For the record: NYT obit for Richard Overton.
Archive for the ‘Heroism’ Category
Obit watch: December 29, 2018.
Saturday, December 29th, 2018Obit watch: December 28, 2018.
Friday, December 28th, 2018Richard Overton, local veteran and WWII hero, has passed. He was 112.
Obit watch: December 1, 2018.
Saturday, December 1st, 2018Obit watch: November 20, 2018.
Tuesday, November 20th, 2018Andrew Fitzgerald passed away last week at the age of 87.
There’s a chance you may have heard of Mr. Fitzgerald. He was the last surviving member of the four man crew of the Coast Guard lifeboat CG-36500.
At 5:50 AM on February 18, 1952, the oil tanker Pendleton broke in half off Cape Cod during a severe storm. The crew of the CG-36500 went out and rescued 32 out of 33 men off the stern half of the ship. (One man drowned during the rescue, and the eight men who were in the bow were also lost at sea.)
There are a lot of people who think this is one of the greatest rescues in the history of the Coast Guard. I can’t do it justice here. You should really go read the entire obituary. There’s also a 2016 Disney film (which I haven’t seen), “The Finest Hours”, based on the book by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman.
In 2002, a 50th-anniversary reunion of the rescue crew was held at the historic Mariners House in Boston’s North End. The four also returned to Chatham for an outing on the CG-36500. Mr. Maske died in 2003, Mr. Livesey in 2007 and Mr. Webber in 2009.
The inscription on their Coast Guard medals read, “In testimony of heroic deeds in saving life from the perils of water.”
Obit watch: September 26, 2018.
Wednesday, September 26th, 2018Freddie Dekker-Oversteegen passed away on September 5th, one day before her 93rd birthday.
It was 1940, Germany had invaded the Netherlands, and she and her sister, Truus, who was two years older, had been recruited by the local Dutch resistance commander, in the city of Haarlem.
“Only later did he tell us what we’d actually have to do: Sabotage bridges and railway lines,” Truus Menger-Oversteegen recalled in a 2014 book, “Under Fire: Women and World War II.” “We told him we’d like to do that.”
Then the commander added, “ ‘And learn to shoot — to shoot Nazis,’ ” she said.
“I remember my sister saying, ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never done before!’ ”
The sisters, along with a lapsed law student, Hannie Schaft, became a singular female underground squad, part of a cell of seven, that killed collaborators and occupying troops.
The three staged drive-by shootings from their bicycles; seductively lured German soldiers from bars to nearby woods, where they would execute them; and sheltered fleeing Jews, political dissidents, gay people and others who were being hunted by the invaders.
…
“Yes, I’ve shot a gun myself and I’ve seen them fall,” Freddie Oversteegen told a TV interviewer. “And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up.”
Still, she justified killing collaborators, who had betrayed her neighbors, and foreign soldiers, who had invaded and occupied her country.
“We had to do it,” she said. “It was a necessary evil.”
Ms. Oversteegen also rebutted criticism that the resistance had provoked German retaliation against innocent civilians.
“What about the six million Jews?” she said. “Weren’t they innocent people? Killing them was no act of reprisal. We were no terrorists. The real act of terror was the kidnapping and execution of innocent people after the resistance acted.”
Hannie Schaft was arrested, tortured, and killed shortly before the end of the war. Truus and Freddie Oversteegen created the National Hannie Schaft Foundation in her memory. Truus Oversteegen died in 2016.
Obit watch: June 17, 2017.
Saturday, June 17th, 2017Helmut Kohl, former German chancellor.
John G. Avildsen, noted film director. Among his credits were “The Karate Kid” and “Rocky”, the movie that shouldn’t have won Best Picture in 1977, but beat out the far superior “Network”.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.
Anita Pallenberg, sometime actress:
She may, perhaps, have been better known for her relationships with Brian Jones (“who was reported to have physically abused her”) and after him, Keith Richards. (“She lived with Mr. Richards from 1967 through 1980, and had three children with him.”)
Finally, there’s an interesting obit for Marine Corps Capt. Arthur J. Jackson, who passed away at 92 last Sunday.
During WwII, Jackson (at the time a private first class) committed serious acts of badassery during the invasion of Peleliu:
Loaded up with grenades, he charged the pillbox, raking it with automatic fire while discharging white phosphorus grenades and other explosives. He was credited with killing all 35 occupants.
Continuing alone and again at tremendous peril, he repeated the same maneuver at 11 smaller pillboxes that contained another 15 Japanese soldiers.
He received the Medal of Honor for his actions. After the war, he became a commissioned officer in the Army and then in the Marines.
On the night of September 30, 1961, as a company commander at Guantanamo Bay, he discovered a Cuban who worked as a bus driver (“even though he expressed openly pro-Fidel Castro sympathies and was under surveillance by naval intelligence”) in a restricted area of the base. Jackson and his executive officer decided to escort the Cuban, Ruben Lopez, off the base. But the gate they were using was locked: Jackson sent his XO to get something to break the lock with. And while the XO was gone, Jackson claimed that Lopez “lunged at him” so he shot and killed Lopez with his sidearm.
Jackson and some other Marines buried Lopez in a shallow grave on base. Cutting to the chase, the truth eventually came out, and Jackson was allegedly “thrown out” of the Marines.
Capt. Jackson, who said he long felt “ashamed” of his Guantanamo killing, did not speak publicly about the incident until an Idaho Statesman reporter interviewed him in 2013.
He said his key concern was his “understanding” of a treaty between the United States and Cuba that could have resulted in his detention in a notorious Cuban prison.
“I hoped no one would find out,” he told the newspaper. “The world found out.”
Welles. Welles Welles Welles. Welles.
Wednesday, March 15th, 2017I do want to see this, even though I don’t have Netflix (and won’t pay for it just for this). I have a pretty strong suspicion that this is…not going to be good. But hey, Welles! (What I’m really hoping for is a Criterion package like they did for “F Is For Fake”.)
(And can someone explain to me why I keep confusing “The Other Side of the Wind” with The Wind Done Gone?)
Other unrelated stuff:
By way of Lawrence, follow-up on Captain Bill Dowling and his funeral. (Previously.)
From the WP: a summary of the players in the “Fat Leonard” scandal, including the eight recent indictments.
Edited to add: One other minor follow-up that I forgot to add: the NYT obit for Mother Divine. I don’t think it adds much over the WP obit, but I did want to note it for the historical record.
Obit watch part 2.
Thursday, March 9th, 2017Captain William Dowling of the Houston Fire Department passed away on Tuesday.
Captain Dowling was fighting a fire at a restaurant/motel in Houston when the roof collapsed. Four other firefighters were killed: Captain Dowling survived the collapse, but was left badly injured.
According to the department, Captain Dowling’s death is considered to have been in the line of duty, and he will be honored appropriately.
Obit watch: January 17, 2017.
Tuesday, January 17th, 2017Eugene Cernan, Gemini 9, Apollo 10, and Apollo 17 astronaut. NYT. NASA.
Hans Berliner, master chess player and prominent developer of early game playing computers (such as HiTech and BKG 9.8.)
Obit watch: December 9, 2016.
Friday, December 9th, 2016John Glenn roundup: NYT. Lawrence. WP. Sweet story about Mrs. Glenn: they were married for 73 years. LAT. NASA Glenn Research Center.
(My dad worked at the Glenn Research Center a long time ago; so long ago, it wasn’t called the Glenn Research Center back then.)
Edited to add: Borepatch on Glenn. NYT obit for Greg Lake.
Historical note, suitable for use in schools.
Monday, October 17th, 2016Fifty years ago today, on October 17, 1966, members of the New York Fire Department responded to a fire at East 22nd Street in Manhattan.
The firefighters didn’t know where the fire was burning (though the smoke was obvious) so some of them went into the building at 23rd Street. The idea was to bring hoses in and hit the fire from behind.
What was burning in the 22nd Street building, a subsequent investigation showed, was paint and lacquer that had been stored in the basement by an art dealer. What the firefighters who went into Wonder Drug & Cosmetics, at 6 East 23rd Street, across from Madison Square Park, had no way of knowing was that the store and the 22nd Street building shared a basement, and that an interior basement wall had recently been moved to give the 22nd Street building more underground storage space.
That meant that the drugstore’s thick floor was poorly supported, and as the fire burned below it collapsed, sending 10 firefighters plunging into the basement. Two others were caught by the flames that quickly roared up to the first floor through the huge hole left by the collapse.
12 firefighters were killed that day. At the time, it was the worst loss of life in the history of the NYFD.
I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, but there’s a short documentary (produced by the department) about the fire on the NYFD Foundation website.
From Wikipedia, the names of the dead:
Deputy Chief Thomas A. Reilly, FDNY 3rd Division
Battalion Chief Walter J. Higgins, FDNY 7th Battalion
Lt. John J. Finley, FDNY Ladder Co. 7
Lt. Joseph Priore, FDNY Engine Co. 18
Firefighter John G. Berry, FDNY Ladder Co. 7
Firefighter James V. Galanaugh, FDNY Engine Co. 18
Firefighter Rudolph F. Kaminsky, FDNY Ladder Co. 7
Firefighter Joseph Kelly, FDNY Engine Co. 18
Firefighter Carl Lee, FDNY Ladder Co. 7
Firefighter William F. McCarron, FDNY 3rd Division
Firefighter Daniel L. Rey, FDNY Engine Co. 18
Firefighter Bernard A. Tepper, FDNY Engine Co. 18
(I can’t find an official NYFD memorial page. There’s a unofficial historical site, NYFD.com, that does have a memorial page.)
(Does anyone remember being in elementary school and having to watch fire safety films? You know, how to behave when the fire alarm goes off and your school is burning to the ground? Was that only a thing in the mid-1970s? Or even just in certain parts of the country? It seems to me in the distant mists of memory that we were always watching one fire safety film or another when I was in elementary school.)
Obit watch: September 1, 2016.
Thursday, September 1st, 2016There’s a nice obituary in today’s Statesman for Tom Anderson, who passed away a few weeks ago.
Mr. Anderson was the carillon player at the University of Texas since…well, since Jesus was a private:
I never met Mr. Anderson, but I remember when we toured the Tower some years back, he came up in conversation: the tour guide told us that he always said he was going to keep playing until he could no longer physically make the climb.
He was 93 when he died.
Marvin Kaplan has also passed away. He is perhaps best remembered as Henry Beesmeyer on “Alice”. though he was also in “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” and “The Great Race”.
Finally, I intended to note this one earlier in the week, but the past few days have been hard. Jeremiah J. O’Keefe passed away on Tuesday. He was 93.
Mr. O’Keefe was a Corsair pilot with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323, the “Death Rattlers”. During the course of his first combat mission, on April 22, 1945, he shot down six enemy planes.
Obit watch: June 23, 2016.
Thursday, June 23rd, 2016David Thatcher has passed away at the age of 94.
Mr. Thatcher was the tail gunner in the “Ruptured Duck”, one of the 16 B-25s in the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan.
After the raid, the Duck crash-landed and several of the crew were injured. Mr. Thatcher tended their injuries.
All of the crew evaded capture and eventually made it home, though the pilot (Ted Lawson, who also wrote Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a book I remember reading when I was very young) lost a leg.
As cited in James M. Scott’s book “Target Tokyo” (2015), Colonel Doolittle told Corporal Thatcher’s parents that “all the plane’s crew were saved from either capture or death as a result of his initiative and courage in assuming responsibility and in tending the wounded himself day and night.”
Corporal Thatcher was awarded the Silver Star for valor.
Mr. Thatcher’s death leaves one surviving crew member from the raid, Richard Cole, who was Doolittle’s co-pilot.
Obit watch: December 24, 2015.
Thursday, December 24th, 2015Marine Gunnery Sgt. Eden Pearl.
Sgt. Pearl was critically injured by an IED in 2009, and died on Sunday as a result of his injuries.
Fernande Grudet, aka “Madame Claude”. I note this here for two reasons:
1) Hookersnblow.org.
2) In one of my favorite Ross Thomas books, The Seersucker Whipsaw
Obit watch and other random notes: November 11, 2015.
Wednesday, November 11th, 2015Helmut Schmidt, former chancellor of West Germany.
Allen Toussaint, noted New Orleans musician.
Vito J. Lopez, former New York assemblyman who resigned due to a sexual harassment scandal.
Non-obit, but interesting:
The individual is not named, but is described as a “former lance corporal”.
“Former fugitive fish smuggler pleads guilty, prosecutors say”. Somebody at the LAT was having a bit of fun…
Second day coverage of the Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow trial. Doesn’t seem like much here: one of “Shrimp Boy”‘s confederates claims he ordered a hit, but he never explicitly said anything beyond “take care of this”.
Where do we get such men?