Before Their Time

Battle of Little Big Horn pitted Custer against Crazy Horse

George Armstrong Custer and Crazy Horse were among the most revered leaders of their times.

Custer had distinguished himself on the battlefields of the Civil War as a crafty strategist and bold leader. He was also seen as insufferably vain and preoccupied with perpetuating a mythical legacy.

Crazy Horse was seen as a brave leader and fierce fighter whose sole motivation was to halt the white man's encroachment on Native American lands and to preserve his tribe's way of life.

It was almost inevitable that their paths would cross as Custer was tasked with rounding up and relocating the Plains Indians that Crazy Horse had vowed to protect. That meeting came at Little Big Horn, Montana, on June 25, 1976. As a result, neither man would live to see his 38th birthday.

George Armstrong Custer's father intended for his son to become a preacher but the younger Custer had different ideas. Following high school, Custer tried teaching but longed to do something more adventurous. He eventually landed at West Point where he graduated 34th in his class of 34 cadets. The Army - desperate for officers after the Civil War erupted - graduated Custer's class a full year early, in 1861.

It was while serving as a junior staff officer in the Union cavalry under Major General George B. McClellan, that Custer first made a name for himself. 

After his commander hesitated while considering a risky river crossing at a point of undetermined depth, Custer dashed to the middle of the river on his horse and turned to his astonished commander, shouting "That's how deep it is. Mr. General!" The crossing and battle were successful, launching Custer's high-profile career.

He later became the protege of Major General Alfred Pleasonton, who gave Custer his first command. Custer - an athletic-looking 6-foot-tall man who refrained from smoking and drinking alcohol - adopted a flashy, personalized uniform style that included a red cravat. His adoration for the spotlight created a love-hate relationship with the men under his command, who detested his showmanship but applauded his willingness to lead attacks.

His vanity earned him the derisive nickname of "Ringlets," a reference to  his long, curling, cinnamon-scented blond hair but, because of his physical stamina and strict discipline, he was more commonly referred to as "Iron Butt" or "Hard Ass" by those under his command.

Three days prior to the Battle of Gettysburg, 23-year-old Custer was given a battlefield promotion from captain to brigadier general of the volunteers, making him one of the youngest Union Army generals. Custer became known for the "Custer Dash," a tactic that included Custer leading his Michigan Brigade into battle aboard his mount while delivering a full-throated "Michigan yell," often startling the rebel forces.

At Hunterstown, such a charge led to Custer falling from his wounded horse only to be rescued by one of his troops. By war's end, it was reported that 11 horses had been shot out from under Custer. Near Gettysburg, however, a Custer dash was credited with foiling a Confederate assault, although Custer's loss of 257 men was the most of any Union cavalry brigade at Gettysburg.

It was Custer's division that blocked the retreat of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on the final days of the war and accepted the first flag of truce from a rebel commander. Custer was present at Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House and was later presented the table on which the surrender was signed.

Custer assumed his permanent rank of captain after the war and considered leaving the Army for a career in banking, mining or politics but instead assumed the top position in the Soldiers and Sailors Union before being appointed a lieutenant colonel in the cavalry at Fort Riley, Kansas. There he took part in an 1867 campaign against the Cheyenne Indians.

Custer was court martialed after the campaign, accused of going AWOL to see his wife. Although he was suspended for a year, the suspension was lifted early so he could resume fighting in the Indian Wars. In 1868 he led the cavalry against the Cheyenne in the Battle of Washita River in the Dakota Terrritory.

Although Custer reported killing 103 Cheyenne warriors and 875 Indian ponies in that batttle, he neglected to report his relationship with Mo-nah-se-tah, daughter of Cheyenne chief Little Rock, who was killed in the skirmish. Two members of Custer's unit later reported that Custer married Mo-nah-se-tah after the battle and Cheyenne oral history says that union produced a child, although some historians claim that the child's father was actually Custer's brother, Thomas.

Custer remained in the Dakota Territory until 1871 when he was re-assigned to Kentucky. He returned to Dakota in 1873 and in 1874 he led an expedition into the Black Hills. It was Custer's announcement that gold had been discovered in the region that triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and heightened tensions between the U.S. and Plains Indians. President Grant ordered the Indians to report to their designated reservations by January 31, 1876, or be considered hostile.

But Sitting Bull, chief of the Sioux tribe, led a resistance against the intrusion into Native American holy lands. In the spring of 1876, he summoned area tribes to a gathering that eventually encamped on the banks of the Little Big Horn where they considered their options in their battle against U.S. forces. Crazy Horse was among the 2,000 warriors at the assemblage.

Crazy Horse was the third male in his Oglala Sioux Native American family to carry that name. His future as a tribal chief was foretold when he stole horses from the rival Crow tribe before he was 13 years old. He went on to become known as a fierce fighter in the escalating battle against encroaching white American settlers.

In 1873, he had led an attack on a survey party led by Custer. On June 17, 1876, while en route to Sitting Bull's gathering, Crazy Horse's forces of some 1,200 Cheyenne and Oglala warriors turned back soldiers led by General George Crook, who were advancing on Sitting Bull's encampment.

Meanwhile, Custer's scouts had located the Sitting Bull camp and Custer deployed his forces in three batallions in an effort to surround the Indians and cut off possible avenues of retreat.

From the first wave of attacking soldiers on June 25, the attack went poorly as the Indians repelled their advances. Cavalry skirmish lines failed to hold against the Indians, who quickly broke through. Many soldiers panicked and dropped their weapons. As the soldiers fell, the Indians retrieved their weapons and used them against the soldiers.

Surviving soldiers killed their horses to use as protection against a final attack but to no avail. All the soldiers, including Custer, were killed.

When the battlefield was discovered two days later, army soldiers reported that the bodies had been stripped, scalped and mutilated. Custer had been shot twice - above the heart and in the head. The soldiers' remains were buried in a shallow grave but some were later retrieved for re-burial. Custer was buried with full military honors at West Point on October 10, 1877.

Sitting Bull fled to Canada after the battle, but Crazy Horse remained as the U.S. Army continued its pursuit of the rebellious Indians. Several battles followed through the winter of 1876-77 before Crazy Horse decided the best option for his people was to surrender.

For four months, he and his tribe lived in a village near Fort Robinson, Nebraska. He was arrested in September 1877 when he took his wife, who was ill with tuberculosis, on an unauthorized trip to her parents' village.

After he returned to Fort Robinson, he was stabbed with a bayonet during an altercation. He died later that night. According to Native American oral history, Crazy Horse was defiant to the end, dying on the floor instead of on the white man's cot.

Custer's legacy took a bashing after the Battle at Little Big Horn where critics have alleged that his stubborn style of leadership led to several tactical errors that resulted in the death of every white person who was there. That included both of his younger brothers - Thomas and Boston Custer - and a 45-year-old Associated Press reporter, Mark Kellogg, who is generally considered the first AP correspondent to die in the line of duty.

Custer, who is still considered a controversial figure today, went to great lengths to mold his image in the most positive light possible while he was alive. For several years prior to his death, he was a regular contributor to Galaxy magazine with articles about life on the plains. Several of these articles were assembled in a book in 1874, My Life On the Plains. He often invited journalists on his campaigns and wrote articles on hunting for several magazines. Just months before his death, he met with a publisher about publishing his life story.

His wife, Elizabeth, who often accompanied Custer on his expeditions, wrote at least three books about her late husband following his death.

But perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Little Big Horn will be that of Crazy Horse. In 1948, sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski - who had come to America from Poland to work on the presidential mountain-carving project at Mount Rushmore - began work on the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills. Although Ziolkowski died in 1982, the massive mountain-shaping project continues today. When completed, the head of Crazy Horse will be larger than the combined size of all four presidents' heads on Mount Rushmore.

George Armstrong Custer, U.S. Army
Born: December 5, 1839
Died: June 25, 1876 (age 36)

Crazy Horse, Oglala Sioux chief
Born: early 1840s
Died: September 5, 1877

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Karen Silkwood: Scheming malcontent or innocent victim?

Karen Silkwood knew something was wrong.

After hours of grinding and polishing plutonium pellets through a protective glovebox, she checked for radioactive exposure. After a modest positive result, the glovebox was replaced. By the time she left the Kerr-McGee plant where she worked in Cimarron, Oklahoma, five hours later, she was clean.

But over the next two days, tests showed confusing patterns of radioactive contamination. Within days, Silkwood, a roommate and boyfriend were flown to Los Alamos, New Mexico, for further testing and within a week, Silkwood would be dead - not from the radiation, but from injuries suffered in a suspicious automobile accident.

Silkwood's death would spark a heated debate over nuclear safety as well as a lengthy court case. It would also inspire a movie that earned numerous Academy Award nominations, including for Meryl Streep (best actress) and Cher (best supporting actress).

Karen Silkwood was a native Texan and a straight A student in high school, where she was the only girl in a chemistry class. She earned a scholarship which she used to study medical technology at Lamar College in Beaumont, Texas.

But Silkwood quit school after her freshman year to begin a common-law marriage to Bill Meadows, a California transplant who found work in the Texas oilfields. But, three children later, the marriage dissolved and Silkwood left her children behind to find work in Oklahoma City in 1972.

She landed a job as a laboratory analyst at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site near Crescent, Oklahoma, where she began work making plutonium pellets for fuel rods to be used in nuclear reactors.

Kerr-McGee started as an oil company founded by former Oklahoma politician Bob Kerr in 1929. After luring Phillips Petroleum chief geologist Dean McGee in 1946, Kerr-McGee was born. Merging Kerr's skill at securing lucrative contracts through his political connections with McGee's nose for oil, the company was solidly in the Fortune 500 in the 1970s. Since beginning uranium production at Cimarron in 1965, it was the largest private-sector uranium producer in the world by the time Silkwood went to work there.

Silkwood, the granddaughter of a Texas oil worker and union member, recognized the value of a union, even in a right to work state like Oklahoma, and joined the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). Within months, the union went on strike. Although the vast majority of union members abandoned the picket lines during the months-long strike, Silkwood was one of 20 who stuck it out. She was rewarded in August 1974 by becoming the first woman to be elected to the OCAW bargaining committee and was put in charge of health and safety.

As Silkwood began documenting the spills and contamination she observed in Cimarron, which had a turnover rate of 60 percent and was manned by many poorly trained workers, another member of the bargaining committee complained to officers of OCAW International about working conditions at the plant. At the end of September 1974, the committee's three members flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with union officials.

There they were told for the first time that plutonium was a carcinogen. Since Kerr-McGee was pressing for decertification of the OCAW due to its dwindling membership. national union officials saw an opportunity to resurrect its withering local. The first step was to warn Cimarron employees of the serious dangers of the material they were producing. The second was to take the damaging information Silkwood was collecting and give it to a New York Times reporter to generate public support for the workers' plight.

On October 10, 1974, about 100 Kerr-McGee workers attended a union-sanctioned workshop about the toxicity of plutonium. One week later, workers defeated the Kerr-McGee proposal to decertify the union by an 80-61 vote. But workers still lacked leverage in bargaining sessions. Union officials figured that a page one story in the New York Times might give them the muscle to give workers some much-needed plant reforms.

Silkwood was encouraged to continue collecting evidence against the company before meeting with New York Times reporter David Burnham.

On November 5, after grinding and polishing plutonium pellets that would be used in fuel rods, a routine check showed that Silkwood had been exposed to radiation. After showering with Clorox and Tide detergent, she was determined to be clean and was sent home with instructions to collect urine and fecal samples for the next five days.

On November 6, Silkwood arrived at the Kerr-McGee plant early to prepare paperwork for a bargaining meeting. Even though she had not worked with plutonium since the previous day, she was found to be even more contaminated than the day before. A painful shower with abrasive chemicals designed to remove the outer layer of skin followed, but the contamination remained.

When she arrived for work on November 7, Silkwood immediately reported to the Health Physics Office where it was determined that she was dangerously contaiminated. After a check of the plant and Silkwood's car came up negative, a team of Kerr-McGee investigators headed to Silkwood's apartment.

Investigators in full protective gear found intense contamination, especially in the kitchen and bathroom, but Silkwood's roommate and co-worker, Sherri Ellis, only had low-level exposure to radiation. Suspecting that Silkwood may be exposing herself intentionally, Kerr-McGee investigators took advantage of the opportunity to read Silkwood's diaries and other documents found in the apartment and dispatched company lawyers to question her.

At the recommendation of union officials and Atomic Energy Commission investigators, Silkwood, Ellis and Silkwood's boyfriend, Drew Stephens, were flown to Los Alamos, New Mexico, on November 10 for two days of intense testing. Although Ellis and Stephens were found to be relatively clean, Silkwood was determined to have higher - but not life-threatening - levels of contamination. She was reassured that despite the contamination she should go on to live a normal life.

But Silkwood, a heavy smoker with asthma who had lost 20 pounds in recent weeks and was down to 94 pounds, wasn't so sure. Plus, her cover as a union investigator was blown. Union officials decided to move up her meeting with Times reporter Burnham. It was set for 8:30 p.m. on November 13, 1974, at the Holiday Inn in Oklahoma City, about 30 miles from the Cimarron plant.

Silkwood and Ellis were re-assigned to new jobs when they reported for work on Nov. 13. Silkwood also attended a union bargaining session before a union meeting at the Hub Cafe began at 5:30 p.m. After the union meeting, Silkwood confided to a friend and co-worker that she had been contaminated and that she feared she would later contract cancer. She also said that she had photos of defective welds and documents proving falsification of records by Kerr-McGee.

Clutching a folder containing the photos and documents, Silkwood climbed into her white 1973 Honda Civic around 7:15 p.m. and started driving to her appointment with Burnham.

Burnham arrived at the Holiday Inn around 8:30, where he joined union official Steve Wodka and Drew Stephens. When Silkwood failed to arrive by 10 p.m., Wodka began making phone calls. That's when he learned the shocking news: Silkwood had been killed in an automobile accident on a two-lane rural road.

The trio immediately headed to the accident scene and found the accident investigator, Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Rick Fagen. Fagen ultimately determined that Silkwood crashed after falling asleep, possibly while under the influence of drugs. He found sedatives and evidence of marijuana use - but no documents - in Silkwood's car.

Suspecting foul play, the union hired its own investigator, A.O. Pipkin, a former policeman who had investigated more that 2,000 accidents. Pipkin challenged the notion that Silkwood was unconscious before the crash. First he disputed the driving pattern of the crash itself. Silkwood's car veered off the road to the left, then traveled in a straight line for 240 feet before slamming into a concrete culvert. Pipkin argued that sleepy drivers usually drift off the road to the right and crash or roll immediately.

Furthermore, Pipkin argued, the steering wheel was bent in on two sides, suggesting that Silkwood was bracing herself for impact at the time of the crash.

Then there was the problem of the dents. Silkwood's car had dents on its rear bumper, marks the Oklahoma Highway Patrol attributed to towing the car out of the culvert after the crash. A microscopic examination ordered by Pipkin, however, proved otherwise. That examination said the dent was fresh and contained paint chips from another vehicle. Pipkin's final analysis was that someone in another car had forced Silkwood from the road.

An autopsy the next day showed that Silkwood's bloodstream had twice the recommended dosage of Quaalude necessary for causing drowsiness and that even more undissolved Quaalude was in her stomach. Subsequent tissue analysis revealed that she had serious recent plutonium contamination with the highest concentrations in her gastrointestinal tract, indicating that she had ingested plutonium shortly before her death.

Although Kerr-McGee tried to paint Silkwood as a vindictive plutonium smuggler who infected herself to make the company look bad, an Atomic Energy Commission report released less than two months after her death said that isotope studies showed that Silkwood never had ready access to the type of plutonium found in her body.

Reporter Burnham wrote several stories about the Silkwood case in the weeks following the accident, but the story had largely run its course by January 1975. Meanwhile, Kerr-McGee ran its own investigation, using lie detector tests to question employees, reassigning local union officials and closing down operations for two weeks around Christmas 1974, leaving employees without income for that period.

National union official Tony Mazzocchi, an environmental activist who was a major architect of the Occupational Safety & Health Act and had been involved in the Silkwood case from the beginning, vowed to continue his investigative efforts into what he considered a murder case despite what the union viewed as intimidation on the part of Kerr-McGee.

Despite his own serious automobile accident on January 17, 1975, Mazzocchi was instrumental in getting major Silkwood articles published in two magagazines - Ms. and Rolling Stone. National Public Radio also did an update on the case and the National Organization of Women used the Silkwood case as a rallying cry in its "Stop Violence Against Women" campaign.

Although the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plant was shut down in 1975, the company was sued by the Silkwood estate in 1979. That trial resulted in a $10.5 million award to the family, but the Federal Court of Appeals reduced the award to a mere $5,000. After further legal wrangling, the parties agreed to a $1.38 million settlement in 1986, with $810,000 reportedly going to legal fees.

Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen collaborated on the screenplay for the 1983 movie, Silkwood, that was nominated for five Academy Awards. In preparation for her starring role, actress Meryl Streep was given recordings of union conversations with Karen Silkwood. The result was a best acting nomination for Streep, although many of Silkwood's friends thought Cher - who played Silkwood's roommate in the film and earned a best supporting actress nomination - more closely resembled Silkwood.

One of the great ironies of the case is that a December 7, 1985, story in the New York Times reported that the fuel rods questioned by Silkwood in 1974 turned out to be "among the best Kerr-McGee performers" and "posed no hazard while often exceeding contract specifications for useful life and power production."

Defenders of Silkwood maintain that it was still proper to blow the whistle since the intent to cover up and misrepresent flaws was the real problem from the start.

On June 14, 1995, Silkwood's ex-boyfriend, Drew Stephens, was practicing acrobatic loops in his plane outside of El Reno, Oklahoma, when the plane careened through a wheat field and burst into flames, killing him instantly. He was 45 years old.

Karen Gay Silkwood. plant worker
Born: February 19, 1946
Died: November 13, 1974 (age 28)

Here is the first part of a series of videos about Karen Silkwood. You can find the rest here: part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

 

Skydiver Piantanida sought record in skies over Iowa

Nick Piantanida was on a mission, a mission that took him over Iowa at an altitude higher than anyone had ever achieved by a balloon anywhere.

It also cost him his life.

Piantanida's pursuit of a world record for a high altitude dive from the sky brought him to the Midwest in the mid-1960s. His reputation as a risk-taking daredevil preceded him.

After a stint in the U.S. Army, Piantanida and buddy Walt Tomashoff planned an expedition to Venezuela where they hoped to become the first to climb Devil’s Mountain. Since neither had any climbing experience, they bought a book on the subject and practiced by day by climbing on the Hudson River Palisades above Hoboken, New Jersey, while working in a can factory at night.

Although someone else had climbed the mountain by the time they reached Venezuela, Piantanida and Tomashoff managed to become the first to climb the mountain by a more difficult route along Angel Falls that was thought to be unclimbable.

Piantanida returned to the United States with some exotic animals and tried to parlay that into an exotic animal business. That business never took off so Piantanida worked a variety of jobs in his native New Jersey to support his wife and growing family. Along the way, he acquired a taste for skydiving at Lakewood Sport Parachute Center on the Jersey Shore.

It was a tough crowd that took up the sport in its early days, before steerable parachutes and rip-stop jumpsuits. Equipment malfunctions were frequent, as were fatalities. Rough landings and broken bones were common. While many jumpers had military experience, Piantanida had to start from scratch.

Early on, Piantanida decided he wanted to take aim at the highest, longest skydiving jump in history. The longest free-fall parachute up to that time was the 80,380-foot descent by Russian Yevgeni Andreyev on November 1, 1962. On the same day, another Russian, Pyotr Dolgov, who ascended in the same capsule as Andreyev, attempted a jump from 10,000 feet higher but struck his helmet as he exited, cracking his visor, which led to rapid depressurization and his death,

The highest jump on record was from 102,800 feet by Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger Jr. on August 16, 1960, although it wasn't recognized since it wasn't officially monitored by an international organization. Kittinger's jump also set records for longest free-fall (4 minutes 36 seconds) and fastest speed by a human being through the atmosphere (614 miles per hour).

For two years, Piantanida pushed his project, criss-crossing the country doing 435 exhibition jumps, working wherever he could, seeking colunteers and sponsors and promoting his project through interviews with reporters. Once the Air Force offered training facilities, the David Clark Company offered to create a pressurized suit and Raven Industries of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, offered a balloon, Piantanida's Project Strato-Jump was born.

On his first jump attempt on October 22, 1965, a wind shear tore off the top of his balloon, forcing him to bail out at 16,000 feet and land in a St. Paul, Minnesota, city dump.

Piantanida prepared for his second attempt with a free fall from a plane at 16,000 feet in temps of minus-30 degrees from over Rock Rapids, Iowa, on January 28, 1966. All was good for his formal attempt by balloon, which would take him from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to somewhere around Estherville, Iowa.

All was going well on the morning of February 2, 1966, as Piantanida's balloon carried him to the world-record altitude of 123,500 feet (21.21 miles) above Estherville. But, as Piantanida stood in the doorway of the gondola ready to leap, he couldn't disconnect his oxygen hose. The decision was made from the ground to separate the gondola from the balloon and let it free fall some 25,000 feet before the cargo chute would deploy and safely return the gondola to earth.

Piantanida's bulky suit kept him from re-attaching his seat belt so he was forced to stand in the doorway for the entire descent. It was feared that the force of the deploying cargo chute might forcefully eject him into space or disconnect his oxygen hose but neither event occurred and Piantanida was successfully rescued.

At a subsequent news conference, Piantanida expressed frustration at the malfunction that he could have fixed "with a $1.25 wrench." He also promised to try again.

That third attempt came on Sunday, May 1, 1966, when he again lifted off from Sioux Falls after promising his wife that he'd be back in time for 11 a.m. Mass. He also promised that it would be his last jump.

The ascent was going well when at 57,000 feet, the ground crew heard a "whooshing" sound and a brief "Emergency, emer..." from Piantanida, whose face mask had depressurized. The ground crew immediately cut the gondola loose from the balloon and it began what would be an agonizing 26-minute descent.

After the still-unconscious Piantanida was removed from the gondola 17 miles northwest of Spirit Lake, Iowa, he was rushed to a hospital in Worthington, Minnesota. He was later flown to Hennepin County General Hospital for treatment in one of the country's few hypobaric chambers at the time. Doctors felt he had a chance for survival but brain damage was inevitable. A month later, though, they described him as being in a "waking coma" and transfered him to the National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Maryland.

Piantanida was later transfered to the Veterans Adminstration Hospital at Philadelphia where he died on August 29, 1966. He never regained consciousness.

The high altitude mark that Piantanida was seeking to break was finally broken 46 years later by Austrian Felix Baumgartner on October 14, 2012, when he jumped from a height of 128,100 feet and became the first human to break the sound barrier outside of a vehicle by reaching 834 miles per hour. Baumgartner's free fall time of 4 minutes and 19 seconds was just 17 seconds shy of Kittinger's 1960 jump.

Nicholas Piantanida, daredevil
Born: August 15, 1932
Died: August 29, 1966 (age 34)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Robert Falcon Scott: Explorer loses race to pole - and his life

Robert Falcon Scott was ambitious, competitive and destined for a spot among British aristocracy.

But in the end, his ambition and competitive drive - and, some critics say, his poor decisions and lack of leadership skills - cost him more than a knighthood. It also cost him and four of his companions their lives.

From an early age, Scott and his younger brother, Archibald, were guided toward military careers, following their grandfather and four uncles into the British service. At age 13, Scott began his military career as a naval cadet. He caught the eye of Clements Markham, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society.

In 1897, Scott was a 29-year-old torpedo officer when his father died, leaving his mother and two of her daughters dependent on Scott and brother Archie's incomes. It all fell on Scott a year later when Archie died of typhoid fever.

Concerned with scant propects of promotion, Scott was intrigued when he learned that Markham and the RGS were planning an Antarctic expedition. Within two years, Scott earned a promotion to commander and was named leader of Discovery Expedition that set sail for Antarctica on March 11, 1902.

The expedition was a success, highlighted by a march that took Scott and two companions within 530 miles of the South Pole. By the time the explorers returned to England in September 1904, they were hailed as heroes. Scott was awarded several medals and was promoted to captain. He spent more than a year attending receptions and giving lectures before returning to naval service.

He married in 1908 and became a father in 1909, not long after he announced that he would be heading up a new Antarctic expedition aboard the ship Terra Nova in 1910.

Although the Terra Nova expedition was officialy designated as a scientific trip, Scott made it clear that his No. 1 goal was to be the first man to reach the South Pole. Fellow Brit Ernest Shackleton had recently gotten within 100 miles of the pole. Scott soon learned he was in a race to achieve that feat as Norwegian explorer Roald Amundson was leading a similar expedition at the same time.

In preparation for the expedition, Scott's crew gathered ponies and motorized sledges for the arduous trek. Before reaching Antarctica, however, the Terra Nova was trapped in ice for 20 days. Upon arrival, the largest of the motorized sledges broke through the ice and sank into the sea.

Scott and his crew began their march to the pole on November 1, 1911, following the same route earlier taken by Shackleton. The 12 men were broken into groups, with only the five-man group headed by Scott assigned to reach the pole with the other groups in support roles for the nearly 1,800-mile trip to the pole and back.

One by one the ponies died or were shot as they were unable to cope with the deep, soft snow, leaving the men to pull the 200-pound sledges by themselves in snow that sometimes limited their advances to a few miles a day. By January 3, 1912, only Scott's group continued toward the pole.

As they approached the pole on the afternoon of January 18, they spotted an apparent cairn. By the time they got there, they saw what it really was - a small tent with a Norwegian flag attached to a bamboo pole. As Scott wrote in his journal: "This told us the whole story. The Norwegians have forestalled us and are first at the Pole."

Indeed, Amundson had reached the pole more than a month earlier, on December 14, 1911. Nevertheless, Scott wrote: "We built a cairn, put up our poor slighted Union Jack and photographed ourselves - mighty cold work all of it."

The team rested a day before starting its trip back to the base camp. Within a week, team members suffered snow blindness and frostbite. They became lost at one point and the weather deteriorated with gale-force winds.

The first casualty came on February 16 when Edgar Evans fell behind the others and froze to death. Lawrence Oates, who had intense pain from his frost-bitten feet, simply gave up on March 5 and left his tent in a blizzard where he died from exposure. Scott wrote: "We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to disuade him, we knew it was an act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit and assuredly the end is not far."

On March 19, the remaining three team members - Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers - made camp in another raging blizzard. It would be their last camp. The last entry in Scott's journal is dated March 29, 1912: "Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far."

It would be eight months before their bodies would be found. They were covered by a cairn topped with a cross made from skis. It is estimated that 75 feet of snow and ice now cover their frozen tomb, which has moved some 30 miles from its original location. Within 300 years, it is estimated, their bodies will fall into the Ross Sea, perhaps in an iceberg.

Robert Falcon Scott, explorer
Born: June 6, 1868
Died: circa March 29, 1912 (age 43)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon. 

 

 

 

 

 

One of rock's most dangerous jobs: Playing keyboards for the Grateful Dead

It's sometimes called "the curse of the Grateful Dead keyboardists."

The first four keyboard players for the famed rock group died untimely deaths - three of them before they'd reached their 38th birthdays.

Without Ron McKernan, the Dead might not have happened at all. It was McKernan who first suggested forming the band that began as the Warlocks and evolved into the Grateful Dead. In the band's earliest years, McKernan acted as front man, playing the harmonica and keyboards while adding gritty blues vocals.

The son of an R&B disc jockey who moonlighted as a boogie woogie piano player around his San Bruno, California, home base, McKernan's drinking and biker image led his expulsion from Palo Alto High School around the same time he met Jerry Garcia, who played for a local band, the Zodiacs.

Although McKernan was a mediocre keyboard player and had a rough, unpolished voice, Garcia was impressed with his rough-edge persona. Garcia - who tagged McKernan with the nickname "Pigpen" -  eventually added him to his band, which evolved into Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Band, then the Warlocks and, finally, the Grateful Dead. In 1965 - as the band was shifting away from folk music - McKernan suggested they go electric.

That was just one change for the band, however. While Garcia and most of his Dead bandmates started experimenting with psychedelic drugs, McKernan elected instead to stay with his Thunderbird wine and Southern Comfort.

McKernan's drinking forced his bandmates to recruit some backup help to fill in for their increasingly unreliable keyboard player. But whenever possible, the Dead called on McKernan to close  their shows with Turn On Your Lovelight, the Bobby Womack song that McKernan had transformed into what famed critic Ralph Gleason once referred to as "a one-man blues project ... building to climax after climax."

But McKernan's hard-drinking life finally caught up with him. He was hospitalized with liver trouble in 1971 and his failing health caused himto leave the band for good in June 1972. On March 8, 1973, he was found dead in his apartment at age 27 of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage.

Keith Godchaux, the backup who filled in for the ailing McKernan in 1971, became his permanent replacement in 1972. A Seattle, Washington, native, Godchaux grew up in the East Bay area of Concord, California, and had played with Dave Mason before Garcia invited him into the Dead. Godchaux's wife, Donna, also joined the group.

Godchaux spent most of his first three years with the Dead on the road, then spent the next three years mostly on the sidelines as the band took a break. He filled the time with recording projects with his wife and Garcia. In 1978, the Dead hit the road again where Godchaux succumbed to  anxiety. Bouts of depression and heavy drug use followed and, after a few shows where he nodded of at the keyboards and Donna sang off-key, both were booted out of the band in 1979.

Keith and Donna formed a new group, the Heart of Gold Band. After a night of rehearsals at the Dead's Front Street Studio, Godchaux and a friend drove from a toll plaza into the back of a flatbed truck. He died at age 32 two days later from injuries sustained in the crash.

Godchaux's place in the Grateful Dead had been taken by Brent Mydland, a Bay Area musical veteran who caught Garcia's attention as keyboardist for a band that Dead guitarist Bob Weir had put together for a solo project.

Mydland was a better fit for the band than his predecessor and contributed many songs to the Dead catalogue, including Far From Me, Easy to Love You, Tons of Steel and I Will Take You Home. During his tenure with the Dead, Mydland also took part in some of the band's many side bands.

On July 26, 1990, shortly after completing a summer tour with the Dead, Mydland died in his Lafayette, California, home of an accidental drug overdose. He was 37 years old.

Bruce Hornsby was a temporary fill-in on keyboards for the Dead until another Bay Area music veteran, Vince Welnick stepped in as Mydland's replacement. Welnick, a former member of avant garde group The Tubes, had also played for Todd Rundgren before joining the Dead.

In 1995, though, Welnick was diagnosed first with throat cancer, then emphysema. While he beat the cancer, the emphysema was more persistent. Coupled with the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia on August 9, 1995, Welnick was overcome by depression and attempted suicide while on tour with bandmate Bob Weir's RatDog Revue later that year.

Welnick left the band and never quite regained his footing. He died, apparently by suicide at his California home, at age 55 on June 2, 1996.

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, musician
Born: September 8, 1945
Died March 8, 1973 (age 27)

Keith Godchaux, musician
Born: July 19, 1948
Died: July 21, 1980 (age 32)

Brent Mydland, musician
Born: October 21, 1952
Died: July 1, 1990 (age 37)

Vince Welnick, musician
Born: February 21, 1951
Died: June 2, 2006 (age 55)

 

Here's McKernan performing his signature song:

 

Here's a rehearsal for Uncle John's Band that features Godchaux:

 

 

Here's Mydland performing Easy to Love You:

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marine Private Ira Hayes and the 'Iwo Jima Six'

Ira Hayes deserved to be proud of his military service.

As Marine Private Ira Hayes, a 22-year-old Pima Indian from Arizona, he survived the bloody battle to take the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese at the height of the South Pacific fighting during World War II and was one of six members of America's fighting forces captured in the iconic flag-raising image by photographer Joe Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945.

Yet, moments after he was cited as a true American hero by President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the dedication of the Iwo Jima monument in Washington, D.C., in 1954 and was asked by a reporter "How do you like the big celebration?," Hayes just hung his head and quietly replied, "I don't."

Hayes was more than a reluctant hero. Within three months, he was dead, an apparent victim of unsought celebrity. Of the six Americans forever captured by Rosenthal's lens, he was the fourth to die. Three of them never made it off the island alive.

Hayes didn't have to be there at all.

The eldest of six children born to a World War I veteran subsistence farmer and devoutly religious mother in Arizona's Gila River Indian Community, Ira Hamilton Hayes was a quiet yet precocious child, learning to read and write English before age four. Hayes attended high school for just two years and worked as a carpenter and spent some time with the Civilian Conservation Corps before enlisting in the Marine Corps following the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor.

Hayes qualified as a parachutist and spent 11 months in combat in the South Pacific, earning the nickname of Chief Falling Cloud. After the parachute unit was disbanded in early 1944, Hayes signed on for another tour of duty and headed back to the South Pacific in September 1944.

On February 19, 1945, Hayes and others in the 5th Marine Division began their assault on Iwo Jima. Four days later, he was in the group that headed up Mt. Suribachi to plant the flag that has become such an American icon. That event did not stop the fighting that would claim half of the flag-planting crew.

Pennsylvanian Mike Strank was the first to die. It was Strank who led the five Marines and one Navy corpsman to the top of Mt. Suribachi to replace the first flag planted by U.S. forces with a larger one so "every Marine on this cruddy island can see it." On March 1, Sgt. Strank was killed by a mortar round as he was diagramming a battle plan in the sand.

Strank's second in command, Harlon Henry Block, a former high school football star from South Texas, briefly took over leadership of the unit but he, too, was struck down by a mortar blast just hours after Strank.

Franklin Sousley, a 19-year-old from Kentucky, was the third of the unit to die on Iwo Jima when he succumbed to  combat injuries on March 21. By the time Iwo Jima was won, more than 6,000 Americans and 20,000 Japanese were dead.

The three surviving members of the flag-raising unit - Hayes, fellow Marine Rene Gagnon and Navy Pharmacist's Mate John Bradley - were summoned back to the states in April where they were temporarily assigned to duties connected to the Seventh War Bond Drive.

They met with President Truman before beginning a 32-city tour where they were presented to the public as heroes in an effort to spur war bond sales. Hayes was not comfortable with his new role.

"How could I feel like a hero when only five men in my platoon of 45 survived?" he later lamented to a reporter. "Everywhere we went people shoved drinks in our hands and said 'You're a hero!' We knew we hadn't done that much but you couldn't tell them that."

Even after his honorable discharge in November 1945, Hayes could not escape his fame. In 1949, he, Gagnon and Bradley played themselves in the John Wayne movie, Sands of Iwo Jima. Hayes returned to his hometown in Arizona, but never fulfilled the promise he had shown as a youngster.

Suffering from what would be diagnosed today as post-traumatic stress disorder, Hayes turned to the bottle and was frequently in trouble with the law. He was arrested as many as 50 times on drinking-related charges. On Jan. 24, 1955, after Hayes was involved in a scuffle during a card game, Hayes was found dead near his home. He was later buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Hayes' story was documented in the 1961 film, The Outsider, with Tony Curtis portraying Hayes. His story was also popularized in the song, The Ballad of Ira Hayes, a big hit for Johnny Cash in 1964. The song was written by Peter LaFarge, a Native American of Pima heritage and military veteran of the Korean war. LeFarge also died young, at age 33 on Oct. 27, 1964. The cause of death is listed as a stroke but many friends believe it was a suicide.

The historic flag that was raised on Mt. Suribachi in 1945, was placed in the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Washington, D.C., in 2006. Filmmaker Clint Eastwood told the story of the battle for Iwo Jima in two 2006 films - Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Both received Oscar nominations.

Photographer Joe Rosenthal died in 2006 at the age of 94; Rene Gagnon died in Manchester, N.H., on October 12, 1979, at age 54 and John Bradley died in Antigo, Wisconsin, on Jan. 11, 1994, at age 70.

Ira Hamilton Hayes, U.S. Marine
Born: January 12, 1923, Sacaton, Arizona
Died: January 24, 1955, Bapchule, Arizona (age 32)

Here is a 3-minute mini-documentary about the flag-raising:

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon. 

 

Here is my favorite version of "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," by Kris Kristofferson:

 

Jean Harlow: Hollywood's original blonde bombshell

Jean Harlow was a sexpot, the original "blonde bombshell."

No wonder a portrait of Harlow lying on a bearskin rug was prominently displayed in Harry Anderson's office during the entire run of television's Night Court, some 50 years after her death.

Harlow recognized her sex appeal throughout her brief but flamboyant run as a Hollywood star, frequently telling interviewers of her penchant for wearing no underwear and sleeping in the nude. "Men like me because I don't wear a brassiere," Harlow famously said.

It is thus understandable that as famous as Harlow was as an actress, her enduring fame is also inextricably linked to her relationships to the men in her life.

Harlow was born Harlean Carpenter on March 3, 1911, in Kansas City, Missouri, to a dentist and his wife, Jean, who aspired to Hollywood stardom. Jean Carpenter divorced her husband and moved to Hollywood, but never caught on as an actress. She remarried and moved to Chicago with young Harlean in tow.

Young Harlean was a sickly child, contracting meningitis and scarlet fever. In 1927,  at age 16, she eloped with 23-year-old Charles McGrew and relocated to Beverly Hills. She soon began her film career, working up from an extra to bit parts. Adopting her mother's maiden name of Jean Harlow, she found work in at least 11 movies before divorcing McGrew in 1930.

Harlow was alleged to have dated mobster Abner "Longy" Zwillman, who reportedly gave Harlow expensive jewelry and a Cadillac and arranged a two-picture deal with  Columbia Pictures. Harlow also was the godmother of Millicent Siegel, daughter of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

Her first big movie break came in 1930 when Howard Hughes cast her in the lead of Hell's Angels, a film Hughes had first produced as a silent film three years earlier. Hughes loaned her out for a few more films - including Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde in 1931 - before selling her contract to MGM for $60,000.

Harlow - who used to apply an ice cube to her nipples before shooting a sexy scene - forced director Irving Thalberg to make 17 cuts to stem a dispute over morality issues wih the Motion Picture Production Code for her performance in Red-Headed Woman in 1932. The controversy continued despite the cuts and the publicity made the film a huge hit.

Thalberg's right-hand man, Paul Bern, was credited for negotiating the deal that brought Harlow to MGM. The 42-year-old Bern also managed to negotiate another deal with the budding blonde superstar - who was half his age -  as the pair wed on July 2, 1932.

Two months later, as Harlow was filming Red Dust with Clark Gable, Bern was found shot to death in the bathroom of the pair's home, a pistol at his side. Though the death was ruled a suicide, rumors swirled that it was murder. Bern's first wife, Dorothy Millette Bern, reportedly had met Harlow for the first time the day before Paul Bern's death. The day after Bern's death, his ex-wife jumped from the Delta King riverboat while traveling from San Francisco to Sacramento and drowned in Georgiana Slough.

Red Dust was a major hit and was followed by two more box-office successes in 1933 - Dinner at Eight and Bombshell, a feature loosely based on Harlow's real life. Lighting cameraman Hal Rosson's work in highlighting Harlow's platinum hair in Bombshell earned him high praise from critics and Harlow herself, who married Rosson on September 1, 1933, a union that lasted just six months.

Harlow, who had refused the lead in King Kong, went on a salary strike from MGM in 1934 and used her time off-screen to write a novel, Today is Tonight, which went unpublished until the 1960s. She also began an affair with popular actor William Powell that eventually led to their engagement.

In 1935, Harlow again found herself co-starring with Clark Gable, in China Seas. The duo would share star billing in two more movies in the next two years - Wife vs. Secretary (1936) and Saratoga (1937). In an only-in-Hollywood scene, Harlow attended the 1936 Academy Awards on the arm of Powell. They were accompanied by Gable and his newest love, Carole Lombard, who was Powell's ex-wife.

During the filming of Saratoga, Gable noticed that his co-star seemed to be gaining weight. His perception was accurate. Harlow was suffering from uremic failure, which caused her limbs to retain water and threatened to halt filming while Harlow was hospitalized for treatment.

But Harlow's kidneys continued to fail and Harlow died on June 7, 1937, at the age of 26. MGM boss Louis B. Mayer arranged a spectacular funeral that included superstar singing due Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald. Harlow was buried in the same gown she wore while co-starring with Powell a year earlier in Libeled Lady.

Powell purchased a private crypt in Glendale's Forest Lawn Cemetery lined with imported marble. Harlow left her entire $1 million estate to her mother.

Harlow, who was the first movie actress to be featured on a Life magazine cover in May 1937, appeared in 36 movies in her brief career. Saratoga - which was finished by using long shots of her double, Mary Dees - was the largest grossing film of 1937. Critic Graham Greene wrote that Harlow's "technique was the gangster's technique - she toted a beast like a man totes a gun."

Harlow's legacy has lasted long after her death. She ranked 22nd in the American Film Institute's "100 years, 100 Legends" list in June 1999 and was voted the 49th greatest movie star by Entertainment Weekly.

Jean Harlow (Harlean Carpenter), actress
Born: March 3, 1911
Died: July 7, 1937 (age 26)

For a nice, under 3-minute video that encapsulates Harlow's work, check this out:

 

  

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Maurice Stokes: One of the best players in NBA history

Maurice Stokes was one of the best players in NBA history. Right up there with Wilt. With MJ. With Larry, Magic or LeBron. Some of his contemporaries think he may have been the best ever.

We'll never know for sure since tragedy cut short his career after three sparkling seasons in an era when triple-threat stars like Mo were virtually unheard of. Just as rare was the relationship between Stokes and teammate Jack Twyman, a relationship that persisted for nearly four decades after Mo took his final breath.

Maurice Stokes was born on June 17, 1933, in Rankin, Pennsylvania. His dad worked in the steel mills around Pittsburgh; his mother worked as a domestic. Although Stokes grew up in a racially segregated, poverty-stricken neighborhood, he found refuge on the public basketball courts at nearby Mellon Park where black players outnumbered white players by a two-to-one margin.

Since the best players from Pittsburgh congregated at Mellon Park, it was logical that Stokes - a two-year starter on the George Westinghouse High School basketball team that won back-to-back city championships in 1950 and 1951 - would test his skills there.

There Stokes was able to go one-on-one against Pittsburgh basketball legend Chuck "Tarzan" Cooper. Cooper, who was a full seven years older that Stokes, was the first black player drafted into the National Basketball Association when he was taken by the Boston Celtics in 1950. He also went toe-to-toe with a skinny white kid from Central Catholic High School who was struggling to make his high school team, Jack Twyman.

Stokes received 10 college basketball scholarship offers but chose tiny Saint Francis College in Loretto, Pa. In his third collegiate game, Stokes scored 32 points and pulled down 28 rebounds against powerful Villanova. After Saint Francis went 23-7 in Stokes' freshman season, many teams refused to schedule the team the next season. Coach Honey Russell of Seton Hall bluntly explained why his team wouldn't play Saint Francis: "We won't play until you lose Stokes."

Stokes and Saint Francis played just 18 games in Stokes' sophomore season, but that number increased to 31 games for his junior year in which he averaged 23 points and 22 rebounds a game. Saint Francis was fourth in the 1955 NIT even though Stokes scored 43 points in a semifinal loss and was named the tournament's MVP.

Stokes was offered a then-huge $15,000 to play for the Harlem Globetrotters after graduation, but Stokes opted for the NBA, whose Rochester Royals made him the No. 2 pick in the 1955 draft. It was something of a Pittsburgh reunion at Rochester after that draft. The Royals took Twyman, who played college ball at Cincinnati, in the second round and opted for Niagara's Ed Fleming - a high school teammate of Stokes - in the third round.

Stokes wasted little time making his mark in the NBA - scoring 32 points to go with 20 rebounds and eight assists in his first game. He went on to average 17 points and a league-best 16 rebounds while claiming Rookie of the Year honors,. He would go on to be an all-league pick for all three of his NBA seasons.

On March 12, 1958, the playoff-bound Royals (now based in Cincinnati) were wrapping up their season in Minneapolis against the Lakers. During action under the rim, Stokes tumbled over the back of Vern Mikkelson and crashed to the floor, where he was knocked unconscious. Stokes later returned to the game where he shared scoring honors with Mikkelson, scoring 24 points in a 96-89 Royals' win.

Three days later, prior to the playoff opener against the Pistons in Detroit, Stokes became nauseated and vomited. Although he was ill, Stokes still managed to score 12 points and snare 15 rebounds in a 100-83 Royals loss.

While boarding an airplane for the return flight to Cincinnati, Stokes collapsed while walking with teammates Dick Rickets and Dave Piontek. "I need some help here, Something's wrong with me," Stokes pleaded to his teammates.

A few minutes into the flight, Stokes became ill again, telling Ricketts, "I feel like I'm going to die." Before landing, Stokes had a seizure and began sweating profusely, "as if someone had dipped his head in a swimming pool," Twyman recalled.

Upon landing Stokes was rushed to the hospital and packed in ice. He lapsed into a coma and was paralyzed from the neck down. The diagnosis was initially encephalitis but was later changed to post-traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury that damaged his motor control center. When it became clear Stokes would require expensive, around the clock care, Royals owners - who had bought the team after the 1957-58 season - declined to renew Stokes' contract, leaving him without income or medical insurance.

"We played our last game. Everybody had their suitcases packed," Twyman said. "I was the only player who made his home in Cincinnati. So here was a guy without a team, without teammates, his family in Pittsburgh. He was a man in limbo. I was the only one there."

So Twyman, a 23-year-old who had an off-season job with an insurance company, kept tabs on his stricken teammate. For 10 weeks, as Stokes remained on the critical list, Twyman visited his old friend. Then Stokes' family ran out of money and couldn't access Stokes' bank account. When Twyman discovered that Ohio law allowed him to become Stokes' legal guardian and manage his care, that's what he did.

He filed a workman's compensation claim and arranged for an NBA all-star fund-raiser game in Monticello, N.Y., that drew the game's biggest names and became an annual affair.

Although permanently paralyzed, Stoke was mentally alert and communicated by blinking his eyes. He adopted a grueling physical therapy regimen that eventually allowed him limited physical movement. He spent three years typing his own autobiography, which was never published. He never missed voting, even for minor local elections. Saint Francis' field house was named the Stokes Athletic Center in his honor.

But Stokes' condition deteriorated through the 1960s. He was transfered to the Good Samaritan Hospital where Tyman continued to be a regular visitor. On March 31, 1970, Stokes suffered a massive heart attack. He died a week later, on April 6, at the age of 36 and was the first layperson to be buried in the on-campus cemetery at Saint Francis.

Twyman, who was voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983, was a persistent supporter of the Stokes legacy. Each year he nominated his old friend for hall membership. In 2004, his persistence was rewarded when Stokes was finally added to the Naismith hall. Twyman died on May 30, 2012, at the age of 78.

Maurice Stokes, basketball player
Born: June 17, 1933
Died: April 6, 1970 (age 36)

Photo courtesy of NBAE/Getty Images

Although technical limitations prevent viewing the video directly, you can click on these links to check out an excellent three-part video about Maurice Stokes. You might want to skip through the ads. Sorry. Total running time is about 20 minutes. Part One Part Two Part Three

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

After 70 years, 'Gentleman Giant' legend still growing

Robert Wadlow had big shoes to fill. Literally.

With a shoe size of 37AA, he was grateful for the deal he had with the International Shoe Company. which produced his shoes for free in exchange for Robert's duties as a goodwill ambassador for the company.

It was one of the few perks available to a nearly 9-foot-tall 20-year-old in the 1930s.

No one would have predicted Robert Wadlow's prodigious future growth when he entered the world on Feb. 22, 1918, the 8-pound 6-ounce first-born child of Harold and Addie Wadlow of Alton, Ill. But by the time Robert started walking a year later, he tipped the scales at a hefty 44 pounds.

The Wadlow family added four children over the next few years. All of Robert's siblings were of normal height and weight, but he continued to grow at an astonishing rate. At the age of five he already stood 5 1/2 feet tall. By age 8 he topped six feet and weighed nearly 200 pounds. His elementary school built a special desk for him.

Just before his 12th birthday, Wadlow was diagnosed with an overactive pituitary gland, a condition relatively easy to treat today but without a simple solution in 1930.

Wadlow tried to blend in with his peers, collecting stamps and taking up photography. But when Wadlow joined the Boy Scouts at age 13, it was obvious that his days of anonymity were over. At 7-feet 4-inches tall and weighing 270 pounds, Wadlow was soon known as the largest Boy Scout in history. Newsreel cameras and reporters flocked to Alton to report to the world about the young "Alton Giant," whose scout uniform took 14 yards of material to construct and who fueled his uncontrollable growth by eating 8,000 calories a day.

The newsreel cameras would be a nearly constant companion for the rest of Wadlow's life.

Wadlow's high school years were apparently without incident, although he did manage to participate in extracurricular activities and served as advertising manager for his school's yearbook. He graduated at mid-term in January 1936 and enrolled in Shurtleff College in Alton in hopes of becoming a lawyer.

But Wadlow, who had shot to over 8-foot tall and weighed nearly 400 pounds by his 18th birthday, dropped out after one semester. In June 1936, the Wadlow family was visited by Dr. C.D. Humberd, who wanted to write about Robert's condition. But the Wadlows found Dr. Humberd's demeanor to be so demanding and overbearing that they refused to let their son submit to a medical exam.

Undaunted, Dr. Humberd went ahead with his paper, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Wadlow family was irate when Dr. Humberd described their son as a "pre-acromegalic giant," "surly and indifferent," and questioned his intellectual capacities. The Wadlows sued Dr. Humberd for libel, but lost in court.

Although the Wadlow family had fought hard to allow Robert to grow up as much out of the spotlight as possible, an offer to join the Ringling Brothers Circus proved too good to pass up. Insisting that Robert perform only in street clothes and only in center ring, they hoped to avoid the spectacle of their son being portrayed as a sideshow freak. His contract called for two appearances per day of three minutes each and only in Madison Square Garden in New York and Boston Garden.

Young Wadlow proved to be so popular he signed on with the International Shoe Company as a traveling goodwill ambassador. His father quit his job at an oil company and had the front passenger seat of the family Ford Model T removed so Robert could travel comfortably while resting in the back seat.

Harold Wadlow claimed that the pair covered more than 300,000 miles while visiting more than 800 towns in 41 states in their time on the road for the shoe company. Some sources use more modest figures, but there's no doubt that the travel was grueling for young Robert.

His rapid growth had left him with brittle bones and he rarely walked without leg braces and a cane. Although he enjoyed relatively good health as a youth, Wadlow had little feeling in his legs or feet as he grew older. Despite his serious mobility issues, Wadlow took pride in never resorting to a wheelchair.

On June 27, 1940, Wadlow's height was measured at 8 feet 11.1 inches at Washington University in St. Louis, a height still recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records as the World's Tallest Living Man.

One week later, Wadlow made an appearance in a parade in Manistee, Michigan, to mark the Manistee National Forest Festival on July 4. After spending four hours riding in the back of a truck on the hot, muggy day, Wadlow collapsed in his hotel room where he was treated in two beds placed end to end.

Doctors began treating a raging infection that had begun when a faulty brace irritated his ankle and caused a blister. Wadlow's condition was so severe that over the next 10 days, he underwent numerous transfusions and emergency surgeries. By July 14, he was getting nourishment from a feeding tube, his temperature was 106 degrees and he was described as being in "very grave" condition.

He died in his sleep the next day.

At the time of Wadlow's death he weighed 490 pounds and was said to be still growing. Rumors soon started circulating. His legs had been amputated one story went. His brain was sold to a scientist went another. Truth is, Wadlow went to his grave fully intact, without as much as an autopsy. The family cited Dr. Humberd's callous actions when defending their decision to not allow any post-morten examination of Wadlow's body.

Furthermore, the family desstroyed nearly all of Robert Wadlow's belongings because they didn't want him remembered as a "freak." One exception was several pairs of shoes which can still be viewed at various locations today.

It took 20 men to carry Wadlow's half-ton casket to his 12-foot-long reinforced concrete tomb in Oakwood Cemetery in Upper Alton, Illinois, where he was buried on July 19, 1940. More than 40,000 people signed the guest register for Alton's most famous citizen whose gravestone reads simply "At Rest."

Harold Wadlow teamed with Frederic Fadner, an English instructor at Shurtleff College, to publish a brief biography of Robert Wadlow entitled The Gentleman Giant in 1944. In 1985, a life-sized bronze statue of Wadlow was dedicated on the campus of the Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine in Alton.

In 2010, the Upper Alton Association initiated an annual summer concert series called "Rockin' With Robert" next to the Wadlow statue.

Wadlow's father, Harold, died on September 25, 1969, at age 76. His mother, Addie, died on Christmas Day, 1980, at age 83. They are buried next to their famous son.

Robert Pershing Wadlow, world's tallest man
Born: February 22, 1918
Died: July 15, 1940 (age 22)

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Van Tassel family ballooning legacy ends in tragedy

This story begins in Albuquerque, N.M., in 1882 and ends half a world away, in the East Bengalese capital of Dhaka, now the capital of Bagladesh, in 1892. In those 10 years, Jeanette Van Tassel's family of balloon-flying adventurers created major stirs across the western United States, Hawaii, Australia and, eventually, Southeast Asia.

At the heart of the story is Park Van Tassel, a P.T. Barnum-type huckster. As you might expect in a story centered on such a flamboyant character who was long on hyperbole and short on honest facts, Park Van Tassel was either Jeanette's husband or father.

Regardless of their relationship, Park Van Tassel was a 30-year-old Indiana native when he first made a name for himself in Albuquerque in 1882.

Van Tassel - the tall, blond owner of the Elite Saloon who often tended bar in his own establishment - bought a balloon made from cattle intestines for $850 in California and planned to make the first manned balloon flight in New Mexico history as part of Albuquerque's Fourth of July festivities.

Christened "The City of Albuquerque," the balloon would require 30,000 cubic feet of coal gas for his ascent. As was fitting of the mastermind behind such an event, Van Tassel soon started calling himself Professor and the name stuck - until years later when he promoted himself to Captain.

On the morning of the Fourth, Albuquerque was flooded by people arriving in wagons, on horseback or burro and on foot. Some of them headed to Second Street, between Railroad and Gold aveunes, to watch Van Tassel's enormous balloon being inflated before the scheduled 10 a.m. launch. Even though residents gave up their home access to gas a day earlier so it could be diverted to the balloon efforts, the balloon was filling slowly.

Most people left the scene for other activities, skeptical that an ascent would even take place. But in late afternoon Van Tassel decided to go ahead with his partially filled balloon and a 6:15 p.m. launch was planned. Van Tassel stepped into his wicker gondola with passenger John Moore, a local reporter who was to chronicle the historical event.

But, when the balloon still wouldn't rise, a disappointed Moore stepped out. When the balloon still wouldn't rise, Van Tassel tossed a sandbag of ballast over the side, striking a spectator who later sued. The balloon then began its slow ascent with a beaming Van Tassel waving an American flag to the crowd that soon resembled "one black mass of humanity."

When he reached 11,000 feet, Van Tassel jettisoned more ballast, allowing the balloon to climb to 14,207 feet, according to his onboard instruments. But with the air thinning and becoming colder, Van Tassel struggled to open a valve, triggering a rapid descent. Fearful of a crash, he tossed his coat, lunch and water bottle over the side to slow his fall. An anchor tossed overboard at the last moment brought the flight to a merciful halt in a cornfield near the Albuquerque fairgrounds.

Within a week after the flight and subsequent rowdy celebration, Van Tassel was invited back for a fall event. He crashed within 15 minutes on that flight, and started looking immediately for another balloon.

The next year, Van Tassel made his longest flight in a balloon - some 300 miles in a 6-hour 45-minute flight that carried him from Salt Lake City over the Wasatch mountain range.

But ballooning wasn't Van Tassel's only aviation interest. He was also interested in parachuting, a dangerous undertaking that caused so many fatalities in Europe that parachutes were known as man-killers. Indeed, many chutists had taken to dropping other items from their balloons instead, including pigs.

"I figured, if a live animal, why not a live man?" Van Tassel later told The New York Times.

Constructing his own parachute from a diagram he found in a dictionary in a library, Van Tassel made his first jump in Kansas City.

Sometime after beginning his ballooning career, Van Tassel married a women who shared his adventurous spirit, generally referred to as Jenny Rumary Van Tassel. Jenny soon became a prime attraction in the Van Tassel touring troupe.

On July 4, 1888, Jenny Van Tassel was scheduled to attempt the first parachute jump by a woman, in Los Angeles. But after practice runs of the Van Tassel balloon went awry - including landing on the roof of a former mayor and demolishing a chimney - the police decided to prevent the ill-advised adventure. But Jenny managed to escape the detective assigned to keep her from the much-ballyhooed stunt and climbed into the gondola piloted by her husband. After rising 6,000 feet Jenny Van Tassel made her historic leap.

In a later interview with the Los Angeles Times, Jenny was described as "big [she weighed 165 pounds], young, handsome and blonde." For her part, Jenny responded by describing her jump: "I ain't exactly a bird nor an angel, but it's just about what I imagine the sensation of flying is. It was beautiful!"

In 1889, while jumping from a balloon over the ocean just west of San Francisco, Park Van Tassel became tangled in the lines of his chute and barely escaped drowning when his chute blossomed at the last minute. Undeterred, Van Tassel took his troupe on a world tour where they managed to generate controversy at just about every stop.

Van Tassel landed in a mulbery tree in Siam on one jump. Protestors in India threatened him, fearful that his balloon would "get them in bad" with the devils of the upper air. In Australia, sisters Gladys and Valerie Freitas created a major ruckus because of their clothing.

The Freitas girls performed in skin-tight outfits as they began their ascent while dangling from trapezes below the gondola. They performed a few tricks during the ascent before dropping to earth beneath homemade muslin parachutes.

But, after an Australian performance was witnessed by nearly the entire Queensland Defence Force, critics claimed the soldiers were mesmeraized by the scantily clad skydivers and feared the corps "would be beset with an outbreak of masturbation that would ruin their collective manhood."

Another bit of scandal erupted in Hawaii when it was reported that Park Van Tassel had suffered a horrible death when his chute failed over shark-infested waters. Subsequent investigation revealed that the chutist who had succumbed to the sharks wasn't Van Tassel at all but was instead a man named Joe Lawrence from Albuquerque, N.M. Lawrence was travelling with the Van Tassel troupe and apparently was doing all the jumps credited to Park Van Tassel, who reportedly hadn't jumped since his near-death experience in San Francisco.

In 1892, Jeanette Van Tassel was invited to participate in a grand celebration by the Nawab of Dhaka, Khwaja Ahsanullah. The ruling Nawabs were well-known for their special events and the balloon ascent would be the first in East Bengal.

Jeanette has variously been described as the wife of Park Van Tassel, the daughter of Jenny Rumary Van Tassel, a recent bride and in her late 20s. Regardless of her relationship to Park Van Tassel, she carried the family name and was said to have performed in many countries with the Van Tassel troupe.

The plan was to have Jeanette Van Tassel launch from a south riverbank of the Buriganga River, float north of the river and land on the roof of the main building of the Nawab compound at Ahsan Manzi. A fire of wood and kerosene produced the hot air that filled the balloon, which began its flight without incident at 6:20 p.m. on March 16, 1892.

But the winds didn't cooperate. Instead of landing on the palace roof, Van Tassel's balloon came to rest in a tree at Ramna Garden, nearly three miles away. Police soon arrived and attempted a rescue by extending a bamboo pole to the gondola.

As Jeanette Van Tassel descended, the pole snapped and she crashed to the ground, severely injured. She died a few days later.

There is little evidence that Park Van Tassel continued his barnstorming career after the Dhaka incident. He died in Oakland, Calif., on October 24, 1930, at the age of 78. At the time of his death, he was operating the "Captain P. A. Van Tassel Toy Balloon Mfg. Co.," a maker of miniature balloon ascension toys. Jeanette Van Tassel is buried in the Narinda Christian Cemetery at  Dhaka.

Jeanette Van Tassel, balloonist
Born: ca.1864
Died: March 1892

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.