This Date in History
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donbosco
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In 1976 President Gerald Ford (R) was challenged in the GOP primary by California Governor Ronald Reagan. Federal Equal Time in broadcasting rules would have prohibited Reagan’s old B-movies from airing had Ford not, #OTD (4/20) in 1976, waived that legal protection. Ford defeated Reagan and went on to lose to Jimmy Carter in November. Ford may have been the last decent Republican. He was among them. All mainly wrong-headed mind you but here I’m talking at least by some measure decent.
And yet, had Ford seen to it that Nixon pay for his crimes and violations of the Constitution, perhaps the nation and the world would have never fallen into the grip of the current cackle of grifters and miscreants (2025). But then had Ford not shown the inclination to pardon Nixon he’s likely never been appointed Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, fraud hanging all about his career.
On November 4, 1979 hostages were taken as the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was captured by armed student supporters of the Iranian Revolution — a movement that deposed the corrupt Shah and installed the extremist Theocrat, the Ayatollah Khomeini. This tragedy colored the final year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
The 2023 confession of Ben Barnes confirms (link at conclusion) that he and John Connelly toured Middle Eastern capitals in October, 1980 — the weeks before the U.S. election with the simple message: “Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”
When Reagan defeated Carter and took the presidency in 1980 the party began its slide into the modern morass of Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Ryans, McConnells, Gowdys, and Tillises, landing today in the sordid pit where dwell the trumps, Cawthorns, Greenes, McCarthys, Cottons, Grahams, Millers, and Cruzes.
Ford’s gesture toward Reagan and his B-Movie career in film now seems so innocent — magnanimous and in the spirit of Fair Play even. Was it the last ethical act, admittedly smallish, of The Right?
You can view the letter better at the link: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/30806019
Here’s the Reagan sabotage confession link: A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election (Published 2023)
donbosco
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In 1952 (April 19) the Guatemalteco Doroteo Guamach won the Boston Marathon -- the Boston Press misinterpreted his name and dubbed him Mateo Flores, which became his internationally known moniker. He was a textile worker who earned .25 an hour. He ran the race in formal street shoes. The national stadium in Guatemala City is named for him.
In 1952 Guatemala was eight years into by far the most democratic republican period of government it had to that time - or since - experienced. Arts of all types were flourishing, scholarship was beginning to pick up speed, and a depth and breadth of thinking and doing that was impossible under the corrupt dictatorial regimes preceding 1944 was afoot. Guatemala was a place of hope. To be sure the country had never been quite hope-less but that was due to the spirit of its citizenry and existed in spite of the civil and human rights denied the people by despots, oligarchs, and foreign investors.
In 1944 a popular uprising of fed-up sectors of society had tossed out dictator, and US darling, Jorge Ubicó. Enough of a puppet to make the Boston-based United Fruit Company happy from 1931 until 1944, Ubicó was a fascist at heart but he also knew in whose so-called backyard he resided - that realization tamped down any praise of what he saw Mussolini and Hitler doing across the Atlantic - but it did little to deter him from building an oppressive regime that denied civil and human rights to the Maya population while ‘selecting’ what others would be granted to all but the most elite in the country.
Interestingly, the global anti-Fascist battle that took place — i.e., World War II — resulted in a huge outpouring of pro-democracy sentiments. That War was, after all ‘A Fight to Save Democracy.’ Drafted into service, thousands and thousands of true believers in constitutional democratic republicanism, fanned out to fight the forces of anti-democratic authoritarianism. Perhaps the little Hitlers and Mussolinis of the world like Ubicó should have read the writing on the wall - maybe, cornered rats that they were, they did and didn’t know where to run.
But by 1944 Guatemaltecos were believers - they believed that as the fascists in Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo fell so too should like-governments fall around the world. The Guatemalan military helped - as they had heard the same egalitarian advertisements from the US and Allied Forces as had the people. Indeed, their liaisons during the war with the overwhelmingly volunteer Anti-Fascist Army of the United States convinced them that the way forward was decidedly NOT with characters like Ubico.
So after the army, the shopkeepers, the working class, and students and their teachers chased Ubicó from the country in 1944 elections were held and the Guatemalan people elected a Professor of Education and Philosophy as their first legitimate head-of-state. With Dr. Juan José Arévalo at the helm democratization and wealth redistribution began in earnest. Elites in the USA watched and their frowns grew as the fortunes, of their client-friends - primarily the aforementioned United Fruit Company - made gigantic over years of plunder facilitated by Ubicó and Co. - were called into the service of Guatemaltecos by fair and just laws and regulations.
Arevalo survived and brought much promise during his six years in office. He was followed in a free and fair election by Jacobo Arbenz, who set about continuing the policies of Arevalo. By that time (1951), the Cold War was growing Hot and the vision of the Eisenhower Administration was deeply clouded by the Anti-Communist Presbyterian paranoia of the career diplomats (and brothers) John Foster and Alan Dulles. As Secretary of State and Director of the CIA respectively, the Dulles brothers began to work to ruin the Guatemalan experiment (Nevermind that both had previously worked for the United Fruit Company legal team). In 1954 the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Arbenz and alternating brands of corrupt, but Uber-Pro United States capital governments have been the rule since.
In 1952 however, Doroteo Gumach (Mateo Flores) won the world’s most prestigious marathon - in his street shoes - and for one split second of historical time Guatemaltecos - and the rest of us - experienced what hope born of having crushed fascism and raising up humanity is capable of if given even a sliver of a chance. May Mateo Flores’ Spirit never die nor be forgotten.
donbosco
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Perhaps The First “Voice of America.” (experience it at the link below) I have only heard in retrospectives but I remember him spoken of with reverence by my father who was very pro-democracy and even more anti-authoritarian like so many in his now-forgotten generation—the one that wrestled fascist dictators to the ground and crushed them in Germany and Italy. In our most recent times some brave members of a much maligned profession have followed along Murrow’s path. Far too many go mainly unheralded.
We should be thankful for for journalists and investigators like him and recognize their work in a measure based on the ire they draw from the shysters, seditionists, and nattering anti-democracy nabobs of our time. Edward R. Murrow seems to have been hated by just the right folks.
#OTD (April 25) 1908 Edward R. Murrow was born near Greensboro. He grew up in Washington state. His WW2 CBS radio reports from Europe were historic. On his ‘50s TV program ‘See It Now’ he brought down Red-baiting GOP Senator Joseph McCarthy in ‘54. On that night in March, so very early in our collective television-viewing experience as a nation, Murrow spoke the following; “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” He continued…“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
Murrow’s generation embraced the mantle of defending freedom and then did so by their anti-fascist actions, giving their “blood, sweat, and tears” by journeying around the world and defeating Axis Authoritarianism. Please watch at the link below and hear the “Voice of America” encouraging us to stand for freedom:
Read more here: Edward R. Murrow, Legendary Journalist
Along with the backers of Joseph McCarthy and haters of dissent another great enemy of Murrow was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who despised him and had his agents monitor his activities, a practice which intensified after the McCarthy takedown.
Murrow concludes this influential broadcast with this from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” Act 1, Scene 2, as spoken by Cassius. Our times, like those of Brutus, are complex. Responsibility must be looked at squarely.
We should be thankful for for journalists and investigators like him and recognize their work in a measure based on the ire they draw from the shysters, seditionists, and nattering anti-democracy nabobs of our time. Edward R. Murrow seems to have been hated by just the right folks.
#OTD (April 25) 1908 Edward R. Murrow was born near Greensboro. He grew up in Washington state. His WW2 CBS radio reports from Europe were historic. On his ‘50s TV program ‘See It Now’ he brought down Red-baiting GOP Senator Joseph McCarthy in ‘54. On that night in March, so very early in our collective television-viewing experience as a nation, Murrow spoke the following; “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” He continued…“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
Murrow’s generation embraced the mantle of defending freedom and then did so by their anti-fascist actions, giving their “blood, sweat, and tears” by journeying around the world and defeating Axis Authoritarianism. Please watch at the link below and hear the “Voice of America” encouraging us to stand for freedom:
Read more here: Edward R. Murrow, Legendary Journalist
Along with the backers of Joseph McCarthy and haters of dissent another great enemy of Murrow was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who despised him and had his agents monitor his activities, a practice which intensified after the McCarthy takedown.
Murrow concludes this influential broadcast with this from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” Act 1, Scene 2, as spoken by Cassius. Our times, like those of Brutus, are complex. Responsibility must be looked at squarely.
donbosco
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Missed it by a day…
Meadowlark Lemon was born in Wilmington on April 25, 1932. Meadow Lemon III was his given name passed down from his grandfather through his father according to his own biographical entry at MeadowlarkLemon.org. He graduated from Williston High School (also known as Williston Industrial School) in 1952. Super athlete and pioneer in desegregation and women’s rights Althea Gibson was a 1949 graduate of the same school. Joseph McNeil, one of the Greensboro Sit-In’s original four was also a graduate of Williston. It was, of course, given the times, an African American only institution. Williston would come into the national mindset in 1968 when its closing as part of the municipal desegregation plan led to intense dissatisfaction in Wilmington from its alumni, students, and the African American community. An offshoot of the protests was the globally known case of The Wilmington Ten.
Meadow Lemon officially took the name of Meadowlark after joining the Harlem Globetrotters in 1955. Before that he had briefly attended Florida A&M and served two years in the U.S. Army. There is no mention that I can find of Meadow Lemon having played basketball at Williston High despite there being records accessible for the years that he attended school neither is there any mention of that elsewhere. Some newspaper coverage of African American High School sports existed in those times. A ‘Charlotte Observer’ blurb reported that he had played at Williston High but offers no attribution. ‘The News and Observer’ reported that he was a star in basketball and baseball at Williston — again with no attribution. During his high school years in Wilmington he may have played under the name James Lemmons as the excerpt from a ‘Winston Salem Sentinel’ article on the African American High School state championship tournament of 1952 (March 21) bears a foreshadowing of sorts.
Of course Meadowlark Lemon went on to become one of the most famous people in the world, visiting countless countries, playing over 16,000 games, and combining the all-time greatest hook shot with magical ball-handling skills and worldclass entertainer chops. It ought to be mentioned that he played many of his thousands of games alongside Greensboro’s Ed “Curly” Neal. Topping off his athletic, entertainment, and philanthropical careers, he also became an ordained minister in his later years. He is an inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Meadowlark Lemon
Meadowlark Lemon was born in Wilmington on April 25, 1932. Meadow Lemon III was his given name passed down from his grandfather through his father according to his own biographical entry at MeadowlarkLemon.org. He graduated from Williston High School (also known as Williston Industrial School) in 1952. Super athlete and pioneer in desegregation and women’s rights Althea Gibson was a 1949 graduate of the same school. Joseph McNeil, one of the Greensboro Sit-In’s original four was also a graduate of Williston. It was, of course, given the times, an African American only institution. Williston would come into the national mindset in 1968 when its closing as part of the municipal desegregation plan led to intense dissatisfaction in Wilmington from its alumni, students, and the African American community. An offshoot of the protests was the globally known case of The Wilmington Ten.
Meadow Lemon officially took the name of Meadowlark after joining the Harlem Globetrotters in 1955. Before that he had briefly attended Florida A&M and served two years in the U.S. Army. There is no mention that I can find of Meadow Lemon having played basketball at Williston High despite there being records accessible for the years that he attended school neither is there any mention of that elsewhere. Some newspaper coverage of African American High School sports existed in those times. A ‘Charlotte Observer’ blurb reported that he had played at Williston High but offers no attribution. ‘The News and Observer’ reported that he was a star in basketball and baseball at Williston — again with no attribution. During his high school years in Wilmington he may have played under the name James Lemmons as the excerpt from a ‘Winston Salem Sentinel’ article on the African American High School state championship tournament of 1952 (March 21) bears a foreshadowing of sorts.
Of course Meadowlark Lemon went on to become one of the most famous people in the world, visiting countless countries, playing over 16,000 games, and combining the all-time greatest hook shot with magical ball-handling skills and worldclass entertainer chops. It ought to be mentioned that he played many of his thousands of games alongside Greensboro’s Ed “Curly” Neal. Topping off his athletic, entertainment, and philanthropical careers, he also became an ordained minister in his later years. He is an inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Meadowlark Lemon
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When I was a kid, my Dad and I were at my grandfather's home (his father) watching the Harlem Globetrotters play on TV. I asked how the Globetrotters would fare against an NBA team. My father assured me it would not be a competitive game. I replied that the Globetrotters could do the same things to an NBA team as they did to the Washington Generals. My Dad gave me a long look and replied, "If anyone playing for the Globetrotters could make it in the NBA, then he would be playing in the NBA." I tried to come up with a counterargument but came up empty and conceded my father was correct.Missed it by a day…
Meadowlark Lemon was born in Wilmington on April 25, 1932. Meadow Lemon III was his given name passed down from his grandfather through his father according to his own biographical entry at MeadowlarkLemon.org. He graduated from Williston High School (also known as Williston Industrial School) in 1952. Super athlete and pioneer in desegregation and women’s rights Althea Gibson was a 1949 graduate of the same school. Joseph McNeil, one of the Greensboro Sit-In’s original four was also a graduate of Williston. It was, of course, given the times, an African American only institution. Williston would come into the national mindset in 1968 when its closing as part of the municipal desegregation plan led to intense dissatisfaction in Wilmington from its alumni, students, and the African American community. An offshoot of the protests was the globally known case of The Wilmington Ten.
Meadow Lemon officially took the name of Meadowlark after joining the Harlem Globetrotters in 1955. Before that he had briefly attended Florida A&M and served two years in the U.S. Army. There is no mention that I can find of Meadow Lemon having played basketball at Williston High despite there being records accessible for the years that he attended school neither is there any mention of that elsewhere. Some newspaper coverage of African American High School sports existed in those times. A ‘Charlotte Observer’ blurb reported that he had played at Williston High but offers no attribution. ‘The News and Observer’ reported that he was a star in basketball and baseball at Williston — again with no attribution. During his high school years in Wilmington he may have played under the name James Lemmons as the excerpt from a ‘Winston Salem Sentinel’ article on the African American High School state championship tournament of 1952 (March 21) bears a foreshadowing of sorts.
Of course Meadowlark Lemon went on to become one of the most famous people in the world, visiting countless countries, playing over 16,000 games, and combining the all-time greatest hook shot with magical ball-handling skills and worldclass entertainer chops. It ought to be mentioned that he played many of his thousands of games alongside Greensboro’s Ed “Curly” Neal. Topping off his athletic, entertainment, and philanthropical careers, he also became an ordained minister in his later years. He is an inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Meadowlark Lemon
donbosco
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#OTD IN 1897, Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb on #RiversideDriveNYC was dedicated. It would have been his 75th birthday. He died in 1885. His celebrated burial in this location was controversial as many believed either a military park or Washington D.C. to be more appropriate. Grant himself had nixed those ideas however with his romantic insistence that Julia, his wife, be buried beside him.
Grant (and Julia) also preferred that New York City be their final resting place. They actually lived at No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street beginning in 1881. (Read here: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/.../the-lost-u-s... ) As many know, the Grants were ruined financially in 1884, the victims of a Ponzi Scheme. The General died of throat cancer just over a year later.
As per their wishes the mausoleum is the final resting place of he and Julia. A design by John Hemingway Duncan was chosen in a competition. Duncan based it on the Temple at Halicarnassus (Persia), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (see below, bottom right-facing, for a sketch of that now long-gone structure). While the dedication #OTD IN 1897 was a huge event the fund-raising efforts were not always smooth and brought forward both regional and class-based enmities.
In fact, the monument has seen rough times during its 127 year ‘life.’ Having fallen into disrepair, The Works Project Administration (WPA) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal restored and improved the monument between 1935 and 1939 — there are busts of five of Grant's generals...William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord installed by the Federal Artists Project and many infrastructural additions both cosmetic and fundamental were added.
Despite the monument’s placement in the care of the National Parks Service in 1958, in the 1970s graffiti as well as squatting along the exterior of the structure made it unsightly and even dangerous. Overall New York City itself was in similarly dire straits - #RiversideParkNYC was a rough and mainly off limits area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the monument, and the area was reclaimed. Today I walk with Prince and Maxie in this area daily (even nightly), and literally circling “Grant’s Tomb” is part of our regimen. I admire the structure for its solid but fluid lines. It has a timeless quality and diagonally across from the towering #RiversideChurch we find ourselves sandwiched by two of the more impressive edifices, though I fear, less recognized, in the city. The dogs only see the squirrels and rats in truth but I do try my best to look up.
The structure itself does remind me, as a born and bred southerner who was treated to the barrage of Lost Cause propaganda from my earliest memory, that the country has an incredibly divisive history and that I am living through a time of deep division as well. When I do raise up my eyes I see on the tomb inscribed Grant’s epitaph: “Let us have peace.” I have to add though...not at the cost of permitting fascism, racism, and regression winning to win the day.
About a month ago the dogs and I were passing by and a couple were lingering in front of the tomb. I caught their conversation on the wind and it was one of curiosity about the edifice. I interjected what I knew of the place and its history, mainly what I wrote above but also some things about the "Rolling Bench" that wraps around it ( See here: Mosaic Rolling Bench at General Grant National Memorial — CITYarts ). The couple lived in the southern part of the island and said they did not get "up here" often. They looked at me as curiously as they did the tomb -- I know that my accent threw them off...probably as much as hearing it speaking respectfully about the Union general that laid low The South. The Dunns have been in #WestHarlem now over 4 years and of course we'll never be 'from' there. That said, roots tend to reach down all on their own.
Amen.
The photographs below: Top left-facing is a photograph of the dedication ceremony. Top right-facing, a shot from 1917. Bottom left-facing is a snap by me from Sakura Park. Bottom right-facing is a sketch of The Persian Temple of Halicarnassus.
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We lived at 89th and Riverside…..I often ran up to and around Grant’s Tomb……this was the mid-‘90’s and both Riverside Park and Grant’s Tomb were in excellent shape.
#OTD IN 1897, Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb on #RiversideDriveNYC was dedicated. It would have been his 75th birthday. He died in 1885. His celebrated burial in this location was controversial as many believed either a military park or Washington D.C. to be more appropriate. Grant himself had nixed those ideas however with his romantic insistence that Julia, his wife, be buried beside him.
Grant (and Julia) also preferred that New York City be their final resting place. They actually lived at No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street beginning in 1881. (Read here: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/.../the-lost-u-s... ) As many know, the Grants were ruined financially in 1884, the victims of a Ponzi Scheme. The General died of throat cancer just over a year later.
As per their wishes the mausoleum is the final resting place of he and Julia. A design by John Hemingway Duncan was chosen in a competition. Duncan based it on the Temple at Halicarnassus (Persia), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (see below, bottom right-facing, for a sketch of that now long-gone structure). While the dedication #OTD IN 1897 was a huge event the fund-raising efforts were not always smooth and brought forward both regional and class-based enmities.
In fact, the monument has seen rough times during its 127 year ‘life.’ Having fallen into disrepair, The Works Project Administration (WPA) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal restored and improved the monument between 1935 and 1939 — there are busts of five of Grant's generals...William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord installed by the Federal Artists Project and many infrastructural additions both cosmetic and fundamental were added.
Despite the monument’s placement in the care of the National Parks Service in 1958, in the 1970s graffiti as well as squatting along the exterior of the structure made it unsightly and even dangerous. Overall New York City itself was in similarly dire straits - #RiversideParkNYC was a rough and mainly off limits area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the monument, and the area was reclaimed. Today I walk with Prince and Maxie in this area daily (even nightly), and literally circling “Grant’s Tomb” is part of our regimen. I admire the structure for its solid but fluid lines. It has a timeless quality and diagonally across from the towering #RiversideChurch we find ourselves sandwiched by two of the more impressive edifices, though I fear, less recognized, in the city. The dogs only see the squirrels and rats in truth but I do try my best to look up.
The structure itself does remind me, as a born and bred southerner who was treated to the barrage of Lost Cause propaganda from my earliest memory, that the country has an incredibly divisive history and that I am living through a time of deep division as well. When I do raise up my eyes I see on the tomb inscribed Grant’s epitaph: “Let us have peace.” I have to add though...not at the cost of permitting fascism, racism, and regression winning to win the day.
About a month ago the dogs and I were passing by and a couple were lingering in front of the tomb. I caught their conversation on the wind and it was one of curiosity about the edifice. I interjected what I knew of the place and its history, mainly what I wrote above but also some things about the "Rolling Bench" that wraps around it ( See here: Mosaic Rolling Bench at General Grant National Memorial — CITYarts ). The couple lived in the southern part of the island and said they did not get "up here" often. They looked at me as curiously as they did the tomb -- I know that my accent threw them off...probably as much as hearing it speaking respectfully about the Union general that laid low The South. The Dunns have been in #WestHarlem now over 4 years and of course we'll never be 'from' there. That said, roots tend to reach down all on their own.
Amen.
The photographs below: Top left-facing is a photograph of the dedication ceremony. Top right-facing, a shot from 1917. Bottom left-facing is a snap by me from Sakura Park. Bottom right-facing is a sketch of The Persian Temple of Halicarnassus.
donbosco
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Vietnam was ubiquitous in my youth. Newspapers and the nightly news, often Walter Cronkite but more spectacularly, reporters embedded in the fighting, brought that war into our #Bonlee living room. I had a map of that region on the wall in my bedroom and strange-sounding names like Da Nang and Mekong and Tan San Nhut rang increasingly familiar in my ears. Either Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce, both satirical truth-speakers, are credited with having said “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” I’d substitute government for God there but you get the sad joke either way.
My parents faced the news and talked aloud about the war and other issues of the day. The talk was informed and very political. Our evening meal was a regular seminar with Deddy leading the discussion. We got a morning (‘The Greensboro Daily News’) and an afternoon (‘The Sanford Herald’) newspaper and subscribed to ‘Time,’ ‘Newsweek,’ and ‘US News & World Report.’ My Aunt Leisel made sure we received ‘National Geographic.’ Deddy was always informed, even if he didn’t always agree, by the economics in his weekly ‘Kiplinger Report.’ When my Momma passed away I found years of newspaper sections saved, folded to specific stories, most with notes containing her thoughts penciled in the margins.
Despite the final five minutes of mean-spirited editorializing on WRAL we watched NBC channel 5 out of Raleigh for the news of North Carolina but then switched over to channel 2 (WFMY) for CBS’s national news where Cronkite and company so often brought uncomfortable truths. It was there I saw the war as reporters brought the story very literally from the fire zones of the DMZ. (We’ll never see i such a thing that up close again - too much transparency) Each night I stared at what amounted to a scoreboard counting off each day’s dead. These body counts, showed an impossibly large number of North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong guerrilla fighters killed, lower, yet still high, counts of South Vietnamese dead, with the fewest tally being US soldiers killed. I clearly remember thinking that the enemy, North Vietnam, would surely run out of people soon and the war would end. We now know that these numbers were manipulated for the benefit of the ‘war effort’ back home - for naive little boys in places like #DeepChatham for example.
Along with the military ‘intelligence’ I was filled with war movie-John Wayne heroics - “Combat” and “Rat Patrol,” chronicles of the anti-Fascist ‘good fight’ in World War II were among my favorite shows and despite the unpopularity of the war, I wanted to go. I even begged my Deddy to send me to military school and for those slightly older that were anti-war I had nothing but disdain. The Revealing of Nixon’s Criminality (Deddy had warned me - he saw the GOP in the glare of historical experience, a light that has literally never in my life failed to illuminate modern conservatism in the USA from then to the present day as a movement dedicated to the hoodwinking myth of ‘trickle down’ trick economics and general grifting) lifted the scales from my eyes so that by 1975 I had come to see more clearly the depths of our deadly National Folly.
In those days I’m pretty sure that most of us had no idea that wrapped up in the far-off center of that mess stood a fellow North Carolinian. #OTD (April 29) in 1975 the last US citizens and South Vietnamese allies evacuated Saigon ahead of North Vietnamese forces. United States Ambassador Graham Martin was from Mars Hill. A World War II veteran and career diplomat, Nixon had appointed him in to that thankless post in 1973. Martin was a preacher’s son and Wake Forest graduate who became an FDR New Dealer and career foreign service officer with experience in espionage. Read on here about Martin: The Fall of Saigon and Ambassador Graham Martin MORE HERE ON THE LAST DAYS: HISTORY
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I was born within a couple of months of when Dien Bien Phi fell. I was serving in the Army when Saigon fell. I had a Sergeant who had served served several tours in Vietnam. He was telling everyone to pack their duffle bags because we WOULD be receiving orders to move out at any time. It was almost as if he had convinced himself that the US would "do it right" this time. Guys my age just rolled our eyes and went about our business.
But back when Vietnam was on, I remember making up gifts bags for men serving there, along with audio cassettes for those who we actually knew. One of my older brothers served a year in Vietnam and the other served on a supply ship in the Mediterranian his entire tour. My paternal grandparents had a maid who cooked and cleaned in their home five days a week. She had a son in Vietnam (he also served in Korea along with other tours in Vietnam) and we regularly made up gifts bags and cassette tapes for him too. Eventually, I found out this man's grandfather and my maternal grandfather were half-brothers. (ETA: He had the same last name as my maternal grandfather, so "Duh, you reckon.") His great-grandmother had been a slave (in the literal sense, not the metaphorical sense) to my great-grandfather. Which meant this black soldier in Vietnam was my second cousin. I was in school with several of his children. They were all smarter, more diligent, better athletes, and better looking than I was. So I decided to keep my mouth shut about my second cousins, once removed, because I knew the response would be, "What went wrong with you?" These kids, pretty much, when on to have very successful lives. We are talking about Annapolis, West Point, full rides at prestigious colleges, PhD's, and very prominent careers. I still wonder, what went wrong with me?
But back when Vietnam was on, I remember making up gifts bags for men serving there, along with audio cassettes for those who we actually knew. One of my older brothers served a year in Vietnam and the other served on a supply ship in the Mediterranian his entire tour. My paternal grandparents had a maid who cooked and cleaned in their home five days a week. She had a son in Vietnam (he also served in Korea along with other tours in Vietnam) and we regularly made up gifts bags and cassette tapes for him too. Eventually, I found out this man's grandfather and my maternal grandfather were half-brothers. (ETA: He had the same last name as my maternal grandfather, so "Duh, you reckon.") His great-grandmother had been a slave (in the literal sense, not the metaphorical sense) to my great-grandfather. Which meant this black soldier in Vietnam was my second cousin. I was in school with several of his children. They were all smarter, more diligent, better athletes, and better looking than I was. So I decided to keep my mouth shut about my second cousins, once removed, because I knew the response would be, "What went wrong with you?" These kids, pretty much, when on to have very successful lives. We are talking about Annapolis, West Point, full rides at prestigious colleges, PhD's, and very prominent careers. I still wonder, what went wrong with me?
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donbosco
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Also on April 29 (1945)...
donbosco
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The phrase Mutually Assured Destruction was coined in 1962 though I don’t recall hearing it until quite a few years later. That doesn’t mean that the concept wasn’t well lodged in my young brain from early youth. An episode of “The Twilight Zone” sticks in my memory though I couldn’t have seen it at first airing in 1959 — “Time Enough At Last” —showed bookworm Henry Bemis, played by Burgess Meredith (who I’d come to know soon enough as ‘The Penguin’ to the much more hopeful TV Batman that I so loved), in a post-apocalyptic world where he was finally left alone to read to his heart’s content (no spoiler).
I don’t remember any “Duck and Cover” drills at #Bonlee Elementary School either but I was very aware in my imagination that nuclear targets lay most immediately to my east — I knew my cardinal directions very early — the beach was east and the mountains were west — Raleigh and Fort Bragg being most prominent. Later I would identify the Research Triangle Park, also east, as a major attraction for Soviet bombs and missiles.
Maybe I was a particularly unrealistic kid - but I thought about MAD and even imagined thwarting the whole thing and surviving an atomic showdown. Maybe that’s what everybody imagined? In fact around this time I put together a ‘Fall-Out’ Shelter in the basement of the house in #Bonlee. I got the idea from a 4-H show on WUNC-TV (Channel 4 we called it). It never dawned on me that a shelter was a patently foolish enterprise - unless, and then in only a mildly sensible way - you were going to be The Attacker and would take to the bunkers before you launched. Yep, all those
Just another piece of the Shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction that Cold War kids lived beneath I guess. We, at least were lucky to be in the country and not a Russian Target — we thought.
Now in an urban setting like New York City ponder for a moment the thinking, if you can call it that, that windowless, damp tenement basements might be represented as places of refuge or that being locked in such a space with your neighbors, the surviving ones, after all around you lay in electricity-less, poisoned rubble. Lordy.
I reckon it made me feel better about my chances in a post apocalypse world that one corner of our reasonably dry basement in Bonlee spirted a two-week supply of canned peaches, Nabs, and unspoilable Vienna Sausages. After all, my part of the world in those days had to be pretty low priority in Russian estimates, right…though as the cartoon feature below suggests, rural America was hardly safe from dastardly Commie designs.
Cold War History: “Did You Know?” Syndicated Feature published #OTD (April 30) 1964.
Also read, “Fallout Shelters: Why Some New Yorkers Never Planned To Evacuate After A Nuclear Disaster,” Fallout Shelters: Why some New Yorkers never planned to evacuate after a nuclear disaster | 6sqft
donbosco
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"On April 30, 1963, Angie Brooks and Allard Lowenstein attempted to have lunch together at two restaurants in downtown Raleigh but were denied service because Brooks was African.
Brooks, Liberia’s United Nations ambassador and a Shaw University graduate, was in Raleigh to deliver a speech at N.C. State University. After the speech, Allard Lowenstein, then a professor at the university, invited the ambassador to lunch.
The pair, with a few students in tow, visited the S & W Cafeteria and Sir Walter Coffee Shop in downtown Raleigh. Despite her diplomatic credentials, Brooks was refused service at both establishments. In fact, the manager at the coffee shop went so far as to say that he would not serve Brooks but could offer her a job as a cook or a waitress.
The press was on hand to report the story. The incident brought national attention to North Carolina, and Gov. Terry Sanford issued an apology to Brooks on behalf of the state. Since Lowenstein chose restaurants that were frequented by state officials, many believed he was an agitator who wanted to stir up controversy. Although he was aware that the establishments were segregated, he denied staging the event."
www.dncr.nc.gov
Brooks, Liberia’s United Nations ambassador and a Shaw University graduate, was in Raleigh to deliver a speech at N.C. State University. After the speech, Allard Lowenstein, then a professor at the university, invited the ambassador to lunch.
The pair, with a few students in tow, visited the S & W Cafeteria and Sir Walter Coffee Shop in downtown Raleigh. Despite her diplomatic credentials, Brooks was refused service at both establishments. In fact, the manager at the coffee shop went so far as to say that he would not serve Brooks but could offer her a job as a cook or a waitress.
The press was on hand to report the story. The incident brought national attention to North Carolina, and Gov. Terry Sanford issued an apology to Brooks on behalf of the state. Since Lowenstein chose restaurants that were frequented by state officials, many believed he was an agitator who wanted to stir up controversy. Although he was aware that the establishments were segregated, he denied staging the event."
African Diplomat Denied Service in Raleigh, 1963
www.dncr.nc.gov
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I guess I remember two families in CH that had separate from the house dug in "bunkers"-nuclear war shelters . Our neighbors had central room in the basement-no windows-cement block walls-full of water and beenie weinies etc
The phrase Mutually Assured Destruction was coined in 1962 though I don’t recall hearing it until quite a few years later. That doesn’t mean that the concept wasn’t well lodged in my young brain from early youth. An episode of “The Twilight Zone” sticks in my memory though I couldn’t have seen it at first airing in 1959 — “Time Enough At Last” —showed bookworm Henry Bemis, played by Burgess Meredith (who I’d come to know soon enough as ‘The Penguin’ to the much more hopeful TV Batman that I so loved), in a post-apocalyptic world where he was finally left alone to read to his heart’s content (no spoiler).
I don’t remember any “Duck and Cover” drills at #Bonlee Elementary School either but I was very aware in my imagination that nuclear targets lay most immediately to my east — I knew my cardinal directions very early — the beach was east and the mountains were west — Raleigh and Fort Bragg being most prominent. Later I would identify the Research Triangle Park, also east, as a major attraction for Soviet bombs and missiles.
Maybe I was a particularly unrealistic kid - but I thought about MAD and even imagined thwarting the whole thing and surviving an atomic showdown. Maybe that’s what everybody imagined? In fact around this time I put together a ‘Fall-Out’ Shelter in the basement of the house in #Bonlee. I got the idea from a 4-H show on WUNC-TV (Channel 4 we called it). It never dawned on me that a shelter was a patently foolish enterprise - unless, and then in only a mildly sensible way - you were going to be The Attacker and would take to the bunkers before you launched. Yep, all those
Just another piece of the Shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction that Cold War kids lived beneath I guess. We, at least were lucky to be in the country and not a Russian Target — we thought.
Now in an urban setting like New York City ponder for a moment the thinking, if you can call it that, that windowless, damp tenement basements might be represented as places of refuge or that being locked in such a space with your neighbors, the surviving ones, after all around you lay in electricity-less, poisoned rubble. Lordy.
I reckon it made me feel better about my chances in a post apocalypse world that one corner of our reasonably dry basement in Bonlee spirted a two-week supply of canned peaches, Nabs, and unspoilable Vienna Sausages. After all, my part of the world in those days had to be pretty low priority in Russian estimates, right…though as the cartoon feature below suggests, rural America was hardly safe from dastardly Commie designs.
Cold War History: “Did You Know?” Syndicated Feature published #OTD (April 30) 1964.
Also read, “Fallout Shelters: Why Some New Yorkers Never Planned To Evacuate After A Nuclear Disaster,” Fallout Shelters: Why some New Yorkers never planned to evacuate after a nuclear disaster | 6sqft
donbosco
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They hanged Tom Dula #OTD in 1868 in Iredell County.
"In 1868 a man named Tom Dula (pronounced Dooley) was hanged in Statesville, N.C. after being convicted of murdering his lover, Laura Foster, in 1866.
The execution wasn’t the end of Tom Dula’s story. For generations rumors, conspiracies, and a hit song have swirled around the crime and its fallout.
As the story goes, the young Tom Dula was romantically involved with a woman named Ann Melton prior to enlisting as a confederate soldier in 1862. After the Civil War, he returned to Wilkes County, N.C. and resumed his affair with the now married Ann Melton, while also becoming romantically involved with her cousin Laura Foster.
In the spring of 1866, Laura Foster’s body was found in a shallow grave days after she’d been stabbed in the chest. Dula was arrested in Tennessee and returned to North Carolina for trial. His highly publicized case was tried, convicted, temporarily overturned, and ultimately upheld.
Legend has it that the actual perpetrator of the murder was Dula’s other lover Ann Melton.
The mythology around Tom Dula’s story reached new heights in 1958 when The Kingston Trio recorded and released to great critical and commercial success “Tom Dooley,” a traditional murder ballad about the incident.
Now a part of the canon of American folk music, the recording of “Tom Dooley” that started it all was captured by Frank and Anne Warner, two song-collectors who recorded a carpenter named Frank Proffitt singing the song in Beech Mountain, N.C. in 1938. Many have gone on to record and cover the murder ballad, including North Carolina flatpicking legend Doc Watson, who released his version in 1964.
In a poignant twist of music and historic lore, Doc Watson’s great grandmother allegedly heard Ann Melton confess to the murder on her deathbed in 1874."
"As he stood on the gallows facing death, Dula reportedly said, "Gentlemen, I did not harm a single hair on that fair lady's head." (West, John Foster (April 2002). The Ballad of Tom Dula: The Documented Story Behind the Murder of Laura Foster. Parkway Publishers. ISBN 1-887905-55-3.)
"In 1868 a man named Tom Dula (pronounced Dooley) was hanged in Statesville, N.C. after being convicted of murdering his lover, Laura Foster, in 1866.
The execution wasn’t the end of Tom Dula’s story. For generations rumors, conspiracies, and a hit song have swirled around the crime and its fallout.
As the story goes, the young Tom Dula was romantically involved with a woman named Ann Melton prior to enlisting as a confederate soldier in 1862. After the Civil War, he returned to Wilkes County, N.C. and resumed his affair with the now married Ann Melton, while also becoming romantically involved with her cousin Laura Foster.
In the spring of 1866, Laura Foster’s body was found in a shallow grave days after she’d been stabbed in the chest. Dula was arrested in Tennessee and returned to North Carolina for trial. His highly publicized case was tried, convicted, temporarily overturned, and ultimately upheld.
Legend has it that the actual perpetrator of the murder was Dula’s other lover Ann Melton.
The mythology around Tom Dula’s story reached new heights in 1958 when The Kingston Trio recorded and released to great critical and commercial success “Tom Dooley,” a traditional murder ballad about the incident.
Now a part of the canon of American folk music, the recording of “Tom Dooley” that started it all was captured by Frank and Anne Warner, two song-collectors who recorded a carpenter named Frank Proffitt singing the song in Beech Mountain, N.C. in 1938. Many have gone on to record and cover the murder ballad, including North Carolina flatpicking legend Doc Watson, who released his version in 1964.
In a poignant twist of music and historic lore, Doc Watson’s great grandmother allegedly heard Ann Melton confess to the murder on her deathbed in 1874."
"As he stood on the gallows facing death, Dula reportedly said, "Gentlemen, I did not harm a single hair on that fair lady's head." (West, John Foster (April 2002). The Ballad of Tom Dula: The Documented Story Behind the Murder of Laura Foster. Parkway Publishers. ISBN 1-887905-55-3.)
The Legend Behind North Carolina’s Most Famous Murder Ballad
In 1868 a man named Tom Dula (pronounced Dooley) was hanged in Statesville, N.C. after being convicted of murdering his lover, Laura Foster, in 1866. The execution wasn’t the end of Tom Dula’s story. For generations rumors, conspiracies, and a hit song have swirled around the crime and its fallout.
www.ncarts.org
donbosco
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Here’s an example of a ‘Double’ among the North Carolina Historical Markers. There is a marker for Captain Johnston Blakeley on Chicken Bridge in Chatham County, or was the last I drove that way, but I have long had a haunting memory of a Blakeley marker placed in a urban setting (I used to think it might have been in Pittsboro but no). And so there IS one (or was), in the heart of downtown Wilmington at 3rd Street and Princess, also the location of the famous Thalian Hall there.
Here’s the link for the Chatham Marker: http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?MarkerId=H-10
And here is one for the Wilmington one: http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?MarkerId=D-37
Interestingly the Chatham marker went up in 1937 but the Wilmington remembrance had to wait until 1949. I must have seen this one during some long ago trek to the beach. But don’t go looking for it today - it was damaged, taken down, and has not been restored.
The Wilmington Blakeley was probably hit by a truck.
Here’s ‘The Rest of the Story.’ #OTD (May 1) in 1814 ‘The Wasp’ set sail commanded by Johnston Blakeley of Rockrest, Chatham County (and @UNC) with the mission to harass the British navy and shipping (War of 1812). Many victories followed but ‘The Wasp’ was lost at sea - Blakeley was honored posthumously.
See here: https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../johnston-blakeley-war-of-1812...
Also see NCPedia for a full account of the story of Blakeley and the exploits of ‘The Wasp.’ https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/blakeley-johnston
As a student (1797-99) at UNC he headed the Philanthropic Society and his portrait hangs in New West Hall on campus there.
In his honor a poem was penned and published in The North Carolina Magazine in 1855, Volume 3.
No more shall Blakeley's thunder roar,
Upon the stormy deep;
Far distant from Columbia's shore,
His tombless ruins sleep;
But long Columbia's song shall tell
How Blakeley fought, how Blakeley fell.
Here’s the link for the Chatham Marker: http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?MarkerId=H-10
And here is one for the Wilmington one: http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?MarkerId=D-37
Interestingly the Chatham marker went up in 1937 but the Wilmington remembrance had to wait until 1949. I must have seen this one during some long ago trek to the beach. But don’t go looking for it today - it was damaged, taken down, and has not been restored.
The Wilmington Blakeley was probably hit by a truck.
Here’s ‘The Rest of the Story.’ #OTD (May 1) in 1814 ‘The Wasp’ set sail commanded by Johnston Blakeley of Rockrest, Chatham County (and @UNC) with the mission to harass the British navy and shipping (War of 1812). Many victories followed but ‘The Wasp’ was lost at sea - Blakeley was honored posthumously.
See here: https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../johnston-blakeley-war-of-1812...
Also see NCPedia for a full account of the story of Blakeley and the exploits of ‘The Wasp.’ https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/blakeley-johnston
As a student (1797-99) at UNC he headed the Philanthropic Society and his portrait hangs in New West Hall on campus there.
In his honor a poem was penned and published in The North Carolina Magazine in 1855, Volume 3.
No more shall Blakeley's thunder roar,
Upon the stormy deep;
Far distant from Columbia's shore,
His tombless ruins sleep;
But long Columbia's song shall tell
How Blakeley fought, how Blakeley fell.
donbosco
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- 2,831
#OTD in 1970: Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandy Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller.
The Columbus Dispatch: Local News, Politics & Sports in Columbus, OH
Get the latest breaking news, sports, entertainment and obituaries in Columbus, OH from The Columbus Dispatch.
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While not an opinion my parents or grandparents expressed, at the time I remember a lot of talk that if this had happened earlier and more often, then the country would have been better off. I was surprised at who I heard it from and made a mental note of those expressing that opinion. I have come to believe that the National Guard soldier were not universally evil. But there was a subset among them who had no business being handed live ammunition. Once the firing starts, it become infectious. When I was in the Army, I was relieved when I found out the highly controlled conditions under which live rounds were issued. Live rounds should have never been issued. That live rounds were issued was a symptom of a problem far worse than demonstrating students. Not trying to excuse the inexcusible, but if the ROTC building had not been burned down two days earlier, I don't think shots would have been fired on May 4th.
#OTD in 1970: Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Sandy Scheuer and Jeffrey Miller.
The Columbus Dispatch: Local News, Politics & Sports in Columbus, OH
Get the latest breaking news, sports, entertainment and obituaries in Columbus, OH from The Columbus Dispatch.
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