I'm very busy working on a variety of projects this summer, which I hope will bear fruit in the fall, so I'm going to have to cut back on the frequency of my posts here for the next few months.
I will post every Friday.
Thanks for your support!
___________________
Blog updated every Friday
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
'Women are better spies... they're more devious'
Daily Mail Online: 'Women are better spies... they're more devious': The widows who became best friends after discovering both were World War II secret agents
As they sit side by side reminiscing on the sofa, the two elderly widows don't look any different to the other residents of their Virginia retirement community.
But these two women have a secret - both were spies during World War II.
Betty McIntosh, 96, and Doris Bohrer, 88, were part of a small band of women who worked for America's first intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, and both went on to work for the CIA after the war.
Mrs McIntosh travelled through China and India, writing 'black propaganda' to lower Japanese morale, while Mrs Bohrer created maps from aerial photos, eventually helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
They only discovered their shared past when they moved in on the same street of Lake Ridge seniors' village a few years ago, after a mutual CIA friend recommended the retirement community to both of them. Now they're inseparable.
Mrs McIntosh says she calls her friend every morning, just to make sure she's alive. Mrs Bohrer, who still drives, returns the favour by running errands.
The two women never met while they were working for the OSS, but often wonder whether they might have brushed past each other in the canteen.
Mrs McIntosh told the Washington Post: 'But you didn’t really mix with people. You wouldn’t know what to talk about. I couldn’t talk to you about Morale Operations. And I wouldn’t understand your maps.'
Along with their female colleagues, they became known as 'Donovan's Girls', after William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer who led the OSS.
The atmosphere was entirely male-dominated. Mrs Bohrer said: 'We were neglected. We had no privacy. Down the hall, there was a bathroom with no running water.
She was asked to deliver what she thought was a lump of coal to a Chinese operative, but only later discovered it was 'Black Joe', an explosive used to blow up trains.
The agent would board a train with the coal in his knapsack, throw it into the engine and then jump off.
She said: 'I felt very badly. I felt that this one piece of coal that I was responsible for killing all these men.'
They came into the OSS on very different paths. Mrs McIntosh, who grew up in Honolulu and went to the same school that Barack Obama would later attend, was working as a newspaper and wire service reporter in Washington.
She could speak Japanese and was desperate for a job reporting overseas. Then, in 1943, she was approached by an OSS operative when she was covering a Department of Agriculture event.
He asked her if she was interested in a secret overseas assignment for the government.
She said yes - and suddenly found herself learning how to fire a pistol.
She soon started work as a propagandist in Morale Operations, travelling to India to dream up authentic-sounding news articles and radio reports to lower Japanese morale.
On one mission, she had to forge a Japanese government order which told its soldiers in Burma to surrender if caught rather than fighting to the death.
An OSS agent shot dead a Japanese courier, then put the order in his knapsack. She told the Washington Post: 'Then the Burmese agent went to the Japanese and said, "Get your man."
'And the Japanese went through his knapsack and found the new order. At the end of the war in northern Burma, there were lots of surrenders'
Meanwhile Mrs Bohrer was stationed in Northern Italy, after signing up to the civil service soon after the Pearl Harbor attack.
At first she worked as an OSS typist, but in 1943 she was promoted and began analysing aerial photographs of Europe, turning them into relief maps made out of balsa wood so agents could go behind enemy lines and rescue spies.
At just 20-years-old, she found herself helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
She told the Post: 'It was an interesting way to look at the world. It was almost as good as flying. You’re looking over people’s shoulders. Maybe I am nosy.'
Her work even led her to discover where Hitler's concentration camps were. She said: 'That’s how we knew where the concentration camps were located, but we were too late.
Double life: A photograph of Doris Bohrer from her time stationed in Northern Italy
'We kept wondering where all the trains were going. The Germans were also building rocket and electronics factories. We watched what went in, what went out.'
When the war ended, both women continued their espionage careers with the CIA.
Mrs Bohrer went to Frankfrurt, where she wrote up interviews with German scientists kidnapped by Soviets during the war, and then came back to Washington, where she became the agency's deputy chief of counter-intelligence.
Mrs McIntosh joined the agency in the 1950s, but swore an oath of secrecy never to reveal what she did there.
Both women married fellow agents. Mrs Bohrer's husband, Charles, was the CIA's director of medical services.
Mrs McIntosh has had three husbands. She divorced her first, OSS agent Alexander McDonald, after they were posted apart for two long, and her second husband, Richard Heppner, died at his office in the Pentagon.
She married her third husband, Air Force pilot Fred McIntosh, soon after his death, and the couple were married for 45 years until his death in 2006.
The following year, a CIA friend, Murray Minster, recommended she move to the retirement village. A couple of years later, he made the same recommendation to another friend - Mrs Bohrer.
He said: 'Once they moved in here, I got them together, and then came all the questions. It’s just one of life’s 45 billion coincidences, I guess.'
As they sit side by side reminiscing on the sofa, the two elderly widows don't look any different to the other residents of their Virginia retirement community.
But these two women have a secret - both were spies during World War II.
Betty McIntosh, 96, and Doris Bohrer, 88, were part of a small band of women who worked for America's first intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, and both went on to work for the CIA after the war.
Mrs McIntosh travelled through China and India, writing 'black propaganda' to lower Japanese morale, while Mrs Bohrer created maps from aerial photos, eventually helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
They only discovered their shared past when they moved in on the same street of Lake Ridge seniors' village a few years ago, after a mutual CIA friend recommended the retirement community to both of them. Now they're inseparable.
Mrs McIntosh says she calls her friend every morning, just to make sure she's alive. Mrs Bohrer, who still drives, returns the favour by running errands.
The two women never met while they were working for the OSS, but often wonder whether they might have brushed past each other in the canteen.
Mrs McIntosh told the Washington Post: 'But you didn’t really mix with people. You wouldn’t know what to talk about. I couldn’t talk to you about Morale Operations. And I wouldn’t understand your maps.'
Along with their female colleagues, they became known as 'Donovan's Girls', after William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer who led the OSS.
The atmosphere was entirely male-dominated. Mrs Bohrer said: 'We were neglected. We had no privacy. Down the hall, there was a bathroom with no running water.
She was asked to deliver what she thought was a lump of coal to a Chinese operative, but only later discovered it was 'Black Joe', an explosive used to blow up trains.
The agent would board a train with the coal in his knapsack, throw it into the engine and then jump off.
She said: 'I felt very badly. I felt that this one piece of coal that I was responsible for killing all these men.'
They came into the OSS on very different paths. Mrs McIntosh, who grew up in Honolulu and went to the same school that Barack Obama would later attend, was working as a newspaper and wire service reporter in Washington.
She could speak Japanese and was desperate for a job reporting overseas. Then, in 1943, she was approached by an OSS operative when she was covering a Department of Agriculture event.
He asked her if she was interested in a secret overseas assignment for the government.
She said yes - and suddenly found herself learning how to fire a pistol.
She soon started work as a propagandist in Morale Operations, travelling to India to dream up authentic-sounding news articles and radio reports to lower Japanese morale.
On one mission, she had to forge a Japanese government order which told its soldiers in Burma to surrender if caught rather than fighting to the death.
An OSS agent shot dead a Japanese courier, then put the order in his knapsack. She told the Washington Post: 'Then the Burmese agent went to the Japanese and said, "Get your man."
'And the Japanese went through his knapsack and found the new order. At the end of the war in northern Burma, there were lots of surrenders'
Meanwhile Mrs Bohrer was stationed in Northern Italy, after signing up to the civil service soon after the Pearl Harbor attack.
At first she worked as an OSS typist, but in 1943 she was promoted and began analysing aerial photographs of Europe, turning them into relief maps made out of balsa wood so agents could go behind enemy lines and rescue spies.
At just 20-years-old, she found herself helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
She told the Post: 'It was an interesting way to look at the world. It was almost as good as flying. You’re looking over people’s shoulders. Maybe I am nosy.'
Her work even led her to discover where Hitler's concentration camps were. She said: 'That’s how we knew where the concentration camps were located, but we were too late.
Double life: A photograph of Doris Bohrer from her time stationed in Northern Italy
'We kept wondering where all the trains were going. The Germans were also building rocket and electronics factories. We watched what went in, what went out.'
When the war ended, both women continued their espionage careers with the CIA.
Mrs Bohrer went to Frankfrurt, where she wrote up interviews with German scientists kidnapped by Soviets during the war, and then came back to Washington, where she became the agency's deputy chief of counter-intelligence.
Mrs McIntosh joined the agency in the 1950s, but swore an oath of secrecy never to reveal what she did there.
Both women married fellow agents. Mrs Bohrer's husband, Charles, was the CIA's director of medical services.
Mrs McIntosh has had three husbands. She divorced her first, OSS agent Alexander McDonald, after they were posted apart for two long, and her second husband, Richard Heppner, died at his office in the Pentagon.
She married her third husband, Air Force pilot Fred McIntosh, soon after his death, and the couple were married for 45 years until his death in 2006.
The following year, a CIA friend, Murray Minster, recommended she move to the retirement village. A couple of years later, he made the same recommendation to another friend - Mrs Bohrer.
He said: 'Once they moved in here, I got them together, and then came all the questions. It’s just one of life’s 45 billion coincidences, I guess.'
Friday, June 17, 2011
Reporting Under Fire: a Survey of a Century of War Correspondents
The New York Times, World: Reporting Under Fire: a Survey of a Century of War Correspondents
MANCHESTER, England — Within a few hundred yards of each other in Old Trafford lie the Manchester United Football Club and the Imperial War Museum North. One is a monument to the global sport that unites continents and peoples, the other a monument to the study of forces that divide and despoil them.
Pass through the dagger-sharp, mirrored entrance of the Imperial War Museum North, and one of the first things you see inside are museum shop replicas of World War I and World War II military posters, and coffee mugs emblazoned with the British monarch’s crown and the even more British Churchill-era slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Just a few yards farther and you are dragged straight into Bush- and Blair-era Iraq, with the crumpled, rusting hulk of a car that was destroyed by a marketplace bomb in Baghdad in 2007.
The museum covers wars since 1914, and the number and range of the exhibits from the past century puts into poignant context a quote by Martha Gellhorn that is framed in stark yellow and black in the museum’s latest exhibition, “War Correspondent: Reporting Under Fire since 1914.”
The featured journalists are mostly British, although the exhibition also gives prominence to Ms. Gellhorn, an American who reported from the Spanish Civil War, and Alan Moorehead, an Australian who reported during World War II from the very same North African cities that feature in today’s headlines, including his entry to a ruined Benghazi on Christmas Day, 1941.
Indeed, what is most striking as you walk around the exhibition is the permanency of the themes. Ms. Gellhorn from 1937 Spain and her successors during the 1990s war in the Balkans made very similar observations about their drive for morality and truth rather than striving endlessly, and perhaps fruitlessly, for the appearance of absolute objectivity.
“We knew, we just knew, that Spain was the place to stop Fascism. That was it. It was one of those moments in history when there was no doubt,” says another of Ms. Gellhorn’s quoted remarks on the walls. And the many television screens embedded in the walls feature interviews with correspondents of a more recent era: Vaughan Smith of the Frontline news agency giving his assessment that “objective journalism isn’t wrong, it just needs to be identified and clearly packaged and labeled,” and Maggie O’Kane of The Guardian on her refusal while reporting from Sarajevo to equate documented human rights abuses on one side with unverifiable claims by spin doctors on the other.
The methodology of the reporting changes almost beyond recognition — from handwritten scribbled notes with a censor’s blue marks to dispatches delivered live on satellite feeds.
The terminology also changes over time. “Accredited” correspondents wearing military uniforms and epaulettes during World War II become “embedded” correspondents wearing “Press” flak jackets in the Persian Gulf.
However, the issues and problems remain constant: the struggle with censorship, the difficulty of balancing access to military commanders with control by them, the problem of identifying with the soldiers around you, the guilt of wearing helmets and bulletproof jackets while reporting from among civilians who do not have them, the struggle not to become inured to suffering and cynical in the face of abuses of power, the debate over whether to show graphic images of suffering, and perennial struggle to assess, minimize and justify the dangers involved in reporting from the front lines.
“A long career of risk-taking has taught me that gambles tend to come off: it’s the failure to take the plunge which you usually regret later,” opines John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor. “You can’t take no risks,” is the blunter conclusion from one of his television colleagues.
‘Sorry, but It’s Over’
The displays are certainly up-to-the-minute. They include mentions of Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan, and one contribution from a British television correspondent recorded on the roof of his hotel in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, during which he, somewhat glumly, illustrates the level of control that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government exerts over the Tripoli “pack” by pointing to the government-sanctioned transportation waiting in the parking lot for the next government-sanctioned photo opportunity.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the exhibition is the transition from a tone of almost sepia-tinged nostalgia during the early stages, to one of elegiac lament for what many of the participating correspondents regard as the imminent death of traditional war reporting.
That seems premature. Even a cursory glance at the changes on display, from the trenches of the Somme to a map of television correspondents embedded on D-Day in the Normandy landings, to Vietnam to Libya, would suggest that reporting — in some form or other — has survived profound technological, military and social changes.
However the section on social media and phenomena such as “citizen journalism” is as fascinating as any of those that preceded it. Furthermore the exhibition is as multimedia in presentation as in content. There is a section on Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger.
Large screens carry the opinions, expressed on Twitter, of visitors to the exhibition. Facebook responses are actively sought, and questions are also pasted to the floor as you walk around the museum, inviting written responses on cards offered just before the exit.
MANCHESTER, England — Within a few hundred yards of each other in Old Trafford lie the Manchester United Football Club and the Imperial War Museum North. One is a monument to the global sport that unites continents and peoples, the other a monument to the study of forces that divide and despoil them.
Pass through the dagger-sharp, mirrored entrance of the Imperial War Museum North, and one of the first things you see inside are museum shop replicas of World War I and World War II military posters, and coffee mugs emblazoned with the British monarch’s crown and the even more British Churchill-era slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Just a few yards farther and you are dragged straight into Bush- and Blair-era Iraq, with the crumpled, rusting hulk of a car that was destroyed by a marketplace bomb in Baghdad in 2007.
The museum covers wars since 1914, and the number and range of the exhibits from the past century puts into poignant context a quote by Martha Gellhorn that is framed in stark yellow and black in the museum’s latest exhibition, “War Correspondent: Reporting Under Fire since 1914.”
The featured journalists are mostly British, although the exhibition also gives prominence to Ms. Gellhorn, an American who reported from the Spanish Civil War, and Alan Moorehead, an Australian who reported during World War II from the very same North African cities that feature in today’s headlines, including his entry to a ruined Benghazi on Christmas Day, 1941.
Indeed, what is most striking as you walk around the exhibition is the permanency of the themes. Ms. Gellhorn from 1937 Spain and her successors during the 1990s war in the Balkans made very similar observations about their drive for morality and truth rather than striving endlessly, and perhaps fruitlessly, for the appearance of absolute objectivity.
“We knew, we just knew, that Spain was the place to stop Fascism. That was it. It was one of those moments in history when there was no doubt,” says another of Ms. Gellhorn’s quoted remarks on the walls. And the many television screens embedded in the walls feature interviews with correspondents of a more recent era: Vaughan Smith of the Frontline news agency giving his assessment that “objective journalism isn’t wrong, it just needs to be identified and clearly packaged and labeled,” and Maggie O’Kane of The Guardian on her refusal while reporting from Sarajevo to equate documented human rights abuses on one side with unverifiable claims by spin doctors on the other.
The methodology of the reporting changes almost beyond recognition — from handwritten scribbled notes with a censor’s blue marks to dispatches delivered live on satellite feeds.
The terminology also changes over time. “Accredited” correspondents wearing military uniforms and epaulettes during World War II become “embedded” correspondents wearing “Press” flak jackets in the Persian Gulf.
However, the issues and problems remain constant: the struggle with censorship, the difficulty of balancing access to military commanders with control by them, the problem of identifying with the soldiers around you, the guilt of wearing helmets and bulletproof jackets while reporting from among civilians who do not have them, the struggle not to become inured to suffering and cynical in the face of abuses of power, the debate over whether to show graphic images of suffering, and perennial struggle to assess, minimize and justify the dangers involved in reporting from the front lines.
“A long career of risk-taking has taught me that gambles tend to come off: it’s the failure to take the plunge which you usually regret later,” opines John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor. “You can’t take no risks,” is the blunter conclusion from one of his television colleagues.
‘Sorry, but It’s Over’
The displays are certainly up-to-the-minute. They include mentions of Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan, and one contribution from a British television correspondent recorded on the roof of his hotel in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, during which he, somewhat glumly, illustrates the level of control that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government exerts over the Tripoli “pack” by pointing to the government-sanctioned transportation waiting in the parking lot for the next government-sanctioned photo opportunity.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the exhibition is the transition from a tone of almost sepia-tinged nostalgia during the early stages, to one of elegiac lament for what many of the participating correspondents regard as the imminent death of traditional war reporting.
That seems premature. Even a cursory glance at the changes on display, from the trenches of the Somme to a map of television correspondents embedded on D-Day in the Normandy landings, to Vietnam to Libya, would suggest that reporting — in some form or other — has survived profound technological, military and social changes.
However the section on social media and phenomena such as “citizen journalism” is as fascinating as any of those that preceded it. Furthermore the exhibition is as multimedia in presentation as in content. There is a section on Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger.
Large screens carry the opinions, expressed on Twitter, of visitors to the exhibition. Facebook responses are actively sought, and questions are also pasted to the floor as you walk around the museum, inviting written responses on cards offered just before the exit.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
World War II veteran recalls Bataan Death March
GainesvilleTimes.com: World War II veteran recalls Bataan Death March
After World War II was over, internal battles still raged for retired Army Col. Glenn Frazier, a survivor of the horrific Bataan Death March.
Speaking to the Gainesville Kiwanis Club Tuesday, he said he had "nightmares about nightmares" and was consumed with hatred toward the Japanese. Finally, he forgave his captors and let loose years of struggle.
"If you have any hate for anything ... get it out of there," Frazier said. "Get it out of there. Get it away from you."
Frazier, 87, spoke as a guest of club member Tracy Whitmire, who gave an emotional introduction.
Whitmire said she learned about Frazier after watching a History Channel documentary about the forced march of 12,000 American POWs by the Japanese in the Philippines.
She found a picture of Frazier and learned he lived in Alabama.
"I knew immediately — and I said to my husband — that I've got to get this guy to Gainesville," she said.
Frazier, who grew up in Alabama, gave a colorful talk to the group, including a description of a dubious start to his military career.
He recalled a misadventure that involved him riding his motorcycle through a honky-tonk in Montgomery and being chased by a man with a shotgun. He later shared that story with a man at a service station.
"He said, ‘You're crazy. That man is the meanest man in this country. He'll hunt you down and shoot you like a dog,' " Frazier said. "So I said, ‘Man, this is a day for the Army.' "
Frazier ended up getting deployed to the Philippines, and "I enjoyed it," he said. "It was a paradise."
Then, war broke out for the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941, with the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
The Japanese Army began a three-month siege of the Bataan Peninsula.
"It was a total catastrophe. Traffic was on one road and bumper to bumper, and the Japanese dive bombers were eating us up and bombing and strafing us, and killing people," Frazier said.
On April 3, 1942, the Japanese Army attacked malnourished and disease-ridden U.S.-Filipino forces in the peninsula.
The attack smashed defensive lines, eventually leading to an American surrender.
By that time, the U.S. had run out of supplies and ammunition, and the Japanese had issued an ultimatum that the Americans give up or face annihilation.
The Japanese then forced American POWs on the grueling march, which lasted 60 to 90 miles, "depending on where you joined it," Frazier said.
"They were killing us for trying to get water. If you fell down, you were shot," he said. "If you reached over and helped a buddy, both of you were killed. ... I saw all kinds of atrocities."
The march lasted six days with POWs receiving no food, water or sleep. Nearly 3,000 soldiers had died.
"At the end of it ... I couldn't do anything but drag my feet," Frazier recalled.
Soldiers then were placed in a POW camp where another 2,500 soldiers died.
"The stench of death (at the camp) was so bad you could go to the barbed wire fence to try to get away from it and still couldn't stand it," Frazier said.
Frazier, who had his book, "Hell's Guest," on sale at the club meeting, survived more than three years in POW camps.
"If you were me and you had been through some of that, would you hate the Japanese?" he asked the audience.
"I think maybe you would. ... I had hate so deep inside of me and I couldn't do anything about it, but it helped me survive and that was the main thing. I lived on hate."
Frazier recalled returning to the U.S., promptly falling on his knees and kissing the ground.
"I came home to a grateful nation," he said. "I came home with a great love for our flag."
Frazier said he eventually had to get rid of his deep hatred for the Japanese.
"If I hadn't ... I wouldn't be here today to talk to you."
He said he also knows that God was with him on the march, "every step of the way."
After World War II was over, internal battles still raged for retired Army Col. Glenn Frazier, a survivor of the horrific Bataan Death March.
Speaking to the Gainesville Kiwanis Club Tuesday, he said he had "nightmares about nightmares" and was consumed with hatred toward the Japanese. Finally, he forgave his captors and let loose years of struggle.
"If you have any hate for anything ... get it out of there," Frazier said. "Get it out of there. Get it away from you."
Frazier, 87, spoke as a guest of club member Tracy Whitmire, who gave an emotional introduction.
Whitmire said she learned about Frazier after watching a History Channel documentary about the forced march of 12,000 American POWs by the Japanese in the Philippines.
She found a picture of Frazier and learned he lived in Alabama.
"I knew immediately — and I said to my husband — that I've got to get this guy to Gainesville," she said.
Frazier, who grew up in Alabama, gave a colorful talk to the group, including a description of a dubious start to his military career.
He recalled a misadventure that involved him riding his motorcycle through a honky-tonk in Montgomery and being chased by a man with a shotgun. He later shared that story with a man at a service station.
"He said, ‘You're crazy. That man is the meanest man in this country. He'll hunt you down and shoot you like a dog,' " Frazier said. "So I said, ‘Man, this is a day for the Army.' "
Frazier ended up getting deployed to the Philippines, and "I enjoyed it," he said. "It was a paradise."
Then, war broke out for the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941, with the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
The Japanese Army began a three-month siege of the Bataan Peninsula.
"It was a total catastrophe. Traffic was on one road and bumper to bumper, and the Japanese dive bombers were eating us up and bombing and strafing us, and killing people," Frazier said.
On April 3, 1942, the Japanese Army attacked malnourished and disease-ridden U.S.-Filipino forces in the peninsula.
The attack smashed defensive lines, eventually leading to an American surrender.
By that time, the U.S. had run out of supplies and ammunition, and the Japanese had issued an ultimatum that the Americans give up or face annihilation.
The Japanese then forced American POWs on the grueling march, which lasted 60 to 90 miles, "depending on where you joined it," Frazier said.
"They were killing us for trying to get water. If you fell down, you were shot," he said. "If you reached over and helped a buddy, both of you were killed. ... I saw all kinds of atrocities."
The march lasted six days with POWs receiving no food, water or sleep. Nearly 3,000 soldiers had died.
"At the end of it ... I couldn't do anything but drag my feet," Frazier recalled.
Soldiers then were placed in a POW camp where another 2,500 soldiers died.
"The stench of death (at the camp) was so bad you could go to the barbed wire fence to try to get away from it and still couldn't stand it," Frazier said.
Frazier, who had his book, "Hell's Guest," on sale at the club meeting, survived more than three years in POW camps.
"If you were me and you had been through some of that, would you hate the Japanese?" he asked the audience.
"I think maybe you would. ... I had hate so deep inside of me and I couldn't do anything about it, but it helped me survive and that was the main thing. I lived on hate."
Frazier recalled returning to the U.S., promptly falling on his knees and kissing the ground.
"I came home to a grateful nation," he said. "I came home with a great love for our flag."
Frazier said he eventually had to get rid of his deep hatred for the Japanese.
"If I hadn't ... I wouldn't be here today to talk to you."
He said he also knows that God was with him on the march, "every step of the way."
Monday, June 13, 2011
World War II bomber crashes outside Chicago
CBSNews: World War II bomber crashes outside Chicago
OSWEGO, Ill. - A B-17 bomber that dates to World War II crashed and burned Monday morning in a cornfield outside Chicago, aviation officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration believes the seven people on board the plane escaped uninjured, spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
"The plane is burning," Cory said.
The vintage plane took off from Aurora Municipal Airport on Monday morning and crashed about 20 minutes later in Oswego, Cory said.
Kevin Potts, a farmer in the area, said he saw the plane fly over. He told CBS News Station WBBM-TV in Chicago that the plane was obviously in trouble.
"I noticed that it was a little too low and was kind of coming down, and then I noticed flames coming out underneath its left wing," Potts told WBBM-TV.
Potts said the plane was being escorted by a plane from the Lima Lima flight team.
He jumped in an all-terrain vehicle and went to the crash scene, a cornfield about two miles away.
"It's just an amazing job by this pilot, and thank God that, apparently, everyone walked away," he said.
The pilot reported a fire shortly after taking off, said Sugar Grove Fire Chief Marty Kunkle.
"He attempted to make a return to the airport, but couldn't make it so he put it down in a cornfield," Kunkel said.
Firefighters from Oswego, Sugar Grove and Plainfield responded to the crash. Fire officials said they were having difficulty accessing the crash because of wet fields.
The aircraft was made in 1944 and is known as the "Flying Fortress." It is registered to the Liberty Foundation in Miami, Cory said.
OSWEGO, Ill. - A B-17 bomber that dates to World War II crashed and burned Monday morning in a cornfield outside Chicago, aviation officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration believes the seven people on board the plane escaped uninjured, spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
"The plane is burning," Cory said.
The vintage plane took off from Aurora Municipal Airport on Monday morning and crashed about 20 minutes later in Oswego, Cory said.
Kevin Potts, a farmer in the area, said he saw the plane fly over. He told CBS News Station WBBM-TV in Chicago that the plane was obviously in trouble.
"I noticed that it was a little too low and was kind of coming down, and then I noticed flames coming out underneath its left wing," Potts told WBBM-TV.
Potts said the plane was being escorted by a plane from the Lima Lima flight team.
He jumped in an all-terrain vehicle and went to the crash scene, a cornfield about two miles away.
"It's just an amazing job by this pilot, and thank God that, apparently, everyone walked away," he said.
The pilot reported a fire shortly after taking off, said Sugar Grove Fire Chief Marty Kunkle.
"He attempted to make a return to the airport, but couldn't make it so he put it down in a cornfield," Kunkel said.
Firefighters from Oswego, Sugar Grove and Plainfield responded to the crash. Fire officials said they were having difficulty accessing the crash because of wet fields.
The aircraft was made in 1944 and is known as the "Flying Fortress." It is registered to the Liberty Foundation in Miami, Cory said.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
US Open host Congressional also known for Venturi, Els and WWII
GoogleNews: US Open host Congressional also known for Venturi, Els and WWII
BETHESDA, Md. — Leave the five-iron at home if you want to probe the hidden history of Congressional Country Club. Bring a machete instead.
"Back in the woods," said Ben Brundred, former president and longtime club member, "to the left of the 11th, there's some fairly heavy woods back in there. And when we were kids, we used to roam around in there, and there's still some remnants of bunkers and pill boxes and stuff back in there that can be seen."
It doesn't take much of a detective to figure out the origins of a place with a name like Congressional. Nor is it hard to realize what it has become today — a prestigious, must-play destination for the world's top golfers, who will reconvene at the splendid but often unforgiving Blue Course for next week's U.S. Open.
In between, however, the 580 dazzling acres near the nation's capital have a vibrant history that hasn't always gone according to script. Those bunkers — not the kind made of sand, of course — are left over from the 1940s, when the club was leased to the Office of Strategic Services as a World War II training ground. Fairways became target ranges. Craters marred the course. Barbed wire, instead of spectator rope, was the standard partition of the day.
It's easy to say the club was doing its bit of sacrifice in the name of noble service for its country, but actually the country was saving the club. The OSS — predecessor to the CIA — paid US$4,000 per month to rent the place.
"Having gone through the Depression years of the '30s, the club was in serious financial trouble at that time," Brundred said, "and was probably on the verge of perhaps having to shut the doors, when the opportunity to lease the property to the OSS came along. It was being able to shut the doors and not have any expenses during those years and to put some money in the bank that allowed the club to sort of regroup."
Money woes didn't seem possible when Congressional was founded during the Roaring '20s, the brainchild of two Indiana congressman who envisioned an idyllic setting for politicians and businessmen to recharge their psychological batteries while contemplating the world's problems. Oscar Bland and O.R. Lubring wanted a place "where talk has no fetters and where exchanged opinion leads to clarity," according to a 1921 prospectus.
"The official or member of Congress, brain cleared by the bracing air, and exhilarated by the play in which he is engaged, finds a new and more adequate conception of his problems of government; and from his contact with minds that know the nation's needs, develops more surely the solutions essential for America's well being," the prospectus continued.
Five former presidents — Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge — are listed as founding life members. The opening gala in 1924 at the stylish clubhouse with its Mediterranean-style architecture was a grand occasion, but for many years Congressional was too lavish for its budget, particularly during the lean years before the war. Its remote location and lack of local dues-paying members posed problems.
Back on firm footing after the war, Congressional became less of a hangout for men in power and more of a conventional, exclusive country club for members and their families. It wasn't uncommon to spot a Capitol Hill foursome a half-century ago, but Brundred said that changed in the 1970s when it became less acceptable for congressmen to accept perks such as reduced fee memberships. Besides, the discounts offered to the lawmakers weren't helping the finances, so the club discontinued them.
It was also during the postwar era that Congressional realized it could become a place of champions. Renowned designer Robert Trent Jones was hired to overhaul the back nine of the Blue Course in the 1950s and later did the same to the front nine, a much-needed update to Devereux Emmet's original setup from the 1920s. Jones' son, Rees Jones, was called on to do another renovation in the late 1980s.
The changes met with resistance. But, unlike a football field that is always 100 yards long or a baseball diamond that always has 90 feet between bases, Congressional needed to keep up with the evolving nature of its sport.
"When I was on the board and we were getting ready to redo the Blue Course," said Enos Fry, another former club president, "I can remember some of the past presidents coming up to me saying, 'You're going to ruin this place. You're going to change this course, and you young guys should just never do anything like this.' And it was amazing after we got finished doing it, a couple of them came up to me and said, 'I'm glad we decided to do this.'"
The Blue Course's list of blue-chip events is impressive: the 1959 Women's Amateur, the 1976 PGA Championship, the 1995 U.S. Senior Open, and, of course, the U.S. Open in 1964 and 1997.
Fry worked at the 1964 Open, selling scrip coupons that spectators used to buy refreshments, and he got to witness Ken Venturi walking the down the fairway at No. 18. Exhausted and at times disoriented by the notoriously stifling mid-Atlantic heat and humidity, Venturi persevered through 36 holes on the final day to claim the championship in one of the most extraordinary performances the sport has seen.
But Congressional always had one nagging feature that caused a stir every time the big names came calling. Robert Trent Jones' redesign in the 1950s left the Blue Course with a par-3 finish, a scenic hole with a tee shot over a lake with the full expanse of the clubhouse in the background.
The members didn't mind, but it wasn't deemed fitting for a major event. Officials had to find ways around it. When Venturi won, the Blue Course borrowed two holes from the Gold Course so the tournament would end on the members' 17th hole, a classic and difficult par-4 finishing hole that leads downhill onto a peninsula by the lake. At the 1995 Senior Open, No. 18 became No. 10, creating a long and awkward walk from greens to tees at the start of the back nine.
In 1997, the U.S. Golf Association decided to give the par 3 finish a chance. The Open was played the members' way, and it proved a lacklustre means for ending a major. The make-or-break shots everyone remembers — particularly Tom Lehman's fateful 7-iron approach that bounded into the lake — happened at No. 17. The 18th hole was anticlimactic as Ernie Els took home the trophy.
"While the tournament was a great success," Brundred said, "in the years immediately following as we began to lobby the USGA to return the U.S. Open to Congressional, they kind of let us know that they would very much like to return, but they didn't want to finish again on a par 3."
So another facelift was in order. The par-3 hole has been reversed, with the tee and green swapping sides of the lake. It's now the 10th hole for everyone, members included, and fits naturally into the flow of the course. Next week, the golfers will finish on the same hole as Venturi did all those years ago.
The greens, which golfers claimed were too bumpy when Tiger Woods hosted the AT&T National at Congressional for three years, also have been rebuilt with a hybrid grass that better resists the humidity.
Now all can agree that Congressional has a course worthy of its setting.
"I think one of the great attractions to the USGA is a feeling that every so often the national Open should be held in our nation's capital," Brundred said. "More than anything else, that's what Congressional has going for it — that it's a championship golf course that happens to be located just outside our nation's capital."
BETHESDA, Md. — Leave the five-iron at home if you want to probe the hidden history of Congressional Country Club. Bring a machete instead.
"Back in the woods," said Ben Brundred, former president and longtime club member, "to the left of the 11th, there's some fairly heavy woods back in there. And when we were kids, we used to roam around in there, and there's still some remnants of bunkers and pill boxes and stuff back in there that can be seen."
It doesn't take much of a detective to figure out the origins of a place with a name like Congressional. Nor is it hard to realize what it has become today — a prestigious, must-play destination for the world's top golfers, who will reconvene at the splendid but often unforgiving Blue Course for next week's U.S. Open.
In between, however, the 580 dazzling acres near the nation's capital have a vibrant history that hasn't always gone according to script. Those bunkers — not the kind made of sand, of course — are left over from the 1940s, when the club was leased to the Office of Strategic Services as a World War II training ground. Fairways became target ranges. Craters marred the course. Barbed wire, instead of spectator rope, was the standard partition of the day.
It's easy to say the club was doing its bit of sacrifice in the name of noble service for its country, but actually the country was saving the club. The OSS — predecessor to the CIA — paid US$4,000 per month to rent the place.
"Having gone through the Depression years of the '30s, the club was in serious financial trouble at that time," Brundred said, "and was probably on the verge of perhaps having to shut the doors, when the opportunity to lease the property to the OSS came along. It was being able to shut the doors and not have any expenses during those years and to put some money in the bank that allowed the club to sort of regroup."
Money woes didn't seem possible when Congressional was founded during the Roaring '20s, the brainchild of two Indiana congressman who envisioned an idyllic setting for politicians and businessmen to recharge their psychological batteries while contemplating the world's problems. Oscar Bland and O.R. Lubring wanted a place "where talk has no fetters and where exchanged opinion leads to clarity," according to a 1921 prospectus.
"The official or member of Congress, brain cleared by the bracing air, and exhilarated by the play in which he is engaged, finds a new and more adequate conception of his problems of government; and from his contact with minds that know the nation's needs, develops more surely the solutions essential for America's well being," the prospectus continued.
Five former presidents — Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge — are listed as founding life members. The opening gala in 1924 at the stylish clubhouse with its Mediterranean-style architecture was a grand occasion, but for many years Congressional was too lavish for its budget, particularly during the lean years before the war. Its remote location and lack of local dues-paying members posed problems.
Back on firm footing after the war, Congressional became less of a hangout for men in power and more of a conventional, exclusive country club for members and their families. It wasn't uncommon to spot a Capitol Hill foursome a half-century ago, but Brundred said that changed in the 1970s when it became less acceptable for congressmen to accept perks such as reduced fee memberships. Besides, the discounts offered to the lawmakers weren't helping the finances, so the club discontinued them.
It was also during the postwar era that Congressional realized it could become a place of champions. Renowned designer Robert Trent Jones was hired to overhaul the back nine of the Blue Course in the 1950s and later did the same to the front nine, a much-needed update to Devereux Emmet's original setup from the 1920s. Jones' son, Rees Jones, was called on to do another renovation in the late 1980s.
The changes met with resistance. But, unlike a football field that is always 100 yards long or a baseball diamond that always has 90 feet between bases, Congressional needed to keep up with the evolving nature of its sport.
"When I was on the board and we were getting ready to redo the Blue Course," said Enos Fry, another former club president, "I can remember some of the past presidents coming up to me saying, 'You're going to ruin this place. You're going to change this course, and you young guys should just never do anything like this.' And it was amazing after we got finished doing it, a couple of them came up to me and said, 'I'm glad we decided to do this.'"
The Blue Course's list of blue-chip events is impressive: the 1959 Women's Amateur, the 1976 PGA Championship, the 1995 U.S. Senior Open, and, of course, the U.S. Open in 1964 and 1997.
Fry worked at the 1964 Open, selling scrip coupons that spectators used to buy refreshments, and he got to witness Ken Venturi walking the down the fairway at No. 18. Exhausted and at times disoriented by the notoriously stifling mid-Atlantic heat and humidity, Venturi persevered through 36 holes on the final day to claim the championship in one of the most extraordinary performances the sport has seen.
But Congressional always had one nagging feature that caused a stir every time the big names came calling. Robert Trent Jones' redesign in the 1950s left the Blue Course with a par-3 finish, a scenic hole with a tee shot over a lake with the full expanse of the clubhouse in the background.
The members didn't mind, but it wasn't deemed fitting for a major event. Officials had to find ways around it. When Venturi won, the Blue Course borrowed two holes from the Gold Course so the tournament would end on the members' 17th hole, a classic and difficult par-4 finishing hole that leads downhill onto a peninsula by the lake. At the 1995 Senior Open, No. 18 became No. 10, creating a long and awkward walk from greens to tees at the start of the back nine.
In 1997, the U.S. Golf Association decided to give the par 3 finish a chance. The Open was played the members' way, and it proved a lacklustre means for ending a major. The make-or-break shots everyone remembers — particularly Tom Lehman's fateful 7-iron approach that bounded into the lake — happened at No. 17. The 18th hole was anticlimactic as Ernie Els took home the trophy.
"While the tournament was a great success," Brundred said, "in the years immediately following as we began to lobby the USGA to return the U.S. Open to Congressional, they kind of let us know that they would very much like to return, but they didn't want to finish again on a par 3."
So another facelift was in order. The par-3 hole has been reversed, with the tee and green swapping sides of the lake. It's now the 10th hole for everyone, members included, and fits naturally into the flow of the course. Next week, the golfers will finish on the same hole as Venturi did all those years ago.
The greens, which golfers claimed were too bumpy when Tiger Woods hosted the AT&T National at Congressional for three years, also have been rebuilt with a hybrid grass that better resists the humidity.
Now all can agree that Congressional has a course worthy of its setting.
"I think one of the great attractions to the USGA is a feeling that every so often the national Open should be held in our nation's capital," Brundred said. "More than anything else, that's what Congressional has going for it — that it's a championship golf course that happens to be located just outside our nation's capital."
Friday, June 10, 2011
WWII veteran was also veteran philanthropist
TulsaWorld: WWII veteran was also veteran philanthropist
The Tulsa oilman was a major supporter of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and OSU.By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer
Drilling for oil kept his attention focused on the ground, but Sherman Smith's spirit showed a definite upward tilt.
The Tulsa oilman and philanthropist, who was a major financial contributor toward the development of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, became interested in aviation during World War II.
A member of an Army glider unit who also was trained as a paratrooper, Smith had parachuted into France after the D-Day invasion in 1944.
After the war, Smith became a licensed pilot and flew recreationally for a few years.
The interest found its ultimate fulfillment, however, in the part Smith played in the museum and the effort to preserve Tulsa's rich aviation history.
Smith was the major donor behind the Hangar One Museum, which opened in November 2005 at the Air and Space Museum, which is named for him and his wife, Ellie Smith.
A member of the Air and Space Museum's board of directors, Sherman Smith also contributed to the adjacent planetarium, which opened in 2006.
"We're so happy that the Air and Space Museum has done so well and for the school kids who get to visit," said Sherman Smith's son, Will Smith. "Early childhood education is one of our family's charitable missions, and it has been a wonderful vehicle for that."
Sherman Edward Smith died Monday. He was 88.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian under the direction of Moore's Southlawn Funeral Home.
The longtime president and CEO of Service Drilling Co. of Tulsa, which his father had co-founded, Smith became as well-known for the wellspring of his generosity as for the oil wells that made it possible.
A 1948 Oklahoma State University graduate and member of its college of engineering's hall of fame, he donated millions of dollars over the years to his alma mater's academic and athletic programs.
Smith often was mentioned in the same breath as fellow donor, oilman and alumnus T. Boone Pickens.
The pair, who were Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at OSU and business associates for decades afterward, contributed $1.5 million each in 2005 toward the renovation of OSU's football locker room and the construction of new grass practice fields. Sherman Smith followed that two years later with a $20 million donation toward the development of an indoor practice facility for the school's athletic teams.
Will Smith said his father's support of the athletic program should not, however, overshadow his interest in academics and the funding he set up for engineering scholarships.
"That was critically important to him," he said, adding that his father also donated toward the engineering program at the University of Tulsa.
Also in Tulsa, Sherman Smith and his family were longtime supporters of the Gilcrease and Philbrook museums, the Tulsa Boys' Home and The Salvation Army.
Smith is survived by his wife, Ellie Smith; one son, Will Smith; one daughter, Susan Burghart; two stepchildren, Stanley Hall and Nancy Born; one sister, Wilma Arnold; two grandchildren; and six step-grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, The Salvation Army or a charity of choice.
The Tulsa oilman was a major supporter of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and OSU.By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer
Drilling for oil kept his attention focused on the ground, but Sherman Smith's spirit showed a definite upward tilt.
The Tulsa oilman and philanthropist, who was a major financial contributor toward the development of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, became interested in aviation during World War II.
A member of an Army glider unit who also was trained as a paratrooper, Smith had parachuted into France after the D-Day invasion in 1944.
After the war, Smith became a licensed pilot and flew recreationally for a few years.
The interest found its ultimate fulfillment, however, in the part Smith played in the museum and the effort to preserve Tulsa's rich aviation history.
Smith was the major donor behind the Hangar One Museum, which opened in November 2005 at the Air and Space Museum, which is named for him and his wife, Ellie Smith.
A member of the Air and Space Museum's board of directors, Sherman Smith also contributed to the adjacent planetarium, which opened in 2006.
"We're so happy that the Air and Space Museum has done so well and for the school kids who get to visit," said Sherman Smith's son, Will Smith. "Early childhood education is one of our family's charitable missions, and it has been a wonderful vehicle for that."
Sherman Edward Smith died Monday. He was 88.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian under the direction of Moore's Southlawn Funeral Home.
The longtime president and CEO of Service Drilling Co. of Tulsa, which his father had co-founded, Smith became as well-known for the wellspring of his generosity as for the oil wells that made it possible.
A 1948 Oklahoma State University graduate and member of its college of engineering's hall of fame, he donated millions of dollars over the years to his alma mater's academic and athletic programs.
Smith often was mentioned in the same breath as fellow donor, oilman and alumnus T. Boone Pickens.
The pair, who were Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at OSU and business associates for decades afterward, contributed $1.5 million each in 2005 toward the renovation of OSU's football locker room and the construction of new grass practice fields. Sherman Smith followed that two years later with a $20 million donation toward the development of an indoor practice facility for the school's athletic teams.
Will Smith said his father's support of the athletic program should not, however, overshadow his interest in academics and the funding he set up for engineering scholarships.
"That was critically important to him," he said, adding that his father also donated toward the engineering program at the University of Tulsa.
Also in Tulsa, Sherman Smith and his family were longtime supporters of the Gilcrease and Philbrook museums, the Tulsa Boys' Home and The Salvation Army.
Smith is survived by his wife, Ellie Smith; one son, Will Smith; one daughter, Susan Burghart; two stepchildren, Stanley Hall and Nancy Born; one sister, Wilma Arnold; two grandchildren; and six step-grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, The Salvation Army or a charity of choice.
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