…some quick random book geekery. “Quick” because I bought two copies of the same book, for reasons.
And speaking of Rugers…
March 22nd, 2025Obit watch: March 22, 2025.
March 22nd, 2025Foreman’s career spanned generations: He fought Chuck Wepner in the 1960s, Dwight Muhammad Qawi in the ’80s and Evander Holyfield in the ’90s.
With his fellow heavyweights Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, Foreman embodied a golden era in the 1970s, when boxing was still a cultural force in America. The three great champions thrilled fans with one classic bout after another. Foreman was the last living member of the trio.
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Success came quickly in the amateur ranks; only a year and a half later he was Olympic heavyweight champion, defeating Ionas Chepulis of the Soviet Union by a second-round knockout in Mexico City in 1968.
After the fight, Foreman, who was Black, waved a small American flag in the ring, days after the track athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised clenched fists during the national anthem to protest the country’s treatment of Black people.
“I was just glad to be an American,” Foreman said afterward. “Some people have tried to make something of it, calling me an Uncle Tom, but I’m not. I just believe people should live together in peace.”
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Obit watch: March 21, 2025.
March 21st, 2025Other credits include “Rubber“, “Viva Laughlin“, “CSI: Original Recipe”, “CSI: Miami”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time”.
On a more serious note, the Saturday Movie Group watched “The Siege of Firebase Gloria” recently. I, personally, liked it. I don’t think it is a great war film, but I do think it is a pretty good one. (I would recommend “Go Tell the Spartans” if you haven’t seen it, but “Gloria” is solid.)
Drink!
March 21st, 2025Shot:
A scientist at an isolated Antarctica base allegedly assaulted and sexually harassed colleagues while the team is confined together at the edge of the Earth for a year, according to a shocking new report.
The researcher’s “deeply disturbing” behavior was shared in an email by a fellow team member who was cooped up with him in the SANAE IV base, home to a South African research team.
Inhospitable weather has made it too difficult to evacuate anyone from SANAE IV, meaning everyone is stuck together for the foreseeable future, according to authorities.
Chaser:
Packin’ (random gun crankery)
March 20th, 2025It would not be entirely unfair to say that I am a sucker for concepts. At least when it comes to guns. But a concept has to make sense to me.
I’ve bought into Cooper’s Scout Rifle concept in a big way.
One concept that ended up not making sense to me, was the “car gun” or “truck gun”. I actually did buy into this, and bought a relatively cheap (at the time) Marlin lever action in .30-30 (the poor man’s assault rifle) to use as a “car gun” when Texas instituted legal protection for guns in cars.
But the more I thought about it, the odds of being able to fight my way out to my car, grab my rifle, and go back in to confront the big bad seemed slim. If I’m already at my car, why am I not getting out of there? And it also seemed like a recipe for a rusty or stolen gun. I’m not the only person who feels that way. (I still have that Marlin, now outfitted with XS ghost ring sights.)
Another concept that makes sense to me is the late (and I feel a pang when I say that) John Taffin’s “Perfect Packin’ Pistol”.
That’s a pretty expansive definition, but I understand where he’s coming from. My old Smith and Wesson Kit Gun is, to me, a perfect packin’ pistol for things like casual walks in the woods, plinking at cans, and maybe shooting a vicious squirrel should the occasion arise. It fits easily in a pocket. And if I had to…the mere presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, often serves as a deterrent. Or something like that, as the “Armed Citizen” column puts it.
As the linked article notes, Lipsey’s and Ruger are introducing a special John Taffin Tribute Perfect Packin’ Pistol. (I hope you can read the article: I am a Handloader subscriber, but it comes up okay for me even though I’m not signed in. I’m using a link I got in a Wolfe Publishing email.)
When I saw that, I kind of wanted one. I still kind of do. But I walked into my gun shop one Saturday, and…
Firings watch.
March 20th, 2025Keith Urgo out as men’s basketball coach of Fordham.
50-49 over three seasons. He was also suspended by the university for four games due to “recruiting violations”.
Very quick legal update.
March 20th, 2025Carl Erik Rinsch has been charged federally with fraud.
Previously on WCD. You may also remember him as “the guy who invested a bunch of the money NetFlix gave him in Dogecoin”.
Obit watch: March 20, 2025.
March 20th, 2025George Bell, actor, Harlem Globetrotter, and the tallest man in America.
He was 7’8″, and passed away at 67. He also served honorably with the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office for close to 14 years.
Nadia Cassini, Italian actress. Lawrence emailed this obit and added the observation that she was “the woman in ‘Starcrash’ who wasn’t Caroline Munroe”. IMDB.
Mark Dobies, actor. Other credits include “Nash Bridges”, “CSI: Miami”, and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”.
Gonzaga!
March 20th, 2025Not that I care about basketball, but I love saying “Gonzaga!”
So Lawrence and I have, once again (after a few years layoff) bet on the NCAA tournament. I’m taking Gonzaga, Lawrence is taking the field.
I have a pretty good feeling about Gonzaga. I think this just might be their year…
Firings watch.
March 19th, 2025This could also be an “Art, damn it! Art!” watch, but I decided to go this way.
Jackson Arn was the art critic for the New Yorker.
Note the past tense. Mr. Arn has been canned by the magazine. And not because the New Yorker has money troubles.
The New Yorker had a big 100th birthday celebration in February at some trendy place in NoHo.
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I almost wish I had been there, just so I could walk up to Calvin Trillin and ask him, “Do you want to blow this Popsicle stand and go get some dumplings in Chinatown?”
Here’s the NYT article, but it doesn’t add much detail.
Obit watch: March 18, 2025.
March 18th, 2025Group Captain John A. Hemingway (RAF- ret.) died on Monday. He was 105. NYT. BBC.
Gp Capt Hemmingway was the last known survivor of the Battle of Britain. He flew Hurricanes.
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Flying afterward in defense of Britain, Mr. Hemingway was intercepting German bombers over the English Channel on Aug. 18 when his Hurricane was shot up.
“Somebody clobbered me,” he told The Daily Mirror in 2018. “They hit me in the engine. It covered the inside of the cockpit with oil, and things got very smelly and hot. I had no hope of getting to England, so I bailed out and landed in the sea.
“There were jellyfish everywhere,” he continued. “I started swimming. Two hours later, a rowboat from a lightship bumped into me.”
He climbed aboard, grabbed an oar and helped the crew return with him to England.
Later in August, Mr. Hemingway survived a third close call, this time while pursuing a German bomber over southeastern England. As he told The Daily Mirror: “I got a Dornier in my sight and started to pull around and have a second go. That was it — ‘bang, bang’. There was smoke everywhere.” He bailed out. “I landed in the Pitsea marshes, where I faced the local Home Guard,” he said.
He added wryly, “I could speak reasonable English, so they didn’t shoot me.”
Mr. Hemingway was an Allied flight controller during the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944. The next year, in April, he was a squadron commander in Italy when his Spitfire fighter was downed by the Germans. He bailed out again and was rescued by farm workers, who disguised him in peasant clothing and smuggled him to the British lines.
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(Hattip: Borepatch, who actually beat me to an obit for once.)
Obit watch: March 17, 2025.
March 17th, 2025Guns magazine and American Handgunner are reporting the passing of John Taffin last week. Podcast.
I was fortunate enough to meet him in 2012, shake his hand, and say “thank you”. And I’ve written about some of his books, too.
I’m hoping at some point this week (or by next Sunday) I can get a special gun crankery post up in memory of the late Mr. Taffin. He struck me as a swell guy, and he knew his Smith and Wessons.
Gene Winfield, custom car builder. He did a considerable amount of work in Hollywood.
(Also “Bewitched”.)
He also designed cars for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, “Get Smart”, “Sleeper”, and “Blade Runner”. And he designed the famous shuttle craft from a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Obit watch: March 15, 2025.
March 15th, 2025I lost pretty much the entire day yesterday to various things. I didn’t even get any pie.
One of the things that went by the wayside was obits, so here’s a quick and lazy roundup from the past few days. I have to rush off in a little bit to a wedding shower, and I’m not sure when I’m going to be back.
John Feinstein, sports writer and author. The only one of his books I’ve read is The Punch, which I wrote about a while back and thought was pretty good.
Chris Moore, artist. He illustrated quite a few SF books, and also did album covers for Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart.
Carl Lundstrom, who was one of the people behind the Pirate Bay website, died in a plane crash on Monday.
Ron Nessen, Gerald Ford’s press secretary, and one of the 892 Saturday Night Live hosts who have not committed murder. (I think that count is right, but it may be a little out of date.)
Larry Buendorf, retired Secret Service agent. He’s the guy who wrestled the gun away from Squeaky Fromme.
“Squeaky was back in the crowd, maybe one person back, and she had an ankle holster on with a .45,” he said, referring to a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. “That’s a big gun to have on your ankle. So, when it came up, it came up low, and I happened to be looking in that direction, I see it coming, and I step in front of him, not sure what it was other than that it was coming up pretty fast, and yelled out ‘Gun!’ When I yelled out ‘Gun!’ I popped that .45 out of her hand.”
He added: “I got a hold of her fingers, and she’s screaming — the crowd is screaming — and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t have a vest on, I don’t know where the next shot is coming from,’ and that I don’t think she’s alone. All of this is going on while I’m trying to control her.”
“She turns around, and I pulled her arm back and dropped her to the ground, and agents and police come from the back of the crowd” as Ms. Fromme shrieked in disbelief, he said.
“She’s screaming, ‘It didn’t go off!’” he continued. “I had it in my hand. I knew what she was doing, she was pulling back on the slide, and I hit the slide before she could chamber a round. If she’d had a round chambered, I couldn’t have been there in time. It would’ve gone through me and the president.”
If the Times account is to be trusted, she had four rounds in the magazine and the hammer cocked, but she hadn’t chambered a round.
Kevin Drum, leftist political blogger.
Alan K. Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming.
Raul M. Grijalva, current Democratic House rep from Arizona.
Happy Pi Day!
March 14th, 2025I’m sorry that today’s post is short and perfunctory. A confluence of events (Lent, eye doctor appointment, getting both eyes dialated) has left me unable to celebrate the day in the way I would like.
For those of you who are celebrating, please celebrate responsibly. Don’t contact your local math department saying you’ve squared the circle.
Obit watch: March 12, 2025.
March 12th, 2025Junior Bridgeman, former NBA player and businessman.
He played at a time when NBA salaries were not what they are now:
ESPN ran a profile of Mr. Bridgeman back in September of last year, which I commend to your attention.
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For several years, beginning in in the late 1990s, Bridgeman stood before nearly 60 rookies in a hotel conference room as part of the league’s Rookie Transition Program, which the league founded in 1986 as part of its first efforts to help teach basics about financial literacy: budgeting, saving, taxes.
Bridgeman shared what he’d heard from former Bucks head coach Don Nelson: Their job was to play as hard as they can and make as much money as they can. He offered guardrails: Know the business well and put someone in charge who you trust, who is qualified. “More guys have lost money investing in deals with their second cousin on their mother’s side running it than anything else,” Bridgeman said. Doing something like that, he said, was a “blueprint for failure.”
He said that during a player’s career, doors would open, phone calls would be returned. So if a player were on the road in Detroit and wanted to become involved in the automobile industry, they would have the chance to reach out to the head of one of the automotive giants. Opportunities were everywhere. All they had to do was ask.
I’ve never been a big basketball fan, but Mr. Bridgeman sounds like a heck of a guy.
Obit watch: March 11, 2025.
March 11th, 2025Jessie Mahaffey (Boatswain’s Mate Second Class, United States Navy – ret.) passed away on March 1st. He was 102.
Mr. Mahaffey served on the U.S.S. Oklahoma.
In December, Mr. Mahaffey told KTBS-TV of Shreveport, La., that Dec. 7, 1941, had started as a quiet Sunday.
He and five other sailors were chatting as they scrubbed the deck of the Oklahoma when they “heard a siren, saw planes and smoke,” he said, adding, “It must have only gone on for 45 minutes, but it was crazy.”
The Oklahoma was struck by as many as nine torpedoes. Within minutes, the battleship capsized, trapping hundreds of men below deck. “It didn’t take that long to come back to the other side,” he said. “It turned upside down and we had to slide over the bottom of the ship into the water.”
He managed to swim to the U.S.S. Maryland, another battleship that was moored at Pearl Harbor.
In total, 429 crew members from the Oklahoma were killed in the attack, which left more than 2,400 U.S. military personnel and civilians dead and nearly 1,800 wounded.
He went on to serve on the U.S.S. Northampton, which was sunk by the Japanese on November 30, 1942.
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When he turned 100, in 2022, Mr. Mahaffey told KPLC-TV of Lake Charles, La., about the day he married Joyce Inez Mahaffey. “My best day would be marrying that little gal that just turned 18 years old,” he said. “Me, her and her brother went to that church.”
Ms. Mahaffey died in 2003. His survivors include his sons George and Clarence; several grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandson.
After he was discharged from the Navy, Mr. Mahaffey returned to Louisiana, where he worked for Southwestern Bell, the regional phone company, for at least 30 years, his grandson said. Mr. Mahaffey, who was 5-foot-3, was a pole climber who refused to accept jobs that would require him to work indoors, John Mahaffey said.“They kept trying to give him promotions, to come inside, to take a desk job or to run the crews or to be a supervisor, and he would never take it,” he said.
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According to the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, there are 14 remaining Pearl Harbor survivors.
Obit watch: March 10, 2025.
March 10th, 2025It has been a rough few days for baseball.
Frank Saucier, outfielder for the St. Louis Browns. He had a limited career due to injuries and the Korean War. Baseball Reference.
He is perhaps most famous as a historical footnote.
Yes, he was the player who got benched in favor of Eddie Gaedel.
Art Schallock, pitcher for the Yankees and Orioles. He was, at the time of his death, the oldest living major league player. Baseball Reference.
Athol Fugard, South African playwright. He’s another one of those folks I’ve heard a lot about, but have no personal experience with his work.
It also hasn’t been a good time for music. D’Wayne Wiggins, of Tony! Toni! Tone!.
Joey Molland, the last surviving member of Badfinger. I feel like this is one of those areas where pigpen51 is better equipped to comment than I am.
Geoff Nicholson, author. I’ve never read any of his books, but the NYT obit makes him sound interesting.
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All gun books, all the time!
March 7th, 2025This time on “What’s Been Added to my Library of Gun Books” recently, a special all gun books edition! No diversions into subjects such as absinthe or old bibles. Just some new and new old gun books. But I am going to include a gun crankery photo.
Since this is going to be gun book heavy, I’m following my usual policy of inserting a jump so the non-book, non-gun, and non-book non-gun people can skip easily to the next post…
Obit watch: March 5, 2025.
March 5th, 2025Congressman Sylvester Turner (Dem. – Houston).
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Edited to add: The NYT did not have a story up when I posted, but they do now. I don’t see any coverage in the WP.
Edited to add 2: WP coverage, but it really doesn’t add anything.
James Harrison, big damn hero.
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Mr. Harrison’s plasma contained the rare antibody anti-D. Scientists used it to make a medication for pregnant mothers whose immune systems could attack their fetuses’ red blood cells, according to Australian Red Cross Lifeblood.
Anti-D helps protect against problems that can occur when babies and mothers have different blood types, most often if the fetus is “positive” and the mother is “negative,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. (The positive and negative signs are called the Rhesus factor, or Rh factor.)
In such cases, a mother’s immune system might react to the fetus as if it were a foreign threat. That can lead babies to develop a dangerous and potentially fatal condition, hemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn, which can cause anemia and jaundice.
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In Australia, scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne are working to create a synthetic version of the drug using what some have called “James in a Jar,” an antibody that can be made in a lab.
But for now, human donors are essential: The anti-D shots are made with donated plasma, and Mr. Harrison was one of about 200 donors among the 27 million people in Australia, Lifeblood said.
“It wasn’t one big heroic act,” Jemma Falkenmire, a spokeswoman for Lifeblood, said in an interview as she reflected on Mr. Harrison’s 64 years of donations, from 1954 to 2018. “It was just a lifetime of being there and doing these small acts of good bit by bit.”
Selwyn Raab, journalist and author. He did a lot of reporting on the Mafia, and on people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes.
One was George Whitmore Jr., who had been imprisoned for the 1963 murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert, roommates in an Upper East Side apartment — “career girls,” as the tabloids called them.
Mr. Raab, working first for the merged newspaper The New York World-Telegram and The Sun and then for NBC News and the New York public television station WNET-TV, uncovered evidence showing that Mr. Whitmore was elsewhere on the day of those murders and had no part in an unrelated attempted rape with which he was also charged.
Mr. Whitmore said that the police had beaten him, and that he had no lawyer during the interrogation. In 1996, his case was cited by the United States Supreme Court in Miranda v. Arizona, the landmark ruling that upheld a suspect’s right to counsel.
Mr. Raab wrote a book about the case, “Justice in the Back Room,” which became the basis for “Kojak,” the CBS series about a police detective, played by Telly Savalas, which ran for five years in the 1970s. “I’m not a detective,” Mr. Raab said. “I just look for the most reasonable approach to a story.”
He joined The Times in 1974 and worked there for 26 years. Reporting for the paper, he uncovered evidence that helped free Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, the middleweight boxer who was imprisoned for 19 years in the 1966 shooting deaths of three people in a bar in Paterson, N.J.
The Carter case was another instance of police coercion and prosecutorial overreach, one that also led to the conviction of another man, John Artis. Mr. Carter, who died in 2014, became something of a folk hero, his cause championed in a 1976 Bob Dylan song, “Hurricane,” and in a 1999 film, “The Hurricane,” in which Mr. Carter was played by Denzel Washington.
Obit watch: March 3, 2025.
March 3rd, 2025David Johansen, of the New York Dolls. Later on in life, he also performed under the stage name “Buster Poindexter”. THR.
Lee Goldberg has posted nice obits for Joseph Wambaugh and Gene Hackman.
Olive Sturgess, actress. “The Raven” is actually a pretty swell movie, less horror and more humor than you’d expect. Other credits include “The Rookies”, “Ironside”, and “Petticoat Junction”. (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Obit watch: February 28, 2025.
February 28th, 2025Another day, another damn.
Joseph Wambaugh. THR. I don’t see anything in the LATimes yet.
The story I’ve heard is that, as a working cop, he went to interview a robbery victim. The guy had blood streaming down his head, and Det. Wambaugh asked him if he could describe the suspect. The victim responded by asking him what George C. Scott was like. He quit shortly after, because he realized his fame was getting in the way of doing his job.
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I tell people I read The Blue Knight at a very inappropriate age. Because I try to be family friendly here, I won’t describe the scene I most vividly remember. I got pretty far behind in Wambaugh’s fiction, but I think I’ve read all his non-fiction books. Obviously, The Onion Field had a huge impact on me, but The Blooding and Fire Lover are pretty good, too.
I kind of wish I’d met him.
(Is it just me, or does he look a little like Nicholas Cage in those photos from the 1970s?)
Boris Spassky, of Fischer-Spassky fame.
When they played the first match, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Mr. Fischer, with his brash personality, was something of a folk hero in the West. He was widely portrayed as a lone gunslinger boldly taking on the might of the Soviet chess machine, with Mr. Spassky representing the repressive Soviet empire.
The reality could not have been further from the truth. Mr. Fischer was a spoiled 29-year-old man-child, often irascible and difficult. Mr. Spassky, at 35, was urbane, laid back and good-natured, acceding to Mr. Fischer’s many demands leading up to and during the match.
The match almost did not happen. It was supposed to start on July 2, but Mr. Fischer was still in New York, demanding more money for both players. A British promoter, James Slater, added $125,000 to the prize fund, which doubled it to $250,000 (about $1.9 million today), and Mr. Fischer arrived on July 4.
The match was a best-of-24 series, with each win counting as one point, each draw as a half point and each loss as zero. The first player to 12.5 points would be the winner.
In Game 1, on July 11, Mr. Fischer blundered and lost. Afterward, he refused to play Game 2 unless the television cameras recording the match were turned off. When they were not, Mr. Fischer forfeited the game.
The match seemed in doubt, but a compromise was worked out to move the match to a tiny, closed playing area behind the main hall.
Mr. Fischer won Game 3, his first victory ever against Mr. Spassky, and proceeded to steamroll him, winning the match 12.5 to 8.5.
Mr. Spassky’s sportsmanship was on full display in Game 6 of the match, which by then had been moved back into the main hall. When Mr. Fischer won the game, taking the lead for the first time in the match, Mr. Spassky joined with the spectators in standing and applauding his victory.
Pilar Del Rey, actress. Other credits include “Police Story” (which, as you know, Bob, was a Joseph Wambaugh creation), the “Travis McGee” TV movie, “The Forbidden Dance”, the 1960s “Dragnet”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Bird of Prey”, parts 1 and 2, season 8, episodes 20 and 21. She played “Marquesa”.)
Michael Preece, prominent TV director. Other credits include “Stingray”, “B.J. and the Bear”, “Renegade”, “Jake and the Fatman”…
…and, as a script supervisor before being a director, “Mitchell”, “The Getaway”, and “Mannix”. (“Another Final Exit”, season 1, episode 20. “Eight to Five, It’s a Miracle”, season 1, episode 21.)
Of making many books there is no end…
February 27th, 2025It has been a difficult week. I thought it might cheer me up some to catalog more gun books for the library. As the saying goes, “I’ve suffered for my art. Now it’s your turn.”
This time, though, I have one that’s only sort of tangentially a gun book, and one that’s not a gun book at all. I’ll get into the reason for that one later.
Obit watch: February 27, 2025.
February 27th, 2025Damn.
Gene Hackman. THR 1. THR 2. Tributes. NYT 1. NYT 2. IMDB.
I was a big fan of his when I was younger, even though I wasn’t allowed to watch any of his movies (except when they showed up on television). I still am. He was one of the greats. And I have no idea what his politics were.
Some of the less often cited movies in his body of work that I’d recommend: “The Conversation”, “Prime Cut”, and “The Royal Tenenbaums” (though I think that’s a bit twee). And of course, “Young Frankenstein”.
He also did an episode of “The F.B.I.”, and where is my boxed blu-ray set of that?
Michelle Trachtenberg. THR. Tributes. IMDB.
Never was a “Buffy” fan, but 39 is way too young for anyone to die.
You’ve gone down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#144 in a series)
February 26th, 2025Mike the Musicologist asked me if this qualified. Technically, I’m not sure it does, as I usually reserve flaming hyenas for criminal indictments.
But this is noteworthy, and since I suspect criminal indictments are coming…
There was a Democratic primary in Cook County, Illinois, yesterday. (There may have been primaries elsewhere, but I’m not that up on Illinois politics.)
Cook County includes Dolton, home of Mayor Tiffany Henyard.
How did Tiff do?
I think we can call that a landslide. As a matter of fact, I think we could even call that an avalanche.
For those who are unfamiliar with Ms. Henyard…I wish there was one central source for her that wasn’t Wikipedia. She’s served one term as mayor of Dolton, and that term has been chaotic. Fights at council meetings, the town running out of money, allegations of misuse of public funds, and the list goes on and on.
I note that NBC5 Chicago has a “Dolton” tag. And an hour-long documentary about Dolton and Mayor Henyard. This is one of those stories where, just when you think it can’t get any crazier, it does.
Obit watch: February 25, 2025.
February 25th, 2025You may not recognize the name, but I think you’ll recognize him from the photos.
He was the Secret Service agent who jumped on the back of the limo when JFK was shot, and kept Mrs. Kennedy from falling out.
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When he retired from the Secret Service in 1975, he was the assistant director responsible for all protective forces.
In December 2013, the Secret Service honored him at its James J. Rowley Training Center in Maryland, erecting a bronze plaque next to a street it named Clint Hill Way.
But the accolades and his ascendancy in the agency could not overcome Mr. Hill’s feelings of guilt. He blamed himself for not reacting a split second faster to the sound of gunfire, becoming convinced that he had missed a chance to save President Kennedy’s life. His emotional turmoil resulted in his retirement in 1975 at age 43, at the urging of doctors.