shot at running a marathon in under two hours, which is sort of the Holy Grail of marathon running. He actually ran one in Vienna (in 2019) at 1:59:40, but that didn’t count as a record for reasons. He had said he was going to try to break the two-hour mark in Rotterdam in April.

Posted in Bread, Food, Heroism, Obits, Radio, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: February 9, 2024.

Friday, February 9th, 2024

I wonder sometimes if I lean too much on the NYT for obits. I do try to pull obits from a variety of places (as long as they are trustworthy sources) and the paper of record doesn’t cover everyone, or cover them in a timely fashion.

But the Times also tends to publish obits for interesting people that I just don’t see elsewhere.

Two examples:

Si Spiegel. He was a pioneer of artificial Christmas trees.

In 1954, he finally landed a permanent position with the American Brush Machinery Company, which was based in Mount Vernon, N.Y. He operated machines that manufactured brushes from wire and other materials for various industrial functions, including cleaning and scrubbing wood and metal finishing.

…

After American Brush unsuccessfully branched out into the Christmas tree business, Mr. Spiegel, by then a senior machinist, was tasked with closing the artificial tree factory. Instead, he began studying natural conifers, tweaked the brush-making machines to emulate the real trees and patented new production techniques.
He left the renamed American Tree and Wreath Company in 1979 and founded Hudson Valley Tree Company two years later., which began mass-producing 800,000 trees a year on an assembly line that turned one out every four minutes.
By the late 1980s, his company was generating annual sales of $54 million and employed 800 workers in Newburgh, N.Y., and Evansville, Ind. He sold the Hudson Valley Tree Company in 1993, retired as a multimillionaire and turned his attention to cultural, educational and social justice philanthropy.

Yes, he was Jewish. I wouldn’t ordinarily say that, but it is a key part of his origin story: he applied for commercial piloting jobs after WWII, but was consistently rejected because he was Jewish.

Mr. Spiegel celebrated Jewish holidays with his children, but when they were young, a Christmas tree was a winter holiday staple — first a real one, then the best of his fake ones.
“They were pagan symbols,” he told The Times. “My kids liked them.”

The other reason he’s interesting: he flew 35 missions over Germany as a B-17 pilot. On his 33rd mission, his B-17 was shot down and crash-landed in Poland, which was occupied by the Russians at the time.

Uncertain what to do with putative allies, the Russians awaited orders from their superiors. But instead of staying put, Mr. Spiegel and his fellow officers surreptitiously removed an engine and a tire from their own plane to repair another hobbled B-17 that had crashed nearby. They bartered for fuel and, on March 17, the combined crews escaped to Foggia, Italy, where they were able to notify their families back home that they had survived. Mr. Spiegel led two more missions, then returned home to New York on Aug. 31, 1945, but he would go back to England and Poland for reunions of his crew from the 849th Bomb Squadron of the 490th Bomb Group.

Elleston Trevor, call your office, please. I don’t see any evidence that he ever wrote a book about his wartime experiences, but I wish he had: I am genuinely curious how they moved the B-17 engine.

Mr. Spiegel, who died at 99 on Jan. 21 at his home in Manhattan, was among the last surviving American B-17 pilots of World War II, his granddaughter Maya Ono said.

Walter Shawlee, who the Times describes as “the sovereign of slide rules”.

…Inspired by this encounter with his youth, he created a website dedicated to slide rules. Before long, nostalgic math whizzes of decades past came across the site. Emails poured into Mr. Shawlee’s inbox. He began spending eight hours a day researching, buying, fixing and reselling old slide rules.

…

In the early 2000s, he was earning $125,000 a year fixing and reselling slide rules. The business paid for his two children to go to college, and it sent one of them to law school. His customer base took its most organized form in the Oughtred Society, a club named in honor of William Oughtred, the Anglican minister generally recognized to have invented the slide rule in the early 1620s.
Mr. Shawlee’s website developed a subculture of its own, with a network of slide rule-o-philes from Arizona to Venezuela to Malaysia digging on Mr. Shawlee’s behalf through the mildewed wares of old stationery stores and estate sales and school district warehouses in search of slide rules. In Singapore, a civil servant, Foo Sheow Ming, visited the back room of a bookstore and found 40 unopened crates of more than 12,000 slide rules in multiple varieties. On his website, Mr. Shawlee called the find “the absolute El Dorado of slide rules,” and Mr. Foo told The Journal that it was “the mother lode.”

…

Mr. Shawlee’s inventory included remarkable artifacts of science history. He offered a slide rule made for machine gun operators, with calculations for wind, elevation and range. He offered a slide rule for measuring metabolic rates, with different settings for age, sex and height. And he used his website to explore recondite points of slide rule-iana, writing, for example, about slide rules made by the U.S. government for calculating nuclear bomb effects.

…

He also sold slide-rule cuff links and slide-rule tie clips, which in some cases had been made by major slide-rule manufacturers as promotional items during what Mr. Shawlee called “the golden age of slide rules.” The tie clips proved so popular on the Slide Rule Universe that Mr. Shawlee worked with a small foundry to start manufacturing them himself.

Lawrence gave me a slide rule tie clip one year, which looks like it may have come from Mr. Shawlee’s website. I treasure it, and wear it on special occasions.

Slide Rule Universe. I was previously unfamiliar with this site, but wow! It looks like a relic of the old school Web, which I absolutely love.

In a phone interview, Ms. Shawlee said that thousands of the devices were still in the family’s home. She said she planned to continue selling them. As far as she knows, there is no prospect of another collector-expert-fixer-dealer-romantic like Mr. Shawlee emerging in “the slide-rule racket.”

For the historical record: NYT obit for David Kahn.

The U.S. government considered [The Codebreakers] so volatile that the National Security Agency, the country’s premier cryptology arm, pondered how to block its publication. It even considered breaking into Mr. Kahn’s home in Great Neck, N.Y.
Eventually the agency chose more overt means, demanding that the publisher, Macmillan, not release it. The company refused; instead, MacMillan and Mr. Kahn submitted the text to the Department of Defense for review. Mr. Kahn agreed to cut a few paragraphs about Britain’s code-breaking efforts during World War II, which were still classified, but otherwise he kept the book intact.

…

In a curious twist, in 1993, the N.S.A. invited Mr. Kahn to be its scholar in residence. Despite the agency’s earlier efforts to sideline his work, by the 1990s it had come to respect him for advancing the field of cryptology. In 2020, he was even named to its hall of fame.

Seiji Ozawa, conductor.

Mr. Ozawa was the most prominent harbinger of a movement that has transformed the classical music world over the last half-century: a tremendous influx of East Asian musicians into the West, which has in turn helped spread the gospel of Western classical music to Korea, Japan and China.
For much of that time, a belief widespread even among knowledgeable critics held that although highly trained Asian musicians could develop consummate technical facility in Western music, they could never achieve a real understanding of its interpretive needs or a deep feeling for its emotional content. The irrepressible Mr. Ozawa surmounted this prejudice by dint of his outsize personality, thoroughgoing musicianship and sheer hard work.

…

He found himself near the top of the American orchestral world in 1973, when he was named music director of the Boston Symphony. He scored many successes over the years, proving especially adept at big, complex works that many others found unwieldy.He toured widely and recorded extensively with the orchestra. But his 29-year tenure was, many thought, too long for anyone’s good: his own, the orchestra’s or the subscribers’.
Though relatively inexperienced in opera, he left in 2002 to become music director of the august Vienna State Opera, where he stayed until 2010. The rest of his life was mainly consumed with health issues and with dreams of a major comeback on the concert stage, which he was never able to achieve.

Posted in Books, Christmas, Geek, Heroism, History, Music, Obits, Planes | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: February 2, 2024.

Friday, February 2nd, 2024

Colonel Roger H.C. Donlon (United States Army – ret.)

Col. Donlon was the first person, and first Special Forces member, to receive the Medal of Honor for action in the Vietnam War.

His Medal of Honor citation:

Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army. Place and date: Near Nam Dong, Republic of Vietnam, 6 July 1964. Entered service at: Fort Chaffee, Ark. Born: 30 January 1934, Saugerties, N.Y. G.O. No.: 41, 17 December 1964.
Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while defending a U.S. military installation against a fierce attack by hostile forces.
Capt. Donlon was serving as the commanding officer of the U.S. Army Special Forces Detachment A-726 at Camp Nam Dong when a reinforced Viet Cong battalion suddenly launched a full-scale, predawn attack on the camp. During the violent battle that ensued, lasting 5 hours and resulting in heavy casualties on both sides, Capt. Donlon directed the defense operations in the midst of an enemy barrage of mortar shells, falling grenades, and extremely heavy gunfire. Upon the initial onslaught, he swiftly marshaled his forces and ordered the removal of the needed ammunition from a blazing building. He then dashed through a hail of small arms and exploding hand grenades to abort a breach of the main gate. En route to this position he detected an enemy demolition team of 3 in the proximity of the main gate and quickly annihilated them. Although exposed to the intense grenade attack, he then succeeded in reaching a 60mm mortar position despite sustaining a severe stomach wound as he was within 5 yards of the gun pit. When he discovered that most of the men in this gunpit were also wounded, he completely disregarded his own injury, directed their withdrawal to a location 30 meters away, and again risked his life by remaining behind and covering the movement with the utmost effectiveness. Noticing that his team sergeant was unable to evacuate the gun pit he crawled toward him and, while dragging the fallen soldier out of the gunpit, an enemy mortar exploded and inflicted a wound in Capt. Donlon’s left shoulder. Although suffering from multiple wounds, he carried the abandoned 60mm mortar weapon to a new location 30 meters away where he found 3 wounded defenders. After administering first aid and encouragement to these men, he left the weapon with them, headed toward another position, and retrieved a 57mm recoilless rifle. Then with great courage and coolness under fire, he returned to the abandoned gun pit, evacuated ammunition for the 2 weapons, and while crawling and dragging the urgently needed ammunition, received a third wound on his leg by an enemy hand grenade. Despite his critical physical condition, he again crawled 175 meters to an 81mm mortar position and directed firing operations which protected the seriously threatened east sector of the camp. He then moved to an eastern 60mm mortar position and upon determining that the vicious enemy assault had weakened, crawled back to the gun pit with the 60mm mortar, set it up for defensive operations, and turned it over to 2 defenders with minor wounds. Without hesitation, he left this sheltered position, and moved from position to position around the beleaguered perimeter while hurling hand grenades at the enemy and inspiring his men to superhuman effort. As he bravely continued to move around the perimeter, a mortar shell exploded, wounding him in the face and body. As the long awaited daylight brought defeat to the enemy forces and their retreat back to the jungle leaving behind 54 of their dead, many weapons, and grenades, Capt. Donlon immediately reorganized his defenses and administered first aid to the wounded. His dynamic leadership, fortitude, and valiant efforts inspired not only the American personnel but the friendly Vietnamese defenders as well and resulted in the successful defense of the camp. Capt. Donlon’s extraordinary heroism, at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.

The linked NYT obit provides a little more color. This was a wild battle.

Years later, Mr. Donlon said that among the fighters the Green Berets were training were many Vietcong sympathizers. When the shooting began, he told the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the attackers made an announcement over a public address system in English and Vietnamese telling the sympathizers: “Lay down your weapons. We just want the Americans.” He estimated that there were only 75 dependable fighters to defend the camp.

He wrote two books. I think his first, Outpost of Freedom, was a pretty big seller at the time. We had a version of that in a “Reader’s Digest Condensed Book” at my house when I was a little kid, and I remember reading it pretty regularly. (That same Condensed book also had The Century of the Detective and The Yearling.) His other book was Beyond Nam Dong, about his post-war return.

In a 1995 return trip to Nam Dong, Mr. Donlon visited the overgrown graves of the South Vietnamese soldiers under his command who died in the battle. Beside him was Nguyen Can Thu, a former Vietcong political officer who had helped plan the attack. It was Mr. Thu, Mr. Donlon later said, who told him that 100 of the 300 Vietnamese he was training in the camp were Vietcong infiltrators.

David Kahn, cryptographic historian and author. (The Codebreakers.)

I read The Codebreakers (the original edition, the one with the key on the cover) when I was in middle school, and it was a big influence on me. I suspect there are a lot of other folks out there who can say the same thing. (Hattip: Bruce Schneier.)

Carl Weathers. THR. IMDB. Pretty well covered elsewhere, and I don’t have much to add.

Don Murray, actor. Other credits include “T.J. Hooker”, “Ghosts Can’t Do It”, and “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes”.

Jennell Jaquays, prominent D&D creator.

Over nearly five decades, Ms. Jaquays illustrated the covers and interiors of settings, modules, books and magazines for D&D and other role-playing games. In one of them, a red dragon roars while perched in front of a snow-capped mountain; in another, a nautiluslike spaceship floats above an alien world; in a third, two Ghostbusters prepare to tangle with a field of animated jack-o’-lanterns.
Ms. Jaquays also crafted scenarios of her own. Two of her earliest D&D modules, “Dark Tower” and “The Caverns of Thracia,” are renowned for their pathbreaking designs.

…

In the early 1980s Ms. Jaquays went to work for Coleco, and she eventually oversaw the teams that designed games for the Coleco Vision, an early home video game console; one notable project was WarGames, an adaptation of the 1983 film.
Long after leaving Coleco, when video games were vastly more sophisticated, Ms. Jaquays designed levels for the first-person shooters Quake II and III and the military strategy game Halo Wars. She also made The War Chiefs, an expansion pack that let users play as Native American cultures vying for power against European civilizations in Age of Empires III.

Posted in Books, Cryptography, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 1, 2024.

Thursday, February 1st, 2024

This is an obit that made me say “Wow.” when I read it.

Jack Jennings has died at the age of 104.

Mr. Jennings was a private in the British Army (1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment) and was serving in Singapore when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. He was one of “an estimated 85,000” soldiers captured and taken prisoner.

…Mr. Jennings spent the next three-and-half years as a prisoner of war, first in Changi prison in Singapore and then in primitive camps along the route of the railway between Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar).

He and the other POWs were put to work building the Burma Railway.

He survived the searing heat of the Indochinese jungle; a daily diet of rice, watery gruel and a teaspoon of sugar; and a battery of ailments: malnutrition, dysentery, malaria and renal colic. He developed a leg ulcer that required skin grafts, which were performed without anesthesia.
“At least 15 soldiers died each day of malaria and cholera,” Mr. Jennings told the British newspaper The Mirror in 2019. “I remember sitting in camp just counting the days I had left to live. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of there alive.”

His memoir, Prisoner Without A Crime, is available from Amazon in the US.

This is also in the linked NYT obit, but if you don’t want to click over there to watch it, here’s the commercial Mr. Jennings did for the British National Lottery.

An estimated 12,000 to 16,000 P.O.W.s died during construction of the railway. Many civilian prisoners perished as well.

Two months after he came home, he married. He had at least two daughters. (“Complete information on survivors besides Mr. Jennings’ daughters was unavailable.”) The daughters believe he was the last survivor of the captured soldiers.

Posted in Bridges, Heroism, History, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: January 12, 2024.

Friday, January 12th, 2024

Russell Hamler, the last surviving member of Merrill’s Marauders.

After Pearl Harbor, Japan’s armed forces overran Southeast Asia, capturing Hong Kong, Singapore and Indochina. An American general, Joseph Stilwell, was forced into a humiliating retreat from Burma (now Myanmar). Allied leaders agreed in 1943 to send a force back into Burma, into what Winston Churchill called the “most forbidding fighting country imaginable.” It would be a long-range penetration unit, challenging Japanese control of the northern half of the country. The men would have only the weapons and supplies they could carry on mules or on their backs, with additional supplies dropped occasionally by parachute from planes.

…

The dense bamboo, tangled vines and banyan trees of the jungle, where men marched single-file in stifling tropical heat and humidity, was as much an enemy as the Japanese. Dysentery and malaria were endemic and rendered many men unfit for combat.
Mr. Hamler trekked until he wore holes in his boots, then walked on bare feet before receiving new footwear in one of the parachute drops, he recalled in an interview published in 2022 with Carole Ortenzo, a retired Army colonel and a member of Mr. Hamler’s extended family. Leeches sucked blood from his limbs and bugs “bored into your arms,” he recalled.
The Army supplied mostly K-rations, providing just 2,830 calories a day to men who were burning far more energy. Famished soldiers, Mr. Hamler recounted, dropped grenades into rivers, skimmed the dead fish and cooked them in their helmets.
“There had to be absolute silence at night in the jungle because any noise invited shelling from the Japanese,” Mr. Hamler said. Pairs of men dug foxholes nearby so one could sleep while his buddy stood sentry. When it was time to switch roles, the sentry tugged a rope attached to the sleeping man to wake him without uttering a sound.

…

Early in the fighting at Nhpum Ga, Mr. Hamler was hit in the hip by a mortar fragment and lay immobilized in his foxhole for more than 10 days, until Americans from the Third Batallion broke through to the village — by that point christened “Maggot Hill” by the Americans — and the Japanese retreated. The Marauders counted 400 enemy corpses. The Marauders lost 57 men, with 302 wounded. General Merrill himself suffered a heart attack just before the siege and was evacuated.

…

In May 1944, three months after the Marauders entered Burma, the airstrip in the town of Myitkyina, the mission’s key objective, fell to the Americans and Chinese troops who had reinforced them. In August, the heavily fortified town itself was captured. The Marauders were disbanded one week later. All told, the unit suffered 93 combat fatalities in Burma and 30 deaths from disease. Another 293 men were wounded and eight were missing. Most startling, an additional 1,970 men at one point were hospitalized with sicknesses, including 72 with what was described as “psychoneurosis.”
Mr. Hamler had been evacuated after the battle of Nhpum Ga in April to northern India, where he spent five weeks recuperating in a hospital. He was transferred back home to Pennsylvania and served as a military policeman until he was discharged in December 1945. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

He was 99.

It has been a bad few days for writers.

Lawrence sent over a report that David J. Skal died after a car accident on January 1st. I can’t find a trustworthy link for this, though it is confirmed by Wikipedia and the SF Encyclopedia.

Skal was a prominent cultural critic, who specialized in the horror genre. I was a pretty big fan of what I’ve read of his work: I particularly liked Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen and Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, but I feel like just about anything he wrote is worth picking up. (I haven’t read his Claude Rains book yet. I actually didn’t know he’d written one.)

He also appears in a lot of DVD commentary tracks. His Wikipedia entry has a good list. And he was from Garfield Heights, so he counts as another good Cleveland boy.

Terry Bisson, prominent SF and fantasy writer, although that may be minimizing his work somewhat.

Three things I want to link to:

  1. “They’re Made Out Of Meat”, a Bisson story that I find absolutely hilarious.
  2. Michael Swanwick’s profile of Terry Bisson.
  3. I didn’t know that the New Yorker had profiled him, but they did back in October.

(This is another obit where reliable links have been hard to find, and a second one Lawrence tipped me off to.)

Edward Jay Epstein, writer who the NYT describes as a “professional skeptic”. His first book was Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth which started out as his master’s thesis:

His book raised doubts about the commission’s finding that Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin, basing them largely on what Mr. Epstein considered serious deficiencies in the panel’s investigation. “Inquest” was published a few months before “Rush to Judgment” by Mark Lane, another in a tsunami of books that suggested that the commission had been hampered by time constraints, by limited resources and access, and by Justice Warren’s demand for unanimity to make its conclusions more credible.
“It was the only master’s thesis I know of that sold 600,000 copies,” Professor Hacker, who now teaches at Queens College, said in a phone interview.

…

Mr. Epstein had an insatiable curiosity, writing about anything and everything, from the economics of Hollywood to the rape accusation against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, by a Manhattan hotel maid in 2011. (Mr. Epstein suggested that it had been a political setup staged to embarrass him. Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the maid ultimately settled her lawsuit against him.)

Bud Harrelson, shortstop for the Mets. (Hattip to pigpen51 on this.)

Harrelson played in the major leagues for 16 seasons, 13 with the Mets; he appeared in 1,322 games with the team, the fourth most in franchise history. (Ed Kranepool tops the list with 1,853 games played, followed by David Wright and Jose Reyes.)
Standing 5 feet 10 inches and weighing between 145 and 155 pounds at varying times, he wasn’t much of a threat at the plate. He had a .236 career batting average and hit only seven home runs. But he possessed outstanding range in the field and a strong arm. He won a National League Gold Glove Award in 1971 for his fielding, appeared in two All-Star Games and was inducted into the Mets’ Hall of Fame in 1986.

He played on the 1969 “Miracle Mets” team, and famously got into a brawl with Pete Rose in 1973.

Adan Canto. THR. IMDB.

Georgina Hale, British actress. Other credits include “The Bill”, “Doctor Who”, several “T.Bag” TV movies, and “Voyage of the Damned”.

Brian McConnachie, comedy writer and occasional actor.

Tracy Tormé. I usually don’t do obits for celebrity children just because they are celebrity children, but Mr. Tormé seems to have carved out a niche for himself as a TV and film writer.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

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