Playing catch-up after returning from my trip:
Ens. Donald McPherson (US Navy – ret.) He was 103. National WWII Museum.
I love the NYT opening:
On April 6, 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa in the final months of World War II, a 22-year-old Navy ensign, Donald McPherson, was piloting a Hellcat fighter with “Death N’ Destruction” painted on the side.
As his squadron, the VF-83, joined an aerial assault on the island of Kikaijima, between Okinawa and mainland Japan, Mr. McPherson spotted Japanese dive-bombers rushing toward him from below. He lowered the nose of his Hellcat and fired, notching his first hit before positioning himself behind a second enemy plane.
“By using full throttle, my Hellcat responded well, and I squeezed the trigger, and it exploded,” he said, referring to the enemy plane, in an interview for Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Granite Falls, Minn. “Then I turned and did a lot of violent maneuvering to try to get out of there without getting shot down.”
Also, I love Hellcats. Ens. McPherson shot down three kamikazes attacking the USS Ingraham in a subsequent engagement, making him an ace.
Although he never flew a plane again, Mr. McPherson was reintroduced to the F6F Hellcat when Fagen Fighters museum — which restores, displays and flies World War II-era planes — refurbished a similar one in 2021, soliciting his approval to paint it navy blue, the color of his plane, and adding the “Death N’ Destruction” motto. He reacquainted himself with the aircraft in person that year when it was flown to a ceremony at an airport in Beatrice, Neb.
At a 2022 event at the Fagen Fighters museum, Mr. McPherson said, “You people just can’t believe what all this has meant to me. That beautiful airplane.”
With a smile, he asked Evan Fagen, the museum’s chief pilot, “Can I take it home with me?”
The National WWII Museum and other reports I’ve seen refer to him as the last surviving WWII ace. The NYT obit seems to hedge that a bit by referring to him as “one of the last surviving American combat pilots from World War II recognized by the American Fighter Aces Association as combat aces”.
He received three Distinguished Flying Crosses and four Air Medals, and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 2015.
Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR guy. I probably would have let this go past if it wasn’t for this:
…he transformed race day into a carnival. With his taste for Hollywood-level stunts, he might just as easily have been called the Cecil B. DeMille of motorsports. The clowns, trapeze artists, elephants and tigers he brought in to perform in the speedway’s infield in 1980 were only a start.
He once collaborated with the 82nd Airborne Division, garrisoned in Fort Bragg, N.C., to restage the U.S.-led 1983 invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada, complete with wood fortifications, troops and helicopters.
“The mortars were blanks,” the sportswriter Tommy Tomlinson recalled in a recent post on Substack, “but the dynamite that blew up two houses placed on the infield was very real.”
David Ketchum, actor. IMDB.
Theodore Friedman, lawyer. I think this is an interesting story. He was a personal injury specialist, and known as a zealous advocate for his clients.
Maybe a little too zealous, as he was disbarred in 1994.
Mr. Friedman’s disbarment exposed an underside to his turn-it-to-11 style of lawyering. Accused of 23 counts of professional misconduct — including intentional dishonesty, filing a false affidavit and soliciting false testimony from a witness — he lost his law license after a special referee affirmed 14 of the charges. He was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the First Department, a state court that oversees civil and criminal appeals in Manhattan and the Bronx.
His disbarment was seen by some in the legal community as unfair, by others as a comeuppance for sleaze, and by still others as a cautionary tale about the limits of overzealous advocacy.
He reapplied for his license several times, and was ultimately reinstated to the bar in 2010.
Ron Turcotte, jockey. He was most famous as the jockey who Secretariat to the Triple Crown.
Secretariat, a big coppery chestnut nicknamed Big Red who, like Riva Ridge, was owned by Penny Chenery of Meadow Stable and trained by Lucien Laurin, made up for that disappointment in spectacular fashion. He powered to victory in the Derby and the Preakness, setting track records that still stand. He then demolished the competition in the Belmont Stakes to become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948.
Secretariat’s Belmont remains one of the most celebrated performances in racing history. Under Turcotte’s supremely confident handling, he cruised by the competition on the backstretch, “moving like a tremendous machine” in the famous race call by Chic Anderson, then drew off to win by an astounding 31 lengths. He broke the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957 by just under three seconds — the equivalent of 13 lengths — and set a new world record for the mile-and-a-half distance on the dirt, one that still stands and has never been approached.