By Douglas Graves © 2008
The shelves are almost empty. The food in stock will sustain health but choices are very limited. The store is so small that only one family at a time can go in. Moveable food shelves compete with three, wheeled racks over-crammed with clothes. Twenty dollars is considered a substantial donation—no big corporate sponsors or government grants here. Still, the St. Stephen’s Food Pantry in Whitehall is doing good business.
Food Bank Director Karen Schell is also the Regional Sales Manager of the Equine Division for Straight Arrow Products. She is the kind of person who only sees the bright side of the situation—just as she sees only the gentler angels of human nature.
“St. Stephen’s [Episcopal Church] is kind enough to provide space, electricity and shelves,” she said. “The church members also provide volunteers, food and money to us.” The Food Pantry is in one of the rooms that the large church at 3900 Mechanicsville Road. “It’s a community effort. Next year we hope to get other churches to participate more.”
The numbers aren’t yet in for 2008, but the number of households served jumped from 525 in 2006 to 590 in 2007. Job loss, economic downturn, foreclosures and evictions are likely run that number up for 2008.
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church’s Annual Report sums it up: “We serve Whitehall residents of all ages, races, and creeds. We are the only food pantry serving the area.”
Schell’s hope for more church involvement came to pass in a way for which she is grateful. “St. Paul’s Lutheran Church on Second Street just gave us a generous donation—they closed up shop but left us some money.” Schell didn’t want to reveal the amount but she was very happily calculating were the windfall could best be spent.
Other churches have helped mostly by “faithfully donating food and money,” said Schell. “They have kept us going when times were lean.” Some of those appreciated churches include Faith Evangelical Lutheran, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran, St. John’s UCC, Shepherd of the Hills. Some civic organizations pitch in: Whitehall Township Woman’s Club and the Lion’s Club of Whitehall.
Schell is enthusiastic about the network of volunteers and organizations that keep this little operation going. “Whitehall Food Bank is very rich in volunteers but we are always short on food,” she said. “We have a wonderful group of people who work hours and hours. Young and old help out, [church] members and non-members—most have full-time jobs.”
These are the kinds of folks who probably know of the exhortation from Psalms 146: “How blessed is he . . . who gives food to the hungry.”
“Doreen Wagner comes every week with her 12-year old granddaughter Alycia Wagner and Alycia’s friends Mariah Lopez, Tamara Wesmann and CeCe Barona. Scott Heefner is an ‘every week’ regular. Donna Scott brings the bread from Weiss Market (they provide bread every week) and helps unload the food that Tom Steckel and Dave Heffernan pick up from Second Harvest every four to six weeks.”
It isn’t just the manual labor that keeps things going. “Carol Siegmund handles the checking and savings accounts,” said Schell. “Judy Kuntz, our church secretary, handles correspondence associated for the Food Bank.”
Some provide financial back-up for supplies that run short. “Karen and Marty Brynildsen help buy food when we fall short. For example, they bought enough pancake mix to cover [a shortage].”
This year the Food Bank added free clothing to their services. “Karen Brynildsen and Doreen Wagner started a clothing drive for the recipients for the food bank,” said Schell. “Marilyn Shive and Darlene Dimmick organize and distribute the clothing which is free to our recipients.”
Northampton High School senior Karrysa Herman her mother, Denise, come in on Monday nights to help distribute food. Other hard workers include Joe and Matthew Lathrop, John Rothschild, Charlie Robinson, Terry Daubet and Dottie Lesavoy. Beverly and Tom Donegal also help with their hard work..
The annual food drive conducted by postal workers get a special, emotional ‘thank you’ from Schell. “The postal workers are doing this on their own time—they’re also breaking their backs.” She pointed to a poster board with food-laden mail trucks and postal workers posing with their culinary collections from customers on their mail routes.
“Second Harvest faxes me a list of what is available and I can stock up.” The “available” list varies every week so there is no chance to keep a dependable supply of any particular brand. This week Schell ordered 10 cases of corned beef and 10 cases of meat balls with tomato sauce. Second Harvest provides 70 per cent of the food to the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Food Pantry.
Sometimes candy is available from her suppliers. The fiscally creative Schell once had what she thought was a great idea: take the candy, have church youth groups re-sell it at fund-raisers and use the money from the candy sales to buy hard-to-find staples to give out to the needy. But, no. Strictly against government rules. No selling of donated candy to buy something useful.
Other food donors include Nestlès who “is very generous” said Schell. The shelves have scatterings of Nestlès’ chocolate drink mix and other products.
Recently Boy Scout Zachary Wehr proposed an Eagle Scout project that he hopes will raise 6,000 pounds of food.
Schell is hoping for donations of the hard-to-find items: jelly, peanut butter, and canned tuna fish. She also needs a food freezer to replace one that is broken.
The Food Bank’s service is for Whitehall residents only who have a financial need. Each family gets one visit per month and should bring bags or boxes for their food. Call 610-262-1264 for an appointment but call only between 9 a. m. and 8 p. m. (It is a private home.)
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Sergeant Robert A. Bell, Shivering in an Ancient Battle Jacket . . .
By Douglas Graves © 2008
Marines mustered from all over the Valley on Monday, Nov. 10 at Cedar Beach Park on Hamilton Street in Allentown. The late afternoon wind swirled fallen leaves and chilled the stones of Marine Corps memorial set like sentinels over the fallen. The oldest Marine present was Dom Marciano who had served as a 60-millimeter mortar man with the Sixth Marine Division on Okinawa in 1945.
It was the 18th annual memorial service held at the monument set in a glade between Hamilton Street and Muhlenberg Lake near the 24th Street traffic signal. As the Marines and friends of Marines crowded in and around the eight tall stones that form the perimeter of the memorial, retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Carl J. Schroeder Jr. led the group in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Most of the Marines wore elements of an old uniform or a Marine Corps League jacket and cap. Some wore baseball caps emblazoned with “Marines” or “Marine Corps.” Several were in business suits or blazers with lapel pins depicting medals earned long ago. Lance Corporal Jamie J. Williams of Allentown was wearing “biker” regalia with campaign ribbons. Regardless what they were wearing, the spirit of comradeship was evident.
Veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were all represented.
Sergeant Robert A. Bell, shivering in an ancient battle jacket and accompanied by his wife, Nora, rendered a crooked fingered salute for his flag and brought his arthritic hands together in noiseless applause as leaders stepped from the ranks to speak to the group. Bell, now in an assisted living home, had served his country from 1945 to 1951.
Retired Hospitalman First Class Richard Bentley of Macungie wore the forest-green Marine Corps uniform authorized for Navy Corpsmen assigned to the Fleet Marine Force as medical personnel. One man approached him and thanked all corpsmen for being there when Marines are in tough spots.
Allentown Assistant Police Chief and former Marine David M. Howells, Jr. attended with his father who is a former Allentown Police Chief and Marine. Major Jim Robbins attended and gave a short speech to his comrades. Robbins, an Allen High School teacher and reserve Marine officer, was a detachment commander in the Iraq war.
Lehigh Court of Common Pleas Judge and Marine colonel Jim Anthony attended as did former Marine corporal Bill Derricott, a retired Parkland School District teacher.
Whitehall High School student Connor Purcell and his brother Corey, as a drum and fife duo, provided timeless martial tunes for the simple affair. Sergeant Howard J. Cooper of Wescosville read the birthday message sent in 1921 to Marines in all “posts and stations” by the thirteenth commandant of the Marine Corps, General John A. Lejuene a World War I general and revered figure to Marines.
The Marines finished the service by singing the Marines’ Hymn that ends with the refrain, “If the Army and Navy ever look on Heaven’s scenes, they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.”
Following the annual Marine Corps memorial service many in the group met for a cake-cutting at the VFW hall on Hamilton Street. The “youngest and oldest Marine” present were invited to be the first served from the celebratory cake.
This year the honor went to Marciano, the WW II veteran, and to Sergeant Howard Cooper, the youngest, at 42.
The celebration of the U. S. Marine Corps’ 233rd birthday was a simple event but the emotion that all Marines feel for this day is best understood by realizing that on every November 10, Marines around the world from generals to privates gather together in groups large and small to celebrate the day 1775 when the Marine Corps was first organized in Philadelphia. These celebrations may include lavish banquets with grand military balls or maybe just three dirty-faced men in a far away fighting hole sharing a cold ration, but, without fail, the Marine Corps Birthday is celebrated.
Marines mustered from all over the Valley on Monday, Nov. 10 at Cedar Beach Park on Hamilton Street in Allentown. The late afternoon wind swirled fallen leaves and chilled the stones of Marine Corps memorial set like sentinels over the fallen. The oldest Marine present was Dom Marciano who had served as a 60-millimeter mortar man with the Sixth Marine Division on Okinawa in 1945.
It was the 18th annual memorial service held at the monument set in a glade between Hamilton Street and Muhlenberg Lake near the 24th Street traffic signal. As the Marines and friends of Marines crowded in and around the eight tall stones that form the perimeter of the memorial, retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Carl J. Schroeder Jr. led the group in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
Most of the Marines wore elements of an old uniform or a Marine Corps League jacket and cap. Some wore baseball caps emblazoned with “Marines” or “Marine Corps.” Several were in business suits or blazers with lapel pins depicting medals earned long ago. Lance Corporal Jamie J. Williams of Allentown was wearing “biker” regalia with campaign ribbons. Regardless what they were wearing, the spirit of comradeship was evident.
Veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were all represented.
Sergeant Robert A. Bell, shivering in an ancient battle jacket and accompanied by his wife, Nora, rendered a crooked fingered salute for his flag and brought his arthritic hands together in noiseless applause as leaders stepped from the ranks to speak to the group. Bell, now in an assisted living home, had served his country from 1945 to 1951.
Retired Hospitalman First Class Richard Bentley of Macungie wore the forest-green Marine Corps uniform authorized for Navy Corpsmen assigned to the Fleet Marine Force as medical personnel. One man approached him and thanked all corpsmen for being there when Marines are in tough spots.
Allentown Assistant Police Chief and former Marine David M. Howells, Jr. attended with his father who is a former Allentown Police Chief and Marine. Major Jim Robbins attended and gave a short speech to his comrades. Robbins, an Allen High School teacher and reserve Marine officer, was a detachment commander in the Iraq war.
Lehigh Court of Common Pleas Judge and Marine colonel Jim Anthony attended as did former Marine corporal Bill Derricott, a retired Parkland School District teacher.
Whitehall High School student Connor Purcell and his brother Corey, as a drum and fife duo, provided timeless martial tunes for the simple affair. Sergeant Howard J. Cooper of Wescosville read the birthday message sent in 1921 to Marines in all “posts and stations” by the thirteenth commandant of the Marine Corps, General John A. Lejuene a World War I general and revered figure to Marines.
The Marines finished the service by singing the Marines’ Hymn that ends with the refrain, “If the Army and Navy ever look on Heaven’s scenes, they will find the streets are guarded by United States Marines.”
Following the annual Marine Corps memorial service many in the group met for a cake-cutting at the VFW hall on Hamilton Street. The “youngest and oldest Marine” present were invited to be the first served from the celebratory cake.
This year the honor went to Marciano, the WW II veteran, and to Sergeant Howard Cooper, the youngest, at 42.
The celebration of the U. S. Marine Corps’ 233rd birthday was a simple event but the emotion that all Marines feel for this day is best understood by realizing that on every November 10, Marines around the world from generals to privates gather together in groups large and small to celebrate the day 1775 when the Marine Corps was first organized in Philadelphia. These celebrations may include lavish banquets with grand military balls or maybe just three dirty-faced men in a far away fighting hole sharing a cold ration, but, without fail, the Marine Corps Birthday is celebrated.
Monday, September 29, 2008
“The French have gotten a bad rap in the U. S. They fought hard here and were brave soldiers.”
Douglas Graves © 2008
Originally published in VMI Alumni Review, 2008, Issue 3
Pre-conceptions about Europe started falling away almost as soon as the 20 VMI cadets landed in Paris. They were there on a week-long trip through some of the European battlefields with VMI history professor Dr. Malcolm “Kip” Muir. The trip was organized by Military Historical Tours (www.miltours.com) based in Alexandria, Virginia which specializes in taking clients to historical locations with knowledgeable historians.
The cadet’s first stop: Cantigny, France, a small village where, in May 1918, the American Army’s 1st Division--the “Big Red One--first met and defeated German forces.
It was at Cantigny that VMI graduate George C. Marshall, Class of 1901, first saw action.
The cadets got their boots muddy on these shell-cratered battlefields, exploring damp and broken bunkers, ruined forts and gun pits.
“In understanding war, there is no substitute for seeing the ground,” said Professor Muir. “The cadets [will] begin to appreciate that [World War I] was not a mere backdrop to World War II but that it represented a titanic struggle in its own right.”
The Aisne-Marne battlefield was the next objective. It is five miles northwest of Chateau-Thierry.
Local historian Gilles Lagin led the cadets through the Bois de la Brigade de Marine or, as U. S. Marines ever since WW I have known it, Belleau Wood.
Marine Corps Major General John A. Lejeune, superintendent of VMI from November 1929 until October 1937, commanded the Marines at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. He was the superintendent of VMI from November 1929 until October 1937. The forest, then blasted to splinters, has since recovered. It still conceals water-filled shell holes pock-marking the damp ground. At the wood’s edge, rock outcroppings and boulders shelter former machine gun nests and command rugged slopes where men grappled in close combat. Here VMI graduate and future 20th Commandant of the Marine Corps Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr. was twice wounded leading his 5th Marines platoon.
After a solemn visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, the curator opened the gates to a private estate. In the stable yard of long destroyed Chateau de Belleau, the maw of a bronze mastiff dog spits cold spring water into a shallow pool. Called by U. S. Marines the “Devil Dog Fountain,” it is reputed to add 10 years to any Marine who drinks the water. The future Marine lieutenants in the group—John Krahling of Stafford, Virginia, John Douglas of Birmingham, Alabama, Andrew Gay from Ridgeland, Mississippi and Mark Parton of Orlando, Florida--all had a good drink.
At Compiègne Forest the history students saw where Germany compelled France’s surrender during WW II. After a night on the town in Reims, they drove past the Porte de Mars, a Roman triumphal arch. The cadets spent a couple hours at Reims’ Notre Dame Cathedral. Built between 1211 and 1311, it is the traditional coronation site for the kings of France.
Reflecting on his first few days in France, Cadet Thomas Schirra, ’11 of Powatan, Virginia, said, “The French are lot nicer than you think. They are usually thought of by Americans as being ‘stuck up’ but they really are not. They love Americans.”
A few miles from Reims the men arrived at the Meuse-Argonne area, site of the last great battle of WW I; it is still broken by shell holes—clear testament to the tornado of steel that ravaged the men here. The Mercedes tour bus stopped next to a granite marker with an arrow pointing to the steep ravine--the “Lost Battalion.” Elements of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 308th Infantry Regiment heroically fought here during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The cadets scrambled down the slope toward a small stream sparkling through the budding trees. Soon one was back, his hands full of battlefield treasure--corroded but recognizable, thirty-caliber brass cartridge casings and a lone .30 copper-jacketed slug.
Later, on their tour of the Argonne Mountains, Cadet John Douglas, with his father, Gilbert, stood at the foot of the massive memorial at Montfaucon. They had John’s great grandfather’s 78th Division shoulder patch, the Cross of Lorraine, brought back to the battlefield where doughboy Captain Gilbert Douglas served as a young Army doctor.
Not far from Montfaucon, the Ossuary of Douaumont commemorates the battle of Verdun in 1916. The bones resting beneath marble capstones have no names, but French widows and families paid to have the names of their missing men engraved on the interior walls and columns.
The group’s guide, Chantal, pointed out the name of her grandfather chiseled high up on the curving wall: Boissonard, Charles 28-7-85 -- 27-6-16. “The ossuary has an almost insane amount of bodies,” said Cadet Noah Scribner ’09 of Armonk, New York. “The artillery shrapnel made Verdun hell on earth. I have much more respect for the French military. They were fighting for four years--putting their husbands and sons through a meat grinder—they held on, fought and defended their homes.”
Cadet after cadet voiced this greater appreciation of the French during the trip.
“My attitude toward the French [military] has changed,” said Cadet Jesse Burnett ’08 from Marion, North Carolina after walking through the Verdun battlefields. “They fought very well—it’s a misconception we have that they didn’t fight. The French have gotten a bad rap in the U. S.,” he said. “They fought hard here and were brave soldiers.”
“I liked Fort Douaumont,” said Cadet Anthony “A. J.” Korbely ’10 from Armada, Michigan after exploring one of the massive French forts protecting Verdun. “It was very impressive to see how they had to fight. I have a new admiration for the French soldier.”
At the 50-acre American Cemetery in Luxembourg several cadets retired the American flags flying from twin flagpoles on each side of the grave site of General George Patton, Class of 1907. Five thousand, seventy six Americans are buried there, most of whom died during the Battle of the Bulge.
Muir’s cadets spent the next three nights in Bastogne, Belgium, their base for an extensive exploration of “Battle of the Bulge” battlefields. A Sherman tank, snow covered by a late spring storm, is proudly displayed on a downtown square. Several cadets reported that in different cafes and pubs they were told, “Your money is no good here. Your grandfathers saved our country. The beer is on us!”
The cadets went from the “dragon’s teeth” and casements of the Siegfried Line on the German frontier to the infamous site where Germans massacred American soldiers at Baugnez near Malmedy. The cadets and their history professor tramped through snowy forests, climbed down mossy stone steps and scrambled up hillsides.
The VMI cadets finished their European tour in Paris where they explored the city and enjoyed the night life.
Muir summed up the experience. “A significant goal was to give the cadets a close look at three of our NATO allies, France, Luxembourg, and Belgium; and to have the opportunity to interact with the peoples of those nations. All indications are that this goal was resoundingly met.”
Originally published in VMI Alumni Review, 2008, Issue 3
Pre-conceptions about Europe started falling away almost as soon as the 20 VMI cadets landed in Paris. They were there on a week-long trip through some of the European battlefields with VMI history professor Dr. Malcolm “Kip” Muir. The trip was organized by Military Historical Tours (www.miltours.com) based in Alexandria, Virginia which specializes in taking clients to historical locations with knowledgeable historians.
The cadet’s first stop: Cantigny, France, a small village where, in May 1918, the American Army’s 1st Division--the “Big Red One--first met and defeated German forces.
It was at Cantigny that VMI graduate George C. Marshall, Class of 1901, first saw action.
The cadets got their boots muddy on these shell-cratered battlefields, exploring damp and broken bunkers, ruined forts and gun pits.
“In understanding war, there is no substitute for seeing the ground,” said Professor Muir. “The cadets [will] begin to appreciate that [World War I] was not a mere backdrop to World War II but that it represented a titanic struggle in its own right.”
The Aisne-Marne battlefield was the next objective. It is five miles northwest of Chateau-Thierry.
Local historian Gilles Lagin led the cadets through the Bois de la Brigade de Marine or, as U. S. Marines ever since WW I have known it, Belleau Wood.
Marine Corps Major General John A. Lejeune, superintendent of VMI from November 1929 until October 1937, commanded the Marines at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. He was the superintendent of VMI from November 1929 until October 1937. The forest, then blasted to splinters, has since recovered. It still conceals water-filled shell holes pock-marking the damp ground. At the wood’s edge, rock outcroppings and boulders shelter former machine gun nests and command rugged slopes where men grappled in close combat. Here VMI graduate and future 20th Commandant of the Marine Corps Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr. was twice wounded leading his 5th Marines platoon.
After a solemn visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, the curator opened the gates to a private estate. In the stable yard of long destroyed Chateau de Belleau, the maw of a bronze mastiff dog spits cold spring water into a shallow pool. Called by U. S. Marines the “Devil Dog Fountain,” it is reputed to add 10 years to any Marine who drinks the water. The future Marine lieutenants in the group—John Krahling of Stafford, Virginia, John Douglas of Birmingham, Alabama, Andrew Gay from Ridgeland, Mississippi and Mark Parton of Orlando, Florida--all had a good drink.
At Compiègne Forest the history students saw where Germany compelled France’s surrender during WW II. After a night on the town in Reims, they drove past the Porte de Mars, a Roman triumphal arch. The cadets spent a couple hours at Reims’ Notre Dame Cathedral. Built between 1211 and 1311, it is the traditional coronation site for the kings of France.
Reflecting on his first few days in France, Cadet Thomas Schirra, ’11 of Powatan, Virginia, said, “The French are lot nicer than you think. They are usually thought of by Americans as being ‘stuck up’ but they really are not. They love Americans.”
A few miles from Reims the men arrived at the Meuse-Argonne area, site of the last great battle of WW I; it is still broken by shell holes—clear testament to the tornado of steel that ravaged the men here. The Mercedes tour bus stopped next to a granite marker with an arrow pointing to the steep ravine--the “Lost Battalion.” Elements of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 308th Infantry Regiment heroically fought here during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The cadets scrambled down the slope toward a small stream sparkling through the budding trees. Soon one was back, his hands full of battlefield treasure--corroded but recognizable, thirty-caliber brass cartridge casings and a lone .30 copper-jacketed slug.
Later, on their tour of the Argonne Mountains, Cadet John Douglas, with his father, Gilbert, stood at the foot of the massive memorial at Montfaucon. They had John’s great grandfather’s 78th Division shoulder patch, the Cross of Lorraine, brought back to the battlefield where doughboy Captain Gilbert Douglas served as a young Army doctor.
Not far from Montfaucon, the Ossuary of Douaumont commemorates the battle of Verdun in 1916. The bones resting beneath marble capstones have no names, but French widows and families paid to have the names of their missing men engraved on the interior walls and columns.
The group’s guide, Chantal, pointed out the name of her grandfather chiseled high up on the curving wall: Boissonard, Charles 28-7-85 -- 27-6-16. “The ossuary has an almost insane amount of bodies,” said Cadet Noah Scribner ’09 of Armonk, New York. “The artillery shrapnel made Verdun hell on earth. I have much more respect for the French military. They were fighting for four years--putting their husbands and sons through a meat grinder—they held on, fought and defended their homes.”
Cadet after cadet voiced this greater appreciation of the French during the trip.
“My attitude toward the French [military] has changed,” said Cadet Jesse Burnett ’08 from Marion, North Carolina after walking through the Verdun battlefields. “They fought very well—it’s a misconception we have that they didn’t fight. The French have gotten a bad rap in the U. S.,” he said. “They fought hard here and were brave soldiers.”
“I liked Fort Douaumont,” said Cadet Anthony “A. J.” Korbely ’10 from Armada, Michigan after exploring one of the massive French forts protecting Verdun. “It was very impressive to see how they had to fight. I have a new admiration for the French soldier.”
At the 50-acre American Cemetery in Luxembourg several cadets retired the American flags flying from twin flagpoles on each side of the grave site of General George Patton, Class of 1907. Five thousand, seventy six Americans are buried there, most of whom died during the Battle of the Bulge.
Muir’s cadets spent the next three nights in Bastogne, Belgium, their base for an extensive exploration of “Battle of the Bulge” battlefields. A Sherman tank, snow covered by a late spring storm, is proudly displayed on a downtown square. Several cadets reported that in different cafes and pubs they were told, “Your money is no good here. Your grandfathers saved our country. The beer is on us!”
The cadets went from the “dragon’s teeth” and casements of the Siegfried Line on the German frontier to the infamous site where Germans massacred American soldiers at Baugnez near Malmedy. The cadets and their history professor tramped through snowy forests, climbed down mossy stone steps and scrambled up hillsides.
The VMI cadets finished their European tour in Paris where they explored the city and enjoyed the night life.
Muir summed up the experience. “A significant goal was to give the cadets a close look at three of our NATO allies, France, Luxembourg, and Belgium; and to have the opportunity to interact with the peoples of those nations. All indications are that this goal was resoundingly met.”
Thursday, July 17, 2008
"Get The Hell Outta Here"
By Doug Graves © 2007
This week’s anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center provides the occasion for this story. It is the story one man’s struggle to survive and his need to find a deeper meaning to his life. It is the story of how one man faced unknown and fearful odds, summoned courage, focused on the needs of others, and brought himself and one other person through disaster to safety.
Whitehall High School graduate James Saganowich was a newly recruited employee of financial giant Morgan Stanley and was in the World Trade Center Building II to begin his new career with the Wall Street corporation. He and colleagues had taken a break from a training session and were going to breakfast in the lower levels of the building. It was Tuesday morning with a beautiful blue sky; however, from the mezzanine overlooking World Trade Center Building I he saw that the tower was “on fire and had debris falling from it.”
“Nobody seemed to know what had happened. There was a lot of speculation: bombs or helicopter or plane crashes were being considered. Then I heard the Port Authority order everyone out of the building and into the street.
“Still not realizing what had happened and having left my briefcase, wallet and phone on the sixty-first floor, I started back to get my stuff. I took the elevator back up to the meeting room where I had left them. When I got there the floor was eerily empty. As I walked down an empty hall two security guards ordered me to ‘Get the hell outta here.’ They escorted me to the stairwell and locked me into it.”
James Saganowich had grown up in Whitehall, Pennsylvania . After securing an appointment to the United States Military Academy he went to West Point for two years where he played football on the Army team. He transferred to Kutztown University and graduated in 1989 with a degree in Russian language. After selling securities in Florida and going through a divorce, he joined Morgan Stanley. They had just sent him to Manhattan for a training session with the firm.
Now, having been locked into the stairwell of a building and unaware of exactly what had happened, Saganowich still did not realize he was now in a desperate struggle for survival. “The stairwell was jammed with people walking down the thousands of steps to the street,” he said. “I was in no hurry and was still hoping to get out of the stairwell to go back and get my things.”
He slowly realized that something serious had happened to the building.
“We all knew something big was wrong. People started to panic. They were pushing and shoving. I was locked in a stairwell with a mob of frightened people. It was hot and dusty. Then I could smell kerosene. I began to grab people and try to calm them down. At about the fifty-ninth or fifty-eighth floor bloodied people with torn clothes started coming down. They had been in or above the impact zone where the airplane had struck the building. They were screaming and we stood aside to let them pass.
“Suddenly one of the women slammed into me as she came down the stairs. I grabbed her and kept her from falling. She looked in my eyes and said that we were going to die. I told her that it was ‘ok’ and that I would get her out.”
Saganowich, with the exhausted and fearful thirty-six year old woman, then began to focus on getting her through the stairway and into the street. Her name was Liz.
“She leaned more and more into me as we slowly moved down the stairs. The hot, humid air smelled of jet fuel,” he said. “Thank God I had Liz to focus on or I think I may have wigged out in there.
“We started to see firemen struggling up the stairwell as we went down. Seeing them soothed us and we started to feel safe for the first time in an hour. They were sweating in their gear as they climbed past us.
“We made in down the next thirty or so floors. People escorted us across the mall area. It was weird to see the huge empty space of the mall now devoid of people.
“We looked up at the smoke and fire. It seemed like miles up to where the fire was burning.
“We were safe.”
Saganowich and Liz were joined by Liz’s friend, Vanessa. Liz was worried about her missing fiancé, John, who had been in the building with her. People were now jumping from the burning building.
“I couldn’t watch,” said Saganowich. “I urged Liz and Vanessa to keep moving and we walked toward my hotel on the Upper East Side. We had walked about ten minutes when the tower collapsed. We saw a cloud of dust traveling toward us. Liz fell to the pavement, sure that John must be dead. We knew that people were dying, that the firemen and policemen were dying.
“I had no more positive words to motivate Liz. I had left them all in the building. I couldn’t say ‘John will be alright,’ not even one more time.
“I bent down and picked Liz up. I said nothing because you can’t say any thing to someone in that much pain that makes any sense. The three of us kept walking. Cars had stopped. People were standing in the street staring back at where the Trade Center had been. In Chinatown the people at a small tailor shop let Liz use their phone, but there was no news of John. Liz was silent and stared straight ahead.
“I used a pay phone to call my ex-wife in Florida and asked her to let my family know I was alright. Then we kept walking to my hotel on Seventy-Sixth Street. Fuzz Fetherolf, my childhood friend from Whitehall was there pacing on the street. We had earlier planned to meet at the hotel.”
“I still keep in touch with Liz. Her experience was different from mine. She lost half of the people in her company, but her fiancé, John did survive. She told me that she still has nightmares about that day. She told me recently that she wants to leave Manhattan.”
Saganowich was changed, too. He began to feel that somehow the financial industry was harming a lot of people around the world and that maybe it was contributing to the conditions that leave many people in despair. He felt that this might be empowering terrorists.
He is now a therapist in residency in Naples, Florida. He works for a non-profit community mental health facility in a chemical dependency unit. He is engaged now and though he makes a fraction of what he made working for a Wall Street financial company, it is enough. He is happy and still helps people in need. He is engaged to Debbie Gilmore and they plan to be married. Saganowich’s daughter, Taylor, also lives in Florida.
His mother, AnnJean Sarko, lives in Treasure Island, Florida near his brother, Jerry Saganowich, a retired professional wrestler. His sister, Lisa, lives in Boca, Florida. His father Jerome Saganowich, Senior is deceased.
This week’s anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center provides the occasion for this story. It is the story one man’s struggle to survive and his need to find a deeper meaning to his life. It is the story of how one man faced unknown and fearful odds, summoned courage, focused on the needs of others, and brought himself and one other person through disaster to safety.
Whitehall High School graduate James Saganowich was a newly recruited employee of financial giant Morgan Stanley and was in the World Trade Center Building II to begin his new career with the Wall Street corporation. He and colleagues had taken a break from a training session and were going to breakfast in the lower levels of the building. It was Tuesday morning with a beautiful blue sky; however, from the mezzanine overlooking World Trade Center Building I he saw that the tower was “on fire and had debris falling from it.”
“Nobody seemed to know what had happened. There was a lot of speculation: bombs or helicopter or plane crashes were being considered. Then I heard the Port Authority order everyone out of the building and into the street.
“Still not realizing what had happened and having left my briefcase, wallet and phone on the sixty-first floor, I started back to get my stuff. I took the elevator back up to the meeting room where I had left them. When I got there the floor was eerily empty. As I walked down an empty hall two security guards ordered me to ‘Get the hell outta here.’ They escorted me to the stairwell and locked me into it.”
James Saganowich had grown up in Whitehall, Pennsylvania . After securing an appointment to the United States Military Academy he went to West Point for two years where he played football on the Army team. He transferred to Kutztown University and graduated in 1989 with a degree in Russian language. After selling securities in Florida and going through a divorce, he joined Morgan Stanley. They had just sent him to Manhattan for a training session with the firm.
Now, having been locked into the stairwell of a building and unaware of exactly what had happened, Saganowich still did not realize he was now in a desperate struggle for survival. “The stairwell was jammed with people walking down the thousands of steps to the street,” he said. “I was in no hurry and was still hoping to get out of the stairwell to go back and get my things.”
He slowly realized that something serious had happened to the building.
“We all knew something big was wrong. People started to panic. They were pushing and shoving. I was locked in a stairwell with a mob of frightened people. It was hot and dusty. Then I could smell kerosene. I began to grab people and try to calm them down. At about the fifty-ninth or fifty-eighth floor bloodied people with torn clothes started coming down. They had been in or above the impact zone where the airplane had struck the building. They were screaming and we stood aside to let them pass.
“Suddenly one of the women slammed into me as she came down the stairs. I grabbed her and kept her from falling. She looked in my eyes and said that we were going to die. I told her that it was ‘ok’ and that I would get her out.”
Saganowich, with the exhausted and fearful thirty-six year old woman, then began to focus on getting her through the stairway and into the street. Her name was Liz.
“She leaned more and more into me as we slowly moved down the stairs. The hot, humid air smelled of jet fuel,” he said. “Thank God I had Liz to focus on or I think I may have wigged out in there.
“We started to see firemen struggling up the stairwell as we went down. Seeing them soothed us and we started to feel safe for the first time in an hour. They were sweating in their gear as they climbed past us.
“We made in down the next thirty or so floors. People escorted us across the mall area. It was weird to see the huge empty space of the mall now devoid of people.
“We looked up at the smoke and fire. It seemed like miles up to where the fire was burning.
“We were safe.”
Saganowich and Liz were joined by Liz’s friend, Vanessa. Liz was worried about her missing fiancé, John, who had been in the building with her. People were now jumping from the burning building.
“I couldn’t watch,” said Saganowich. “I urged Liz and Vanessa to keep moving and we walked toward my hotel on the Upper East Side. We had walked about ten minutes when the tower collapsed. We saw a cloud of dust traveling toward us. Liz fell to the pavement, sure that John must be dead. We knew that people were dying, that the firemen and policemen were dying.
“I had no more positive words to motivate Liz. I had left them all in the building. I couldn’t say ‘John will be alright,’ not even one more time.
“I bent down and picked Liz up. I said nothing because you can’t say any thing to someone in that much pain that makes any sense. The three of us kept walking. Cars had stopped. People were standing in the street staring back at where the Trade Center had been. In Chinatown the people at a small tailor shop let Liz use their phone, but there was no news of John. Liz was silent and stared straight ahead.
“I used a pay phone to call my ex-wife in Florida and asked her to let my family know I was alright. Then we kept walking to my hotel on Seventy-Sixth Street. Fuzz Fetherolf, my childhood friend from Whitehall was there pacing on the street. We had earlier planned to meet at the hotel.”
“I still keep in touch with Liz. Her experience was different from mine. She lost half of the people in her company, but her fiancé, John did survive. She told me that she still has nightmares about that day. She told me recently that she wants to leave Manhattan.”
Saganowich was changed, too. He began to feel that somehow the financial industry was harming a lot of people around the world and that maybe it was contributing to the conditions that leave many people in despair. He felt that this might be empowering terrorists.
He is now a therapist in residency in Naples, Florida. He works for a non-profit community mental health facility in a chemical dependency unit. He is engaged now and though he makes a fraction of what he made working for a Wall Street financial company, it is enough. He is happy and still helps people in need. He is engaged to Debbie Gilmore and they plan to be married. Saganowich’s daughter, Taylor, also lives in Florida.
His mother, AnnJean Sarko, lives in Treasure Island, Florida near his brother, Jerry Saganowich, a retired professional wrestler. His sister, Lisa, lives in Boca, Florida. His father Jerome Saganowich, Senior is deceased.
Angels Are Where You Find Them.
By Doug Graves © 2007
Angels are where you find them. The problem is to recognize them when you see them. They seem so ordinary, so much like regular folks. Those at the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Food Pantry at 300 Mechanicsville Road in Whitehall didn’t have a set of wings in whole bunch.
Karen Schell is the director and has been volunteering there for the past five years. Schell operates the Food Pantry by appointment only. “We do that because if we advertise a particular day and are forced to change the date because a volunteer is not available, then we run the risk of people standing in line waiting for volunteers that won’t be there.” To get an appointment, call (610) 262-1264.
The range of clients who use the Food Pantry include the elderly, single moms raising children, cancer patients and the homeless.
They have plenty of food. They are well stocked in dry foods like cereals and pasta and have lots of canned goods. Bread is plentiful. Meat is sometimes available but their storage capability for fresh meat is very limited plus much of it comes from private donations that might or might not be available any given week.
“We get hamburger in one-pound packages,” said Schell. “We try to distribute it based on family size. For example, a family of three people gets a one-pound package. A family of over seven would get a three-pound package.”
They do similar rationing for chicken and turkey. “A family of three or more would get a turkey,” she said. “Smaller families get a chicken.”
Milk and eggs are not available through the Food Pantry.
“We have 60 to 80 families in here each week,” said Schell. “That’s about 300 people. Each family gets $75 to $100 worth of food each visit.
“Families also get to choose what they want,” she said. In the past volunteers would bag up a set of grocery items and issue them to a family, but that changed under Schell’s direction.
Paper goods are something that St. Stephen’s Food Pantry provides. They have paper towels and toilet paper. This class of supplies cannot be purchased with food stamps in a retail store.
“Once in a while we have fresh vegetables if parishioners bring them in,” said Schell. Otherwise potatoes, corn and other vegetables are not available.
Like any food store, the Food Pantry gets inspected by the government. Since the township has no health department this is done by the state or the federal authorities. One of the requirements is that no food be stored on the floor.
Eagle Scout Michael Siegmund, as part of his Eagle Scout service project, built grocery shelves on wheels. The moveable shelves not only keep food off the floor but facilitate movement of food around the small efficiency-style apartment that the church has allocated for use by the Food Bank.
Doreen Wagner, a parishioner and one of the volunteers, is there when needed. “I feel I’ve been called to help,” she said.
Dottie Lesavoy and Scott Heefner pitch in. “I’m part of the vestry of the church,” said Heefner. “This is just one of the things I do to be active in the church.” Heefner drives a forklift for Moyer Lumber in Bethlehem. He has been volunteering for the past three months.
Donna Scott from Egypt said, “I was a client. Now I come here to volunteer.” Her assistant angel is her 21-year old daughter, Jennifer. They both are committed to helping feed the hungry.
While supervising the scheduling of volunteers and buying the food, Schell also volunteers her time. A woman of seemingly boundless energy, she also has a busy, full-time career as the national sales manager for an equine products company, Straight Arrow Products, Inc. She gets help in her Food Pantry duties from her assistant angel, daughter Denise Herman.
Schell’s impulse to give of herself seems limitless. Once she took an abused woman home with her until better arrangements could be made. She has been known to give her personal phone number to lonely elderly folks so they could “have someone to talk to.”
Their mission is to provide food for the needy in and around Whitehall. They buy food through the Second Harvest Food Bank with offerings left in St. Stephen’s “Hunger Bowl” and from other money donated. Other groups are helping, too: the Lions Club, the Women’s Club and the church’s youth organizations. About 2,000 pounds of food is received from the Boy Scout’s and the Postal Service’s annual food drives.
“Because some of our parishioners are pet lovers and don’t want to see people’s pets go hungry,” said Schell, “they give us pet food which we can pass on to those who need it.” She emphasized that all pet food is donated directly by the parish’s pet lovers.
The urge to help extends to making sure that the children in needy families get a Christmas gift. With the cooperation of parishioners and a local bank, Schell’s volunteers coordinate a “sponsor a child” program to make sure that the kids have a gift under their Christmas trees.
To volunteer, call (610) 435-3901. Angel wings are not required, but will be issued in due time.
Angels are where you find them. The problem is to recognize them when you see them. They seem so ordinary, so much like regular folks. Those at the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Food Pantry at 300 Mechanicsville Road in Whitehall didn’t have a set of wings in whole bunch.
Karen Schell is the director and has been volunteering there for the past five years. Schell operates the Food Pantry by appointment only. “We do that because if we advertise a particular day and are forced to change the date because a volunteer is not available, then we run the risk of people standing in line waiting for volunteers that won’t be there.” To get an appointment, call (610) 262-1264.
The range of clients who use the Food Pantry include the elderly, single moms raising children, cancer patients and the homeless.
They have plenty of food. They are well stocked in dry foods like cereals and pasta and have lots of canned goods. Bread is plentiful. Meat is sometimes available but their storage capability for fresh meat is very limited plus much of it comes from private donations that might or might not be available any given week.
“We get hamburger in one-pound packages,” said Schell. “We try to distribute it based on family size. For example, a family of three people gets a one-pound package. A family of over seven would get a three-pound package.”
They do similar rationing for chicken and turkey. “A family of three or more would get a turkey,” she said. “Smaller families get a chicken.”
Milk and eggs are not available through the Food Pantry.
“We have 60 to 80 families in here each week,” said Schell. “That’s about 300 people. Each family gets $75 to $100 worth of food each visit.
“Families also get to choose what they want,” she said. In the past volunteers would bag up a set of grocery items and issue them to a family, but that changed under Schell’s direction.
Paper goods are something that St. Stephen’s Food Pantry provides. They have paper towels and toilet paper. This class of supplies cannot be purchased with food stamps in a retail store.
“Once in a while we have fresh vegetables if parishioners bring them in,” said Schell. Otherwise potatoes, corn and other vegetables are not available.
Like any food store, the Food Pantry gets inspected by the government. Since the township has no health department this is done by the state or the federal authorities. One of the requirements is that no food be stored on the floor.
Eagle Scout Michael Siegmund, as part of his Eagle Scout service project, built grocery shelves on wheels. The moveable shelves not only keep food off the floor but facilitate movement of food around the small efficiency-style apartment that the church has allocated for use by the Food Bank.
Doreen Wagner, a parishioner and one of the volunteers, is there when needed. “I feel I’ve been called to help,” she said.
Dottie Lesavoy and Scott Heefner pitch in. “I’m part of the vestry of the church,” said Heefner. “This is just one of the things I do to be active in the church.” Heefner drives a forklift for Moyer Lumber in Bethlehem. He has been volunteering for the past three months.
Donna Scott from Egypt said, “I was a client. Now I come here to volunteer.” Her assistant angel is her 21-year old daughter, Jennifer. They both are committed to helping feed the hungry.
While supervising the scheduling of volunteers and buying the food, Schell also volunteers her time. A woman of seemingly boundless energy, she also has a busy, full-time career as the national sales manager for an equine products company, Straight Arrow Products, Inc. She gets help in her Food Pantry duties from her assistant angel, daughter Denise Herman.
Schell’s impulse to give of herself seems limitless. Once she took an abused woman home with her until better arrangements could be made. She has been known to give her personal phone number to lonely elderly folks so they could “have someone to talk to.”
Their mission is to provide food for the needy in and around Whitehall. They buy food through the Second Harvest Food Bank with offerings left in St. Stephen’s “Hunger Bowl” and from other money donated. Other groups are helping, too: the Lions Club, the Women’s Club and the church’s youth organizations. About 2,000 pounds of food is received from the Boy Scout’s and the Postal Service’s annual food drives.
“Because some of our parishioners are pet lovers and don’t want to see people’s pets go hungry,” said Schell, “they give us pet food which we can pass on to those who need it.” She emphasized that all pet food is donated directly by the parish’s pet lovers.
The urge to help extends to making sure that the children in needy families get a Christmas gift. With the cooperation of parishioners and a local bank, Schell’s volunteers coordinate a “sponsor a child” program to make sure that the kids have a gift under their Christmas trees.
To volunteer, call (610) 435-3901. Angel wings are not required, but will be issued in due time.
"It made me realize how fortunate I am."
By Doug Graves © 2007
Almost 60 people of all ages were busy helping Santa last Thursday at the Holiday Inn Conference Center of the Lehigh Valley in Fogelsville. They were wrapping or sorting almost 2,000 toys, books and stuffed animals that had been donated by various groups and organizations, including the Marine Corps Reserve through their “Toys for Tots” program. Books were donated by the Cops ‘n’ Kids Children’s Literacy Program.
The Holiday Hope Chest Campaign donated 1,000 shoe boxes, wrapped and filled with a selection of small gifts.
“We haven’t bought a toy in five years,” said George Pitsilos, catering and sales manager at the hotel. “They are all donated.”
Eight high schoolers from Liberty High School pitched in. They represented the student government body demonstrating that most effective leadership trait—leading by example. “We are here to volunteer,” said Caroline Vail. “Just here to help.”
Mala Saha-Guzman, there with her family, said “We’re here to help out and to show our children its not just about getting gifts.” She was there with her husband Romulo and their children, Amaya, 7, and Ryan, eight and half.
Trevor McCleary, 14, was helping transport wrapped packages to the staging area. “I came to help people,” he said. “To help the community.” Trevor is a student at Orefield Middle School.
The same sentiment was expressed by Dickinson Law School student Christine Lombardo of Allentown. She was there with her children, Madison, 7, and Katie, four and a half. “I like to volunteer. This the first time for them . . . they wanted to volunteer.”
Working at the book table, other college students were busy. Duquesne University student Brigitte Gotzon was there. She is an ’06 graduate of Liberty High School. The University of Pittsburgh’s Carly Stasak was there—also a LHS ’06 grad.
Lauren Diehl from Susquehanna University was helping—another LHS Class of “06” alumna. Also sorting books was Emmaus High School’s Maddie Bean. Working across the room Rutgers University’s was Andre “Hoagie” Morales, also an ’06 grad of LHS.
The huge event room at the conference center was a hub of activity. Tables were surrounded by teams wielding scotch tape and wrapping paper. Others took wrapped packages to staging areas and sorted them into separate piles for boys and for girls and further sorted by age group.
Orchestrating this whirl of scissors, tape and brightly colored wrapping paper, Pitsilos kept the seemingly chaotic “happening” flowing smoothly. With his bull-horn and big smile he kept the group informed and directed supplies flowing to the tables. More wrapping paper here, more tape there, more presents to that table.
“I’ve been working for the company for 14 years,” said Pitsilos. “This event started 15 years ago. It made me realize how fortunate I am—it’s a humbling experience.” Pitsilos’ family participates. His daughter, Kayla, started when she was three years old. Now she is a fashion major at a New York City college.
Why all the gifts?
Sarah Kim, 11, was sitting on the floor and wrapping packages with her brother Joshua, 9 and her good friend, Emily Leonardo, 12. “Come back on Christmas Eve,” Sarah said. “Kids will sit on Santa’s lap and open presents.”
On Christmas Eve Pitsilos plans to feed over 4,000 people from around the Lehigh Valley. These guests have, for a large part, been selected by various homeless shelters and community action centers and they will be bused to the hotel by Trans-Bridge Lines—free.
Once at the hotel they will be honored guests. That’s right. 4,000 guests—not customers. The conference center is being decorated as though it were the social event of the season. Buffet lines will be overflowing with traditional holiday food, drink and sweets. The main course? Turkey, of course—240 of them donated by Jaindl Farms.
The names of some of the other people donating money and services seemed familiar. . . . philanthropist Linny Fowler . . . David Jaindl’s Jaindl Farms . . . hotelier Kostas Kalogeropoulos. These same names are linked to some other marvelous Lehigh Valley institutions: the Miracle League, leadership awards at SkillsUSA, Camelot for Kids-- to name a few.
Almost 60 people of all ages were busy helping Santa last Thursday at the Holiday Inn Conference Center of the Lehigh Valley in Fogelsville. They were wrapping or sorting almost 2,000 toys, books and stuffed animals that had been donated by various groups and organizations, including the Marine Corps Reserve through their “Toys for Tots” program. Books were donated by the Cops ‘n’ Kids Children’s Literacy Program.
The Holiday Hope Chest Campaign donated 1,000 shoe boxes, wrapped and filled with a selection of small gifts.
“We haven’t bought a toy in five years,” said George Pitsilos, catering and sales manager at the hotel. “They are all donated.”
Eight high schoolers from Liberty High School pitched in. They represented the student government body demonstrating that most effective leadership trait—leading by example. “We are here to volunteer,” said Caroline Vail. “Just here to help.”
Mala Saha-Guzman, there with her family, said “We’re here to help out and to show our children its not just about getting gifts.” She was there with her husband Romulo and their children, Amaya, 7, and Ryan, eight and half.
Trevor McCleary, 14, was helping transport wrapped packages to the staging area. “I came to help people,” he said. “To help the community.” Trevor is a student at Orefield Middle School.
The same sentiment was expressed by Dickinson Law School student Christine Lombardo of Allentown. She was there with her children, Madison, 7, and Katie, four and a half. “I like to volunteer. This the first time for them . . . they wanted to volunteer.”
Working at the book table, other college students were busy. Duquesne University student Brigitte Gotzon was there. She is an ’06 graduate of Liberty High School. The University of Pittsburgh’s Carly Stasak was there—also a LHS ’06 grad.
Lauren Diehl from Susquehanna University was helping—another LHS Class of “06” alumna. Also sorting books was Emmaus High School’s Maddie Bean. Working across the room Rutgers University’s was Andre “Hoagie” Morales, also an ’06 grad of LHS.
The huge event room at the conference center was a hub of activity. Tables were surrounded by teams wielding scotch tape and wrapping paper. Others took wrapped packages to staging areas and sorted them into separate piles for boys and for girls and further sorted by age group.
Orchestrating this whirl of scissors, tape and brightly colored wrapping paper, Pitsilos kept the seemingly chaotic “happening” flowing smoothly. With his bull-horn and big smile he kept the group informed and directed supplies flowing to the tables. More wrapping paper here, more tape there, more presents to that table.
“I’ve been working for the company for 14 years,” said Pitsilos. “This event started 15 years ago. It made me realize how fortunate I am—it’s a humbling experience.” Pitsilos’ family participates. His daughter, Kayla, started when she was three years old. Now she is a fashion major at a New York City college.
Why all the gifts?
Sarah Kim, 11, was sitting on the floor and wrapping packages with her brother Joshua, 9 and her good friend, Emily Leonardo, 12. “Come back on Christmas Eve,” Sarah said. “Kids will sit on Santa’s lap and open presents.”
On Christmas Eve Pitsilos plans to feed over 4,000 people from around the Lehigh Valley. These guests have, for a large part, been selected by various homeless shelters and community action centers and they will be bused to the hotel by Trans-Bridge Lines—free.
Once at the hotel they will be honored guests. That’s right. 4,000 guests—not customers. The conference center is being decorated as though it were the social event of the season. Buffet lines will be overflowing with traditional holiday food, drink and sweets. The main course? Turkey, of course—240 of them donated by Jaindl Farms.
The names of some of the other people donating money and services seemed familiar. . . . philanthropist Linny Fowler . . . David Jaindl’s Jaindl Farms . . . hotelier Kostas Kalogeropoulos. These same names are linked to some other marvelous Lehigh Valley institutions: the Miracle League, leadership awards at SkillsUSA, Camelot for Kids-- to name a few.
“Don’t know. Americans will figure this out.”
By Doug Graves © 2007
Ten to fifteen people showed up at the Federal Building in Allentown on Wednesday, July 18 to protest the United States’ policy in Iraq. Pedestrians generally avoided the group or walked stoically past them. Some motorists honked their horns in support of the message, but most remained passively silent. At least one motorist shouted “Hippy!” preceded by an obscene expletive as he drove across Hamilton on 5th Street.
Bill Maurer of Bethlehem said, “People are supportive of security measures; it is difficult to make an argument about which tactic is effective. Bush is not the one to make the decision.” When asked who is [the one to make a decision], Maurer shrugged, “Don’t know. Americans will figure this out.”
Self-described pacifist Judith Woodruff of Allentown, when asked what her response to 9-11 would have been she said, “Legally pursue the people who had something to do with it. 9-11 wouldn’t have happened if the U. S. had been a country that was just in their actions with other countries, especially third world countries.” When asked if she could name a country that she considered as being “just in their actions” with third world countries, she could not. “Maybe a Scandinavian country,” she said.
On the Lehigh County Courthouse courtyard diagonally across from the protesters office workers and contractors sat in ones and twos taking their lunch breaks and passively watching as the demonstrators waved upside-down flags and shouted.
“Don’t they have jobs?” said Ron Castagnera of Emmaus. “I understood why we went into Iraq,” said Dale Inglehart from Dallas, Pa. “I can’t tell you that we should pull out today. I don’t know if that’s the best solution.”
The event was staged outside the Federal Building where Republican Senator Arlen Specter has an office, but Specter was in Washington where Republicans defeated a procedural ballot that would have allowed a vote on an amendment that would bring U. S. troops home from Iraq by April 30. The Democrat leadership needed at least 60 votes to bring the amendment to a vote. They lost 52-47. A call to Senator Specter’s Allentown office on Wednesday was not returned.
Groups that had representatives at Wednesday’s protest included the Lehigh-Pocono Committee of Concern and the Allentown Armory Activists.
Ten to fifteen people showed up at the Federal Building in Allentown on Wednesday, July 18 to protest the United States’ policy in Iraq. Pedestrians generally avoided the group or walked stoically past them. Some motorists honked their horns in support of the message, but most remained passively silent. At least one motorist shouted “Hippy!” preceded by an obscene expletive as he drove across Hamilton on 5th Street.
Bill Maurer of Bethlehem said, “People are supportive of security measures; it is difficult to make an argument about which tactic is effective. Bush is not the one to make the decision.” When asked who is [the one to make a decision], Maurer shrugged, “Don’t know. Americans will figure this out.”
Self-described pacifist Judith Woodruff of Allentown, when asked what her response to 9-11 would have been she said, “Legally pursue the people who had something to do with it. 9-11 wouldn’t have happened if the U. S. had been a country that was just in their actions with other countries, especially third world countries.” When asked if she could name a country that she considered as being “just in their actions” with third world countries, she could not. “Maybe a Scandinavian country,” she said.
On the Lehigh County Courthouse courtyard diagonally across from the protesters office workers and contractors sat in ones and twos taking their lunch breaks and passively watching as the demonstrators waved upside-down flags and shouted.
“Don’t they have jobs?” said Ron Castagnera of Emmaus. “I understood why we went into Iraq,” said Dale Inglehart from Dallas, Pa. “I can’t tell you that we should pull out today. I don’t know if that’s the best solution.”
The event was staged outside the Federal Building where Republican Senator Arlen Specter has an office, but Specter was in Washington where Republicans defeated a procedural ballot that would have allowed a vote on an amendment that would bring U. S. troops home from Iraq by April 30. The Democrat leadership needed at least 60 votes to bring the amendment to a vote. They lost 52-47. A call to Senator Specter’s Allentown office on Wednesday was not returned.
Groups that had representatives at Wednesday’s protest included the Lehigh-Pocono Committee of Concern and the Allentown Armory Activists.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Cub Scouts Burned Flags on Tuesday
By Doug Graves © 2007
When the American flag is burned, the average American knows that in some parts of the world it is an act of desecration by groups wanting to thumb their noses at the United States. Those of us over 35 might remember Chicago Bears outfielder and former Marine Rick Monday snatching an American flag from two men trying to burn it in protest at Dodger Field in 1976.
But when the Boy Scouts and the Cub Scouts burned flags on Tuesday, September 11 in Hanover Township it was done with the highest honors and great dignity. The Scouts were the hosts at a ceremonial retirement of old American Flags. They also invited the public and local leaders to join them for a Patriot’s Day remembrance of 9/11.
Older Boy Scouts taught Cub Scouts how to fold the flag in the triangular shape reminiscent of the Revolutionary War soldier’s three cornered hats. Altogether the Scouts received 120 flags from the community to properly dispose of them.
Scout Master Mike Caffrey of Troop 352 conducted the ceremony. “Remember the valiant heroes who gave their lives to help each other,” he said to the crowd of approximately 125.
Father Carmen Bolock, chaplain for Boy Scout Troop 362 and for the Nancy Run Fire Department said a prayer.
State Senator Pat Browne briefly spoke to the somber group. “We were all with them on 9/11,” he said.
Steve Dashe, Cathy Schneible and J. Schrader played patriotic music for the late afternoon occasion. The crowd sang as the musicians played “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and “This Land is My Land.”
Ryan Neel, an Easton High School senior and aspiring professional musician, sang the “Star Spangled Banner.”
Justin Amann, 14 a student at Liberty High School sang “Amazing Grace.”
Keynote speaker and 9/11 rescue responder Jim Sorenfon, a retired New York City fireman but then working as a fire training officer in the World Trade Center, was at home when he got the call saying “We’ve been hit.”
He said he got in his car and drove into Manhattan. By the time he got there the first tower had collapsed. “All I could do was to become a fireman again and start to help.”
He reminded the boys that all Americans have the duty to uphold the Constitution and that can be done in many was, but to him it meant helping people when they need it in what ever way you can.
“We were covered in cement dust, our mouths choked and our eyes burning,” he said. “I remember a woman, up to her ankles in dust, came with bottles of water and washed the cement out of the men’s eyes. There was a nun standing at Liberty and Church giving out sandwiches.”
Bethlehem Township resident Heather Barbosa released 21 white pigeons to represent a salute to fallen heroes. The owner of “Say It With Doves” said she performs her tribute free for the annual ceremony. She also provides the same service free for the families of service men and women who have been killed in combat.
Boy Scout Devon Dominici, 16, a sophomore at Bethlehem Catholic High School, read “Autobiography of a Flag.”
Scout leader and Bethlehem business man James Smith received the flags as they were passed to him hand to hand by Cub Scouts. Smith then ceremoniously placed each flag in the fires blazing from one of the two 50-gallon steel barrels set up for the ceremony. Black, acrid smoke from many flags made of synthetic material billowed into the darkening sky.
When the American flag is burned, the average American knows that in some parts of the world it is an act of desecration by groups wanting to thumb their noses at the United States. Those of us over 35 might remember Chicago Bears outfielder and former Marine Rick Monday snatching an American flag from two men trying to burn it in protest at Dodger Field in 1976.
But when the Boy Scouts and the Cub Scouts burned flags on Tuesday, September 11 in Hanover Township it was done with the highest honors and great dignity. The Scouts were the hosts at a ceremonial retirement of old American Flags. They also invited the public and local leaders to join them for a Patriot’s Day remembrance of 9/11.
Older Boy Scouts taught Cub Scouts how to fold the flag in the triangular shape reminiscent of the Revolutionary War soldier’s three cornered hats. Altogether the Scouts received 120 flags from the community to properly dispose of them.
Scout Master Mike Caffrey of Troop 352 conducted the ceremony. “Remember the valiant heroes who gave their lives to help each other,” he said to the crowd of approximately 125.
Father Carmen Bolock, chaplain for Boy Scout Troop 362 and for the Nancy Run Fire Department said a prayer.
State Senator Pat Browne briefly spoke to the somber group. “We were all with them on 9/11,” he said.
Steve Dashe, Cathy Schneible and J. Schrader played patriotic music for the late afternoon occasion. The crowd sang as the musicians played “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and “This Land is My Land.”
Ryan Neel, an Easton High School senior and aspiring professional musician, sang the “Star Spangled Banner.”
Justin Amann, 14 a student at Liberty High School sang “Amazing Grace.”
Keynote speaker and 9/11 rescue responder Jim Sorenfon, a retired New York City fireman but then working as a fire training officer in the World Trade Center, was at home when he got the call saying “We’ve been hit.”
He said he got in his car and drove into Manhattan. By the time he got there the first tower had collapsed. “All I could do was to become a fireman again and start to help.”
He reminded the boys that all Americans have the duty to uphold the Constitution and that can be done in many was, but to him it meant helping people when they need it in what ever way you can.
“We were covered in cement dust, our mouths choked and our eyes burning,” he said. “I remember a woman, up to her ankles in dust, came with bottles of water and washed the cement out of the men’s eyes. There was a nun standing at Liberty and Church giving out sandwiches.”
Bethlehem Township resident Heather Barbosa released 21 white pigeons to represent a salute to fallen heroes. The owner of “Say It With Doves” said she performs her tribute free for the annual ceremony. She also provides the same service free for the families of service men and women who have been killed in combat.
Boy Scout Devon Dominici, 16, a sophomore at Bethlehem Catholic High School, read “Autobiography of a Flag.”
Scout leader and Bethlehem business man James Smith received the flags as they were passed to him hand to hand by Cub Scouts. Smith then ceremoniously placed each flag in the fires blazing from one of the two 50-gallon steel barrels set up for the ceremony. Black, acrid smoke from many flags made of synthetic material billowed into the darkening sky.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Keeper of the Mound
Doug Graves (Copyright 2007)
As war memorials go they don’t come any more unassuming-- but this one gets some first class, loving care from a guy with a big heart.
The story of the humble memorial is the story of how, in 1945, the patriotic impulse of some boys and girls has been a bright thread woven into the fabric of the neighborhood’s history. This colorful tapestry has spanned generations, binding the community together with what Abraham Lincoln called, “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land . . .”
Charles Blatnik, 56, has been cutting the grass on the tiny wedge of property at the intersection of Willow Park Road and Freemansburg Avenue for 42 years. And he does it for free.
“I do it because nobody else does,” said Blatnik. “When I was a Cub Scout I used to come here on Memorial Day for ceremonies.”
“When I was about 14, I noticed that the grass at the memorial was about knee high,” said Blatnik. “I cut the grass and have been doing it ever since.”
The small park is across the street from Blatnik’s Bethlehem Township home.
The steel sign is getting rusty and the paint is starting to lift, but the letters are still perfectly legible. It is fitted into a stainless steel frame mounted on steel posts. It is shaded by two honey locust trees that host an ancient but vigorous poison ivy vine. A weathered three-by-four foot national ensign adorns the sign, its staff fastened to the rusting steel sign post. Smaller American flags flutter from sticks stuck in the ground amid red and white geraniums at the base of the memorial.
Geraniums also line the broad steps leading from the street up to the memorial. The steps were laid in about six years ago by James Wiedl as a community service project for his Eagle Scout badge according to Michael Faccinetto, Scout Master of Troop 347.
“I added some flowers,” said Blatnik. “I also put up the flags.”
According to Charlotte Rzepiela, a leader in the local Girl Scout organization, the memorial started out as a remembrance ceremony at Sacred Heart Catholic Church attended by scouts from Girl Scout Troop 44 and Boy Scout Troop 347. She was a Girl Scout in 1937. Shortly after the war ended there was a sign kept at the church with World War II veterans’ names on it. Eventually, under the leadership of Josephine Sakovics, since deceased, a memorial was erected on the current site and the sign was moved to the new location.
“That was done in the early fifties, probably ’52 or ’53,” she said.
“The Scouts then would have a little parade from the church down the street to the memorial site on Memorial Day [then called Decoration Day]”, she said. “A Girl Scout would recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and a Boy Scout would recite ‘In Flanders Fields’.”
Mary Vanya, director of the Girl Scout Service Unit, said, “My aunt, Ilona Romanell, read ‘Boys on the Honor Roll’ at the first memorial service in 1945.”
“Since the honor roll was first put up” said Rzepiela, “the Memorial Day programs have been sponsored by Girl Scout [now Cadette] Troop #44.”
“When it was first put up,” Rzepiela said, “it had the names of all of the people who served in World War II. But the sign was hit by cars three times so the last time we put it up we left the names off and just had the dedication painted on it. That was 55 years ago.”
“We call it ‘the mound’,” said Rzepiela. “We call Charlie the ‘Keeper of the Mound.”
“On the Sunday before or after Memorial Day the Scouts from Sacred Heart Catholic Church do a parade here, and Father King says a prayer,” said Blatnik. “I have a sound system I set up for the occasion.”
Recently Blatnik had surgery on his shoulder and has not been able to mow the grass. He said Bethlehem Township personnel have volunteered to help until he is feeling better.
As war memorials go they don’t come any more unassuming-- but this one gets some first class, loving care from a guy with a big heart.
The story of the humble memorial is the story of how, in 1945, the patriotic impulse of some boys and girls has been a bright thread woven into the fabric of the neighborhood’s history. This colorful tapestry has spanned generations, binding the community together with what Abraham Lincoln called, “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land . . .”
Charles Blatnik, 56, has been cutting the grass on the tiny wedge of property at the intersection of Willow Park Road and Freemansburg Avenue for 42 years. And he does it for free.
“I do it because nobody else does,” said Blatnik. “When I was a Cub Scout I used to come here on Memorial Day for ceremonies.”
“When I was about 14, I noticed that the grass at the memorial was about knee high,” said Blatnik. “I cut the grass and have been doing it ever since.”
The small park is across the street from Blatnik’s Bethlehem Township home.
The steel sign is getting rusty and the paint is starting to lift, but the letters are still perfectly legible. It is fitted into a stainless steel frame mounted on steel posts. It is shaded by two honey locust trees that host an ancient but vigorous poison ivy vine. A weathered three-by-four foot national ensign adorns the sign, its staff fastened to the rusting steel sign post. Smaller American flags flutter from sticks stuck in the ground amid red and white geraniums at the base of the memorial.
Geraniums also line the broad steps leading from the street up to the memorial. The steps were laid in about six years ago by James Wiedl as a community service project for his Eagle Scout badge according to Michael Faccinetto, Scout Master of Troop 347.
“I added some flowers,” said Blatnik. “I also put up the flags.”
According to Charlotte Rzepiela, a leader in the local Girl Scout organization, the memorial started out as a remembrance ceremony at Sacred Heart Catholic Church attended by scouts from Girl Scout Troop 44 and Boy Scout Troop 347. She was a Girl Scout in 1937. Shortly after the war ended there was a sign kept at the church with World War II veterans’ names on it. Eventually, under the leadership of Josephine Sakovics, since deceased, a memorial was erected on the current site and the sign was moved to the new location.
“That was done in the early fifties, probably ’52 or ’53,” she said.
“The Scouts then would have a little parade from the church down the street to the memorial site on Memorial Day [then called Decoration Day]”, she said. “A Girl Scout would recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and a Boy Scout would recite ‘In Flanders Fields’.”
Mary Vanya, director of the Girl Scout Service Unit, said, “My aunt, Ilona Romanell, read ‘Boys on the Honor Roll’ at the first memorial service in 1945.”
“Since the honor roll was first put up” said Rzepiela, “the Memorial Day programs have been sponsored by Girl Scout [now Cadette] Troop #44.”
“When it was first put up,” Rzepiela said, “it had the names of all of the people who served in World War II. But the sign was hit by cars three times so the last time we put it up we left the names off and just had the dedication painted on it. That was 55 years ago.”
“We call it ‘the mound’,” said Rzepiela. “We call Charlie the ‘Keeper of the Mound.”
“On the Sunday before or after Memorial Day the Scouts from Sacred Heart Catholic Church do a parade here, and Father King says a prayer,” said Blatnik. “I have a sound system I set up for the occasion.”
Recently Blatnik had surgery on his shoulder and has not been able to mow the grass. He said Bethlehem Township personnel have volunteered to help until he is feeling better.
Heros Without Capes
Doug Graves © 2007
The old image of heroes wearing capes and tights took another hit when 50 heroic men and women were honored in ceremonies at the Northampton County 911 Center on Saturday evening September 15. They were wearing tuxedos, evening gowns, and business suits.
Dr. James Cipolla, a trauma surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital, conducted the awards ceremony that honored the men and women who all played critical roles in saving two lives despite the fact that many times these professionals felt they were on the verge of defeat.
Scott Skirpan had been working in the Chrin Sanitary Landfill in Williams Township on June 2006 when, about 9:30 a. m., he was run over by a multi-ton tracked vehicle that crushed both of his legs. With his legs all but severed, bone, muscle and blood vessels destroyed, Skirpan stayed conscious and called 911. It was this kind of determined will to survive that doctors would later credit with saving his life.
That was when he met his first hero, the first of many that for 21 days worked feverishly to save his life.
“It was a race against time,” said Jim Seguine an EMT and paramedic with Easton EMS who was among the first to get to Skirpan’s side there in the land fill.
Seguine and some of the men and women who worked to save Skirpan told their story in a video production shown to the audience. Their words brought the dramatic struggles to life.
EMT Donald Lippey recalled, “I was trying to clamp off [the blood vessels] as best I could . . . just hold the pressure there.”
Jodi Hogan, an EMT and flight paramedic on the rescue helicopter said, “When we loaded Scott into the helicopter, he went into cardiac arrest and was no longer breathing . . . we maintained CPR all the way to hospital.”
RN Melissa Eisenhardt, also on the team as a flight paramedic, said that when they arrived at St Luke’s Hospital she “remembers seeing trauma surgeon Dr. Cipolla look up and say ‘that doesn’t look good.’”
Dr. James Cipolla and his trauma team tried to stop the bleeding and performed CPR for 25 minutes but were making no progress in restarting the injured man’s heart. Team member Dr. Nathaniel McQuay suggested that they do an ultra sound image of Skirpen’s heart. ED Technician Lucia Dennis said “All the medications that we gave really didn’t do anything, but we looked at the monitor and saw a little something. There was something on the monitor and we resumed CPR.”
Dr. Joe Rivera was in the operating room when the trauma team sent Skirpan to them. “We were surprised they were bringing him over [to OR],” he said. “We thought he was dead at that point. His Ph was 6.5,” said Rivera. “That is incompatible with life.”
Drs. Rivera and McQuay and their team performed the surgery and did the double amputation needed.
But the trauma and the loss of blood had affected almost every organ in his body. “Every organ system had a problem,” said Dr. Hannah Mude.
The days following the surgery were a “living hell,” said his wife, Carol Skirvan.
When Skirpan did start to respond, he did so quickly. “We talked about it for weeks,” said Rivera. “Not only was this guy alive, but he was neurologically intact.”
“It was nothing short of a miracle,” said trauma surgeon Dr. Cipolla.
Skirpan took his wheelchair Saturday and participated in the five kilometer race that is part of St. Luke’s “A Night of Heroes” program.
Arielle Phillip’s story started when the 15-year old Florida resident was enjoying a vacation in the Lehigh Valley. The car she was riding in left the road and jumped across the Saucon Creek slamming into an embankment. According to her narration being watched by the celebrants, she was unaware of the extent of her massive internal injuries. She said she “couldn’t breathe.” She crawled out of the car and lost consciousness on the bank of the creek. The last thing she saw before passing out was a woman running across the bridge above her.
Lower Saucon Policeman Scott Snyder remembered a different version. When he arrived he knew she was in pain. He saw that “she was moaning and clutching her self.”
When Jonathan Nicholas, the director of Bethlehem Township’s EMT, arrived he was concerned about her complexion. “She was gray in color,” said Nicholas. “I said ‘this is just not right.’”
Once at St. Luke’s Hospital Phillips was under the care of Dr. Michael Grossman and his team. After a CAT scan he did the initial surgery to open up her abdomen. “Most of her blood volume was in her abdomen.”
Initially the operating team saw that a vein to her liver had torn away from the vena cava, a large, short vein that carries de-oxygenated blood from the upper half of the body to the heart. She was bleeding terribly. There was a large laceration in her liver and a kidney was punctured.
Her seat belts, in restraining her body from the force of the crash, had done near fatal injuries to her internal organs.
Phillips had massive internal bleeding and was near death. Because of her youth and because so many in the operating room had children or grandchildren, everyone seemed to identify with her.
“It was a very emotional room to be in,” said Michelle Garen, an RN.
The OR team turned her over to Dr. Brian Hoey. “She was cold,” he said. “My job was to try to resuscitate her with blood products and hope to turn her around. But she did not do well. We returned her to the operating room and re-explored her.
“We found another spot on her liver that was bleeding. Dr. [Wade] Kang and I were able to get that under control.”
But the loss of blood and severe trauma had other consequences, too.
“Her kidneys, at least in the short term, were probably going to shut down,” said nephrologist Dr. Robert Gaynor. She eventually lost one kidney.
Phillips’ mother Paige Gray had flown from Florida to be with her daughter. “They wouldn’t tell me she was going to live. For a couple of weeks I heard nothing positive.”
“We ended up having to operate on her twenty five different times,” said Dr. Hoey.
Arielle Phillips spent forty-six days in the Intensive Care Unit before she could be transferred to the “step down unit” where she remained in serious condition but now also battling depression.
But with constant care from many people and the loving encouragement from her family, she improved. Her spirits got a boost when Dr. Hoey arranged for her to go in an ambulance to Musikfest with her parents.
Then one day she was sitting in the cafeteria with her family when Dr. Kang recognized her. “I said ‘Oh my God, that’s her!’ I almost cried. I could not believe it.”
And on Saturday, many of the people who touched her life, and she theirs, saw that, in deed, the demure, beautiful girl has recovered. She is a high school student in Florida.
“A Night of Heroes,” according to information provided by St. Luke’s Hospital is “an annual charity event held to celebrate the St. Luke’s Trauma Center and its many care givers. Each year two patients tell their stories during a video presentation, and members of the trauma team who touched these patients’ lives are recognized and honored for their skill and dedication.”
A quick check with the hospital’s and local emergency services’ wardrobe departments confirmed that capes and tights are not issued to heroes. They wear scrubs, white coats, orange flight suits, blue coveralls, and police uniforms.
The old image of heroes wearing capes and tights took another hit when 50 heroic men and women were honored in ceremonies at the Northampton County 911 Center on Saturday evening September 15. They were wearing tuxedos, evening gowns, and business suits.
Dr. James Cipolla, a trauma surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital, conducted the awards ceremony that honored the men and women who all played critical roles in saving two lives despite the fact that many times these professionals felt they were on the verge of defeat.
Scott Skirpan had been working in the Chrin Sanitary Landfill in Williams Township on June 2006 when, about 9:30 a. m., he was run over by a multi-ton tracked vehicle that crushed both of his legs. With his legs all but severed, bone, muscle and blood vessels destroyed, Skirpan stayed conscious and called 911. It was this kind of determined will to survive that doctors would later credit with saving his life.
That was when he met his first hero, the first of many that for 21 days worked feverishly to save his life.
“It was a race against time,” said Jim Seguine an EMT and paramedic with Easton EMS who was among the first to get to Skirpan’s side there in the land fill.
Seguine and some of the men and women who worked to save Skirpan told their story in a video production shown to the audience. Their words brought the dramatic struggles to life.
EMT Donald Lippey recalled, “I was trying to clamp off [the blood vessels] as best I could . . . just hold the pressure there.”
Jodi Hogan, an EMT and flight paramedic on the rescue helicopter said, “When we loaded Scott into the helicopter, he went into cardiac arrest and was no longer breathing . . . we maintained CPR all the way to hospital.”
RN Melissa Eisenhardt, also on the team as a flight paramedic, said that when they arrived at St Luke’s Hospital she “remembers seeing trauma surgeon Dr. Cipolla look up and say ‘that doesn’t look good.’”
Dr. James Cipolla and his trauma team tried to stop the bleeding and performed CPR for 25 minutes but were making no progress in restarting the injured man’s heart. Team member Dr. Nathaniel McQuay suggested that they do an ultra sound image of Skirpen’s heart. ED Technician Lucia Dennis said “All the medications that we gave really didn’t do anything, but we looked at the monitor and saw a little something. There was something on the monitor and we resumed CPR.”
Dr. Joe Rivera was in the operating room when the trauma team sent Skirpan to them. “We were surprised they were bringing him over [to OR],” he said. “We thought he was dead at that point. His Ph was 6.5,” said Rivera. “That is incompatible with life.”
Drs. Rivera and McQuay and their team performed the surgery and did the double amputation needed.
But the trauma and the loss of blood had affected almost every organ in his body. “Every organ system had a problem,” said Dr. Hannah Mude.
The days following the surgery were a “living hell,” said his wife, Carol Skirvan.
When Skirpan did start to respond, he did so quickly. “We talked about it for weeks,” said Rivera. “Not only was this guy alive, but he was neurologically intact.”
“It was nothing short of a miracle,” said trauma surgeon Dr. Cipolla.
Skirpan took his wheelchair Saturday and participated in the five kilometer race that is part of St. Luke’s “A Night of Heroes” program.
Arielle Phillip’s story started when the 15-year old Florida resident was enjoying a vacation in the Lehigh Valley. The car she was riding in left the road and jumped across the Saucon Creek slamming into an embankment. According to her narration being watched by the celebrants, she was unaware of the extent of her massive internal injuries. She said she “couldn’t breathe.” She crawled out of the car and lost consciousness on the bank of the creek. The last thing she saw before passing out was a woman running across the bridge above her.
Lower Saucon Policeman Scott Snyder remembered a different version. When he arrived he knew she was in pain. He saw that “she was moaning and clutching her self.”
When Jonathan Nicholas, the director of Bethlehem Township’s EMT, arrived he was concerned about her complexion. “She was gray in color,” said Nicholas. “I said ‘this is just not right.’”
Once at St. Luke’s Hospital Phillips was under the care of Dr. Michael Grossman and his team. After a CAT scan he did the initial surgery to open up her abdomen. “Most of her blood volume was in her abdomen.”
Initially the operating team saw that a vein to her liver had torn away from the vena cava, a large, short vein that carries de-oxygenated blood from the upper half of the body to the heart. She was bleeding terribly. There was a large laceration in her liver and a kidney was punctured.
Her seat belts, in restraining her body from the force of the crash, had done near fatal injuries to her internal organs.
Phillips had massive internal bleeding and was near death. Because of her youth and because so many in the operating room had children or grandchildren, everyone seemed to identify with her.
“It was a very emotional room to be in,” said Michelle Garen, an RN.
The OR team turned her over to Dr. Brian Hoey. “She was cold,” he said. “My job was to try to resuscitate her with blood products and hope to turn her around. But she did not do well. We returned her to the operating room and re-explored her.
“We found another spot on her liver that was bleeding. Dr. [Wade] Kang and I were able to get that under control.”
But the loss of blood and severe trauma had other consequences, too.
“Her kidneys, at least in the short term, were probably going to shut down,” said nephrologist Dr. Robert Gaynor. She eventually lost one kidney.
Phillips’ mother Paige Gray had flown from Florida to be with her daughter. “They wouldn’t tell me she was going to live. For a couple of weeks I heard nothing positive.”
“We ended up having to operate on her twenty five different times,” said Dr. Hoey.
Arielle Phillips spent forty-six days in the Intensive Care Unit before she could be transferred to the “step down unit” where she remained in serious condition but now also battling depression.
But with constant care from many people and the loving encouragement from her family, she improved. Her spirits got a boost when Dr. Hoey arranged for her to go in an ambulance to Musikfest with her parents.
Then one day she was sitting in the cafeteria with her family when Dr. Kang recognized her. “I said ‘Oh my God, that’s her!’ I almost cried. I could not believe it.”
And on Saturday, many of the people who touched her life, and she theirs, saw that, in deed, the demure, beautiful girl has recovered. She is a high school student in Florida.
“A Night of Heroes,” according to information provided by St. Luke’s Hospital is “an annual charity event held to celebrate the St. Luke’s Trauma Center and its many care givers. Each year two patients tell their stories during a video presentation, and members of the trauma team who touched these patients’ lives are recognized and honored for their skill and dedication.”
A quick check with the hospital’s and local emergency services’ wardrobe departments confirmed that capes and tights are not issued to heroes. They wear scrubs, white coats, orange flight suits, blue coveralls, and police uniforms.
Angels in the outfield-- and the infield-- and behind the scenes
Doug Graves © 2007
Seemingly miles from the nearest town is a ball park nestled between the woods and a green hill. From it comes the laughter of children having fun . . . that sweetest of sounds that only the crotchety find irksome.
The Orioles are playing the Yankees. The Orioles are at bat. Bases are loaded. Nine-year old Cheyenne Mack is up. The players are intent as the pitcher lets loose with . . . an air ball? An easy pitch? But still Cheyenne connects with the satisfying sound that only a plastic bat can make on a whiffle ball. “Vbloop!” The ball rolls to center field. Turning what looks like an easy out into a run, Cheyenne runs with a delighted grin to first base, her angel trailing along behind. The runner on third base furiously pushes the grip rails on his child sized wheel chair and rolls across home plate. Safe!
Angel? Rolls across home plate, safe?
Sure, an angel. Because this is the Miracle League. And Cheyenne needs an angel in case she gets in tight spot. She has dyspraxia and doesn’t associate her thoughts with her movements very well. It’s a permanent condition. Dyspraxia, according to the dictionary, “is the partial loss of the ability to coordinate and perform certain purposeful movements and gestures in the absence of motor or sensory impairments.”
And the scoring runner? He is wheel-chair bound. Probably forever.
But every one on both teams has a serious mental or physical limitation. And every one of them is a serious baseball player having the time of his or her life. And they each have an angel. In case they get in a tight spot.
Then with the Yankees at bat, Brianna McGovern, a less than three-foot tall ten-year old, glares at the pitcher. But it’s hard to glare when you’re having fun. Maybe there is the hint of a smile from the under the bill of that baseball cap. Hard for a sports writer to tell if they are glaring or smiling when they wear their baseball caps low over their eyes, squinting into the evening sun. Smiling. Yes, definitely smiling.
She swings! A ball. Another swing; the umpire calls it a strike. Then suddenly, “Vbloop!” Plastic bat on plastic ball. And again the special impact absorbing turf barely slows the grounder as it rolls straight into the pitcher’s glove.
But miraculously, she converts what appears to be a sure out into a base hit. It’s like the laws of physics are suddenly cancelled out by the “Vbloop” of her bat and slow motion impedes every one except Brianna. Freed from the constraints of time she races along on her rump, propelled forward by her sinewy but powerful left arm. The pitcher, ball in hand, seems paralyzed. Brianna touches first base! The laws of physics are again operational. Cheers ring out!
This kind of stuff happens in the Miracle League. Her angel relaxes, angel services not being required this time.
On her rump? Yes. No legs, except part of a shin with a small foot, just enough for a tiny tennis shoe. Brianna is a “congenital amputee,” or born without limbs. In this case, born without legs and without a right arm.
What is going on here? Why is everyone having so much fun? Where are the rules? And what’s with the angels?
The Miracle League got its start in 1997 when a recreational league coach in Georgia invited a disabled boy to play. This led, the following year, to his baseball association forming the Miracle League. It caught on fast and went national.
Rules? There are some, all designed to bring out the fun but keep risks to the players minimized.
Every player bats each inning; all base runners are safe; every player scores a run before the inning is over (the last one up gets a home run); community children and volunteers serve as “angels” to assist the players; each team and each player wins every game.
The local Miracle League of the Lehigh Valley’s Fowler Field is at 5858 Sell Road, Schnecksville just off Route 309 in Heidelberg Township.
Northampton County Executive John Stoffa got the idea of bringing the franchise to the Lehigh Valley and called Kostas Kaleogeropoulos, a local hotelier and the co-founder of Camelot for Children and founder of Dream Come True, both charitable organizations that focus on children with disabilities. He, too, liked the idea and soon they had some well known local businessmen and philanthropists involved.
The ball field is in “Jaindl Family Park” so it makes sense that the Jaindl family had something to with it. David Jaindl, president of the Jaindl Land Company, donated almost five acres of land for the project.
Lee Butz, CEO of the Alvin C. Butz Company donated project management for the facility. “Many of the contractors that we assembled for the project donated portions of their fees,” Butz said. “This was a $1,500,000 project that got done for about $750,000.”
“We built it in four months,” he said. “Usually it takes that long just to get a project through a zoning board. We started construction in March [2006] and had 110 kids playing baseball by July. This year we doubled that number and have about 225 kids playing.” There are now 14 teams in the league.
The field is named “Fowler Field” after Bethlehem artist and philanthropist Marlene “Linny” Fowler. She is well known for her advocacy for children and is on the boards of numerous charitable and service organizations such as Community Service for Children, Valley Youth House and others. She was responsible, through charities that she has interests in, for substantial cash donations to the local Miracle League project.
Local architects, Eric Butz, his wife and business partner Debora Roberson, took the specifications provided by the Miracle League franchise, and donated the design of the supporting buildings such as the concession stand and bathrooms. They also contributed to the design of some of the necessary site development.
After these behind the scenes meetings of local business men, politicians, and philanthropists, it takes the janitor some time to clean up all of the angel feathers left behind.
The diamond itself is perfectly flat so there are no obstacles to interfere with the runners, many of whom use wheel chairs or have other mobility problems. It is made of cushioned, synthetic material to minimize the chances of injury. The parking lot is designed to flow one way in a circular pattern to make it easier to drop off kids and to pick them up. All bathrooms, the concession stand, and the dugouts are all handicapped assessable.
Sponsors provide the uniforms for the teams. Corporate sponsors contribute $5,000 per season for the honor of helping these kids. Teams have adopted major league names and uniforms. To be a sponsor, a volunteer, or even an angel contact Executive Director Dan McKinney (610) 262-6852. To learn more about the league go to www.miracleleaguelv.org.
Brianna, originally from the Philippines, is the adopted daughter of Tom and Kathy McGovern from Emmaus Township. Why does she play? “’Cause it’s fun!” she says.
Chyenne’s parents are William and Robin Mack of Catasauqua. Cheyenne goes to school at Sheckler Elementary School in Catasauqua where she is a ninth grader. When asked who won the dust-up between the Yankees and the Orioles, Cheyenne, with her big grin, said, “Everyone!”
The Orioles’ next game is May 26th when they play the Phillies. Then the Yankees meet the Cubs on May 30th. So Cheyenne and Brianna and their angels will be back on the field where the magic happens, each having the time of her life.
Seemingly miles from the nearest town is a ball park nestled between the woods and a green hill. From it comes the laughter of children having fun . . . that sweetest of sounds that only the crotchety find irksome.
The Orioles are playing the Yankees. The Orioles are at bat. Bases are loaded. Nine-year old Cheyenne Mack is up. The players are intent as the pitcher lets loose with . . . an air ball? An easy pitch? But still Cheyenne connects with the satisfying sound that only a plastic bat can make on a whiffle ball. “Vbloop!” The ball rolls to center field. Turning what looks like an easy out into a run, Cheyenne runs with a delighted grin to first base, her angel trailing along behind. The runner on third base furiously pushes the grip rails on his child sized wheel chair and rolls across home plate. Safe!
Angel? Rolls across home plate, safe?
Sure, an angel. Because this is the Miracle League. And Cheyenne needs an angel in case she gets in tight spot. She has dyspraxia and doesn’t associate her thoughts with her movements very well. It’s a permanent condition. Dyspraxia, according to the dictionary, “is the partial loss of the ability to coordinate and perform certain purposeful movements and gestures in the absence of motor or sensory impairments.”
And the scoring runner? He is wheel-chair bound. Probably forever.
But every one on both teams has a serious mental or physical limitation. And every one of them is a serious baseball player having the time of his or her life. And they each have an angel. In case they get in a tight spot.
Then with the Yankees at bat, Brianna McGovern, a less than three-foot tall ten-year old, glares at the pitcher. But it’s hard to glare when you’re having fun. Maybe there is the hint of a smile from the under the bill of that baseball cap. Hard for a sports writer to tell if they are glaring or smiling when they wear their baseball caps low over their eyes, squinting into the evening sun. Smiling. Yes, definitely smiling.
She swings! A ball. Another swing; the umpire calls it a strike. Then suddenly, “Vbloop!” Plastic bat on plastic ball. And again the special impact absorbing turf barely slows the grounder as it rolls straight into the pitcher’s glove.
But miraculously, she converts what appears to be a sure out into a base hit. It’s like the laws of physics are suddenly cancelled out by the “Vbloop” of her bat and slow motion impedes every one except Brianna. Freed from the constraints of time she races along on her rump, propelled forward by her sinewy but powerful left arm. The pitcher, ball in hand, seems paralyzed. Brianna touches first base! The laws of physics are again operational. Cheers ring out!
This kind of stuff happens in the Miracle League. Her angel relaxes, angel services not being required this time.
On her rump? Yes. No legs, except part of a shin with a small foot, just enough for a tiny tennis shoe. Brianna is a “congenital amputee,” or born without limbs. In this case, born without legs and without a right arm.
What is going on here? Why is everyone having so much fun? Where are the rules? And what’s with the angels?
The Miracle League got its start in 1997 when a recreational league coach in Georgia invited a disabled boy to play. This led, the following year, to his baseball association forming the Miracle League. It caught on fast and went national.
Rules? There are some, all designed to bring out the fun but keep risks to the players minimized.
Every player bats each inning; all base runners are safe; every player scores a run before the inning is over (the last one up gets a home run); community children and volunteers serve as “angels” to assist the players; each team and each player wins every game.
The local Miracle League of the Lehigh Valley’s Fowler Field is at 5858 Sell Road, Schnecksville just off Route 309 in Heidelberg Township.
Northampton County Executive John Stoffa got the idea of bringing the franchise to the Lehigh Valley and called Kostas Kaleogeropoulos, a local hotelier and the co-founder of Camelot for Children and founder of Dream Come True, both charitable organizations that focus on children with disabilities. He, too, liked the idea and soon they had some well known local businessmen and philanthropists involved.
The ball field is in “Jaindl Family Park” so it makes sense that the Jaindl family had something to with it. David Jaindl, president of the Jaindl Land Company, donated almost five acres of land for the project.
Lee Butz, CEO of the Alvin C. Butz Company donated project management for the facility. “Many of the contractors that we assembled for the project donated portions of their fees,” Butz said. “This was a $1,500,000 project that got done for about $750,000.”
“We built it in four months,” he said. “Usually it takes that long just to get a project through a zoning board. We started construction in March [2006] and had 110 kids playing baseball by July. This year we doubled that number and have about 225 kids playing.” There are now 14 teams in the league.
The field is named “Fowler Field” after Bethlehem artist and philanthropist Marlene “Linny” Fowler. She is well known for her advocacy for children and is on the boards of numerous charitable and service organizations such as Community Service for Children, Valley Youth House and others. She was responsible, through charities that she has interests in, for substantial cash donations to the local Miracle League project.
Local architects, Eric Butz, his wife and business partner Debora Roberson, took the specifications provided by the Miracle League franchise, and donated the design of the supporting buildings such as the concession stand and bathrooms. They also contributed to the design of some of the necessary site development.
After these behind the scenes meetings of local business men, politicians, and philanthropists, it takes the janitor some time to clean up all of the angel feathers left behind.
The diamond itself is perfectly flat so there are no obstacles to interfere with the runners, many of whom use wheel chairs or have other mobility problems. It is made of cushioned, synthetic material to minimize the chances of injury. The parking lot is designed to flow one way in a circular pattern to make it easier to drop off kids and to pick them up. All bathrooms, the concession stand, and the dugouts are all handicapped assessable.
Sponsors provide the uniforms for the teams. Corporate sponsors contribute $5,000 per season for the honor of helping these kids. Teams have adopted major league names and uniforms. To be a sponsor, a volunteer, or even an angel contact Executive Director Dan McKinney (610) 262-6852. To learn more about the league go to www.miracleleaguelv.org.
Brianna, originally from the Philippines, is the adopted daughter of Tom and Kathy McGovern from Emmaus Township. Why does she play? “’Cause it’s fun!” she says.
Chyenne’s parents are William and Robin Mack of Catasauqua. Cheyenne goes to school at Sheckler Elementary School in Catasauqua where she is a ninth grader. When asked who won the dust-up between the Yankees and the Orioles, Cheyenne, with her big grin, said, “Everyone!”
The Orioles’ next game is May 26th when they play the Phillies. Then the Yankees meet the Cubs on May 30th. So Cheyenne and Brianna and their angels will be back on the field where the magic happens, each having the time of her life.
“The Gray Ones Are Smarter Than the White Ones”
Doug Graves © 2007
Only while standing in a pigeon coop would it be politically correct to say it, but pigeon entrepreneur Heather Barbosa says it without flinching. “The gray ones teach the white ones how to find their way home.” said Barbosa, “That’s because the gray ones are smarter than the white ones.” She says that, “Training the pigeons to find their way home is lots and lots of hard work.”
She starts them at one fourth of mile from home and lets them find their way back to the coop. After success at that she works them in a full circle at that distance. When she is satisfied that they have passed the test, she increases the distance gradually. They are capable of learning to return from over 300 miles away, but she only trains them to work within 30 miles of home.
With 60 birds, more or less, it is a lot of work to keep up with them and their needs. Besides training the pigeons, she gives them their anti-biotics, feeds and waters them, makes sure they have a roof over their heads and-- she is their secretary.
They need a secretary because these are busy birds. If Barbosa’s business plan works out they will be attending a funeral three to four days a week and a wedding every weekend. While, technically, they are proud pigeons, when they go to work they do it as doves.
The Bethlehem Township Zoning Board gave her official permission to keep the pigeons last week. This cleared the way to start her business. At weddings, a white “dove” represents the bride, and the one in the tuxedo represents the groom. Yes, a tuxedo. Most of her flock are white but one type of pigeon is naturally endowed with black wings on a white body. Add the little bow-tie and the result is a pretty good looking tuxedo.
For funerals, the release of one black “dove” is thought to represent the soul of the departed loved one. When released, it flys up and starts to circle, waiting for its mates. A second release of white birds represents the souls of long gone relatives and friends,returning as angels to escort their friend to “heaven.” “It can be a very warm and emotional time,” said Barbosa. Readers can find more information at Barbosa’s web site, www.sayitwithdoves.com.
While the number of birds involved in any given event is relatively small, Barbosa needs to keep a flock of over 50 to allow for the ones that might not be able to fly on a given day. For example, when molting their feathers, they get a day or so off.
They also get maternal or paternal leave because when the eggs hatch, mom and dad take turns keeping the chicks warm and fed.
Each bird wears loose fitting leg bands. One identifies the owner so that lost birds can be returned. Other bands act as “training records” keeping track of how far advanced the pigeon is in its training.
Heather Barbosa married into the pigeon business. As a child, her husband, Manny, kept gray pigeons as a hobby. Then after marriage, they found a home on Farmersville Road where the previous owner had kept chickens in a coop behind the house. After moving in, Barbosa came to like the idea of developing a business using the natural talent living out back.
Only while standing in a pigeon coop would it be politically correct to say it, but pigeon entrepreneur Heather Barbosa says it without flinching. “The gray ones teach the white ones how to find their way home.” said Barbosa, “That’s because the gray ones are smarter than the white ones.” She says that, “Training the pigeons to find their way home is lots and lots of hard work.”
She starts them at one fourth of mile from home and lets them find their way back to the coop. After success at that she works them in a full circle at that distance. When she is satisfied that they have passed the test, she increases the distance gradually. They are capable of learning to return from over 300 miles away, but she only trains them to work within 30 miles of home.
With 60 birds, more or less, it is a lot of work to keep up with them and their needs. Besides training the pigeons, she gives them their anti-biotics, feeds and waters them, makes sure they have a roof over their heads and-- she is their secretary.
They need a secretary because these are busy birds. If Barbosa’s business plan works out they will be attending a funeral three to four days a week and a wedding every weekend. While, technically, they are proud pigeons, when they go to work they do it as doves.
The Bethlehem Township Zoning Board gave her official permission to keep the pigeons last week. This cleared the way to start her business. At weddings, a white “dove” represents the bride, and the one in the tuxedo represents the groom. Yes, a tuxedo. Most of her flock are white but one type of pigeon is naturally endowed with black wings on a white body. Add the little bow-tie and the result is a pretty good looking tuxedo.
For funerals, the release of one black “dove” is thought to represent the soul of the departed loved one. When released, it flys up and starts to circle, waiting for its mates. A second release of white birds represents the souls of long gone relatives and friends,returning as angels to escort their friend to “heaven.” “It can be a very warm and emotional time,” said Barbosa. Readers can find more information at Barbosa’s web site, www.sayitwithdoves.com.
While the number of birds involved in any given event is relatively small, Barbosa needs to keep a flock of over 50 to allow for the ones that might not be able to fly on a given day. For example, when molting their feathers, they get a day or so off.
They also get maternal or paternal leave because when the eggs hatch, mom and dad take turns keeping the chicks warm and fed.
Each bird wears loose fitting leg bands. One identifies the owner so that lost birds can be returned. Other bands act as “training records” keeping track of how far advanced the pigeon is in its training.
Heather Barbosa married into the pigeon business. As a child, her husband, Manny, kept gray pigeons as a hobby. Then after marriage, they found a home on Farmersville Road where the previous owner had kept chickens in a coop behind the house. After moving in, Barbosa came to like the idea of developing a business using the natural talent living out back.
Blake Tange earns Scouting’s highest honor: Eagle Scout . . . and the community’s respect
Doug Graves © 2007
Eagle Scout Blake Tange got his eagle wings and the distinctive Eagle Scout badge at a standing room only ceremony in the East Hills Moravian Church in Bethlehem on Saturday. The ceremony was, at times, an emotional outpouring of support and admiration for this Freedom High School senior. Family, fellow scouts of all ages, local political figures and national leaders all had messages of congratulations for Blake and expressions of admiration for his mother, Lynn Woolf-Tange and his father, Mark Tange of Bethlehem.
City of Bethlehem Mayor John B. Callahan proclaimed Saturday as “Blake W. Tange Day.”
Blake’s accomplishments are astonishing.
Dr. Joseph A. Lewis, Superintendent of Schools in Bethlehem, in a letter to Blake said, “You are an invaluable young man who has achieved more in 17 years than many people will achieve in a lifetime.
“. . . an outstanding achievement which reflects your hard work and dedication,” said President and Mrs. George Bush.
Governor Edward Rendell, in letter to Blake, said, “May [your] values and commitment to community . . . continue to serve you in the future.”
“I commend your sense of duty,” said United States Congressman Charlie Dent.
“A remarkable achievement,” said Vice President Dick Cheney.
State Representative Steve Samualson said, “. . . by [his] personal example Blake is living testament to the virtues of duty and citizenship that he has so generously and readily displayed.”
He has earned 55 merit badges. (Only 21 are required for the rank of Eagle Scout.) He has hiked 86 miles. He has spent 225 nights camping out. He has held 16 local and national Boy Scout leadership positions. Not listed in his Eagle Scout Court of Honor résumé of achievements, is his recent recognition by the Traveler’s Protective Association with their annual award for altruism, doing good with no expectation for reward. Nor is listed his award and recognition last week for leadership in Freedom High School’s S. A. D. D. (Students Against Destructive Decisions) program.
Why are his accomplishments astonishing?
Blake has cerebral palsy; he walks with an aluminum frame. Every step is a struggle. He was born with a cyst on his brain that has limited him since childhood and has marked him as different from his peers.
But, he has a genius for leadership--- the best kind of leadership —leadership by example. His ability to define goals, then lead people to accomplish the very difficult is what has focused the community’s attention on this young man.
“When Blake first got into scouting,” said one of his early leaders, John Orno, “It was not a question of getting Blake involved. It was a case of getting out of his way!”
“It is hard for other kids to say ‘I’m tired,’” said Dr. Sally Haggerty, his Troop Committee chair, “when they see Blake on the trail.”
Scout leader after leader stepped forward and told different versions of the same story. Emerging from their testimony was a picture of a young man with a smile and a can-do attitude. Here is a man with a compassion born of an understanding of the human condition and its many frailties-- and its strengths, too. He is a man who doesn’t let his physical limitations bound his or any one else’s life.
Singer-physician and former Miss Philadelphia Kiplee Bell came to honor the young man and his accomplishments with her beautiful singing. “I am honored to be part of Blake’s celebration,” said Dr. Bell.
Murnell Schuller, met Blake when he proposed to do his Eagle Scout project for the kids at Camelot for Children where she is the director. “He amazes me with his upbeat, inspirational attitude,” she said. Blake’s project transformed an overgrown wooded lot into an “Enchanted Forest” accessible for handicapped children. “After meeting Blake, some of the physically limited boys, themselves inspired by Blake’s example, joined the Boy Scouts.
Schuller said that later when a large volunteer working party from Air Products came to Camelot to help with landscaping maintenance that several parents, upon seeing Blake’s accomplishments, encouraged their Boy Scout sons to chose Camelot for Children for their own Eagle Scout projects.
“Only about five percent of the boys who enter the Boy Scouts achieve the rank of Eagle Scout,” said Dr. James Roberts, Blake’s Scout Master and professor of chemistry at Lehigh University.
Scout leader Robert Sperling said, “When you first meet Blake, you see that he is a pretty big fellow. When you get to know him you realize he is a huge human being.”
Eagle Scout Blake Tange got his eagle wings and the distinctive Eagle Scout badge at a standing room only ceremony in the East Hills Moravian Church in Bethlehem on Saturday. The ceremony was, at times, an emotional outpouring of support and admiration for this Freedom High School senior. Family, fellow scouts of all ages, local political figures and national leaders all had messages of congratulations for Blake and expressions of admiration for his mother, Lynn Woolf-Tange and his father, Mark Tange of Bethlehem.
City of Bethlehem Mayor John B. Callahan proclaimed Saturday as “Blake W. Tange Day.”
Blake’s accomplishments are astonishing.
Dr. Joseph A. Lewis, Superintendent of Schools in Bethlehem, in a letter to Blake said, “You are an invaluable young man who has achieved more in 17 years than many people will achieve in a lifetime.
“. . . an outstanding achievement which reflects your hard work and dedication,” said President and Mrs. George Bush.
Governor Edward Rendell, in letter to Blake, said, “May [your] values and commitment to community . . . continue to serve you in the future.”
“I commend your sense of duty,” said United States Congressman Charlie Dent.
“A remarkable achievement,” said Vice President Dick Cheney.
State Representative Steve Samualson said, “. . . by [his] personal example Blake is living testament to the virtues of duty and citizenship that he has so generously and readily displayed.”
He has earned 55 merit badges. (Only 21 are required for the rank of Eagle Scout.) He has hiked 86 miles. He has spent 225 nights camping out. He has held 16 local and national Boy Scout leadership positions. Not listed in his Eagle Scout Court of Honor résumé of achievements, is his recent recognition by the Traveler’s Protective Association with their annual award for altruism, doing good with no expectation for reward. Nor is listed his award and recognition last week for leadership in Freedom High School’s S. A. D. D. (Students Against Destructive Decisions) program.
Why are his accomplishments astonishing?
Blake has cerebral palsy; he walks with an aluminum frame. Every step is a struggle. He was born with a cyst on his brain that has limited him since childhood and has marked him as different from his peers.
But, he has a genius for leadership--- the best kind of leadership —leadership by example. His ability to define goals, then lead people to accomplish the very difficult is what has focused the community’s attention on this young man.
“When Blake first got into scouting,” said one of his early leaders, John Orno, “It was not a question of getting Blake involved. It was a case of getting out of his way!”
“It is hard for other kids to say ‘I’m tired,’” said Dr. Sally Haggerty, his Troop Committee chair, “when they see Blake on the trail.”
Scout leader after leader stepped forward and told different versions of the same story. Emerging from their testimony was a picture of a young man with a smile and a can-do attitude. Here is a man with a compassion born of an understanding of the human condition and its many frailties-- and its strengths, too. He is a man who doesn’t let his physical limitations bound his or any one else’s life.
Singer-physician and former Miss Philadelphia Kiplee Bell came to honor the young man and his accomplishments with her beautiful singing. “I am honored to be part of Blake’s celebration,” said Dr. Bell.
Murnell Schuller, met Blake when he proposed to do his Eagle Scout project for the kids at Camelot for Children where she is the director. “He amazes me with his upbeat, inspirational attitude,” she said. Blake’s project transformed an overgrown wooded lot into an “Enchanted Forest” accessible for handicapped children. “After meeting Blake, some of the physically limited boys, themselves inspired by Blake’s example, joined the Boy Scouts.
Schuller said that later when a large volunteer working party from Air Products came to Camelot to help with landscaping maintenance that several parents, upon seeing Blake’s accomplishments, encouraged their Boy Scout sons to chose Camelot for Children for their own Eagle Scout projects.
“Only about five percent of the boys who enter the Boy Scouts achieve the rank of Eagle Scout,” said Dr. James Roberts, Blake’s Scout Master and professor of chemistry at Lehigh University.
Scout leader Robert Sperling said, “When you first meet Blake, you see that he is a pretty big fellow. When you get to know him you realize he is a huge human being.”
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
What happens after Iraq? The Honorary First Defenders get some answers.
Doug Graves © 2007
“What happens after Iraq,” asked Whitehall native Rear Admiral John Elnitsky in Bethlehem on Friday. Answering his own question, he said, “We will continue to operate from the sea.”
Illustrating his point, he said, “We have stood up the Naval Expeditionary Combatant Command, a return of the ‘green and brown water Navy’ to project force close to shore.”
He was referring to a renewed emphasis on the force projection capability first seen in the Civil War with Union Navy dominance of the coastal waters and rivers of the Confederacy and then later in the gunboat diplomacy of pre-World War II China on the Yangtze River. Most recently this strategy was embodied by the “Swift” boat navy in Vietnam’s rivers and delta areas.
The admiral was the keynote speaker at the 68th annual meeting and “Dining-in” of the Honorary First Defenders at the Best Western in Bethlehem on Friday. He posed several future-leaning questions to the 200 plus attendees and invited their questions.
“Are we in a war? Or a struggle?” he asked. “Are we confronting nation states or small groups [who are] supported by nation states?” The de-centralized nature of modern threats requires us to take a longer view when developing the Navy of the future.
“One thing to think about,” he said “is the influence a navy can have in advance of conflict. That is a lot of the focus today in terms of influencing regions that would otherwise become harbors for radical terrorists.”
“What do we make of the emergence of China?” he asked. He noted that while traditional naval powers like Great Britain will have a navy of approximately 25 ships, Asian powers, especially China, are growing their navies.
“China is addicted to oil,” said Elnitsky. “And,” he said, “they want Taiwan— they just want it. If we don’t defend Taiwan, every treaty we have ever signed would be worthless.”
“The only two countries spending money on their military are the United States and the Chinese,” said Elnitsky.
“Who will fight the next war?” he asked. “Less than 35 percent of today’s high school graduates qualify to join the military. Today’s ‘Millennial Generation’ doesn’t remember the fall of the Berlin Wall; they don’t remember a time before cell phones.”
“This generation that makes up today’s recruits is connected and very collaborative,” he said. “They have a strong sense of team and want to do something for the greater good. They are less focused on the individual. The challenge is to harness this energy and enthusiasm and influence young people as early as grade school to become interested in math and the sciences. The war for technology talent is already a challenge as we compete with industry for technologically savvy recruits.”
Admiral Elnitsky, after a remarkable career as a nuclear submarine commander, is now the Special Assistant to the Director of the Submarine Warfare Branch of the Navy.
He is the son of John and Wilma Elnitsky of Whitehall. He is a 1976 graduate of Whitehall High School. The Admiral is married to Christine (Bell) Elnitsky. They have one son, and one granddaughter.
The rest of the evening was decidedly less serious as alert colonels kept watch for violations of the “Rules of the Mess.” Violations observed ranged from allowing a cell phone to ring to the more egregious error of “questioning the decisions of the President” of the Mess. All guilty of such violations were fined one to five dollars payable immediately.
The Honorary First Defenders were formed to honor the first Union volunteers to reach Washington when President Lincoln called for help. In April 1861, Allentown sent a 213-man company of Pennsylvania militia to Washington, D.C. It was one of the first to reach Washington. By their presence, they not only deterred the South from any plans they may have had to capture our capital, they also may have changed the course of the war itself.
The Honorary First Defenders is an organization of business and professional men and women dedicated to perpetuate the memory of these heroes, one of whom, Ignatz Gressser, was later awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in action at Antietam. The organization helps local military units by contributing $1,000 annually to each of our four services for amenities that could not be requisitioned though their normal supply channels.
“What happens after Iraq,” asked Whitehall native Rear Admiral John Elnitsky in Bethlehem on Friday. Answering his own question, he said, “We will continue to operate from the sea.”
Illustrating his point, he said, “We have stood up the Naval Expeditionary Combatant Command, a return of the ‘green and brown water Navy’ to project force close to shore.”
He was referring to a renewed emphasis on the force projection capability first seen in the Civil War with Union Navy dominance of the coastal waters and rivers of the Confederacy and then later in the gunboat diplomacy of pre-World War II China on the Yangtze River. Most recently this strategy was embodied by the “Swift” boat navy in Vietnam’s rivers and delta areas.
The admiral was the keynote speaker at the 68th annual meeting and “Dining-in” of the Honorary First Defenders at the Best Western in Bethlehem on Friday. He posed several future-leaning questions to the 200 plus attendees and invited their questions.
“Are we in a war? Or a struggle?” he asked. “Are we confronting nation states or small groups [who are] supported by nation states?” The de-centralized nature of modern threats requires us to take a longer view when developing the Navy of the future.
“One thing to think about,” he said “is the influence a navy can have in advance of conflict. That is a lot of the focus today in terms of influencing regions that would otherwise become harbors for radical terrorists.”
“What do we make of the emergence of China?” he asked. He noted that while traditional naval powers like Great Britain will have a navy of approximately 25 ships, Asian powers, especially China, are growing their navies.
“China is addicted to oil,” said Elnitsky. “And,” he said, “they want Taiwan— they just want it. If we don’t defend Taiwan, every treaty we have ever signed would be worthless.”
“The only two countries spending money on their military are the United States and the Chinese,” said Elnitsky.
“Who will fight the next war?” he asked. “Less than 35 percent of today’s high school graduates qualify to join the military. Today’s ‘Millennial Generation’ doesn’t remember the fall of the Berlin Wall; they don’t remember a time before cell phones.”
“This generation that makes up today’s recruits is connected and very collaborative,” he said. “They have a strong sense of team and want to do something for the greater good. They are less focused on the individual. The challenge is to harness this energy and enthusiasm and influence young people as early as grade school to become interested in math and the sciences. The war for technology talent is already a challenge as we compete with industry for technologically savvy recruits.”
Admiral Elnitsky, after a remarkable career as a nuclear submarine commander, is now the Special Assistant to the Director of the Submarine Warfare Branch of the Navy.
He is the son of John and Wilma Elnitsky of Whitehall. He is a 1976 graduate of Whitehall High School. The Admiral is married to Christine (Bell) Elnitsky. They have one son, and one granddaughter.
The rest of the evening was decidedly less serious as alert colonels kept watch for violations of the “Rules of the Mess.” Violations observed ranged from allowing a cell phone to ring to the more egregious error of “questioning the decisions of the President” of the Mess. All guilty of such violations were fined one to five dollars payable immediately.
The Honorary First Defenders were formed to honor the first Union volunteers to reach Washington when President Lincoln called for help. In April 1861, Allentown sent a 213-man company of Pennsylvania militia to Washington, D.C. It was one of the first to reach Washington. By their presence, they not only deterred the South from any plans they may have had to capture our capital, they also may have changed the course of the war itself.
The Honorary First Defenders is an organization of business and professional men and women dedicated to perpetuate the memory of these heroes, one of whom, Ignatz Gressser, was later awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in action at Antietam. The organization helps local military units by contributing $1,000 annually to each of our four services for amenities that could not be requisitioned though their normal supply channels.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
In One Profound Transformation--From Hero to Villain
Doug Graves © 2008
“This was also the day when I turned, in one profound transformation, from being a hero to being a villain,” said former First Lieutenant Gerhard G. Hennes. The former Afrika Korps soldier under legendary Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was describing the day that as a prisoner of war in Crossville, Tennessee he and his fellow POWs were assembled in a movie theater and shown documentary films depicting the carnage and inhumanity of the German concentration camps in Europe.
“I had no idea of the extent and ferocity [to which concentration camps were] murdering innocent people. I have never totally recovered from the shock sustained in that dark and suddenly uncomfortably hot movie theater in Crossville.”
Hennes, now 86, and Wendall A. Phillips, 84, were at the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum on January 26 to share experiences with local citizens of all ages.
Phillips who, as a U. S. Army Air Force – Air Transport Command radio operator, had twice during World War II been a prisoner of war—once a prisoner of the Germans in or near the French-Belgium border and later a prisoner of the Japanese in Shanghai.
Phillips and Hennes, who had never met, were sitting side by side, both speakers in a living history symposium organized by museum director Joseph Garrera.
The attendance exceeded expectations of the museum staff and the overflow lined the walls and jammed the entrance to the lecture hall. Museum staffers quickly arranged a second session for later in the afternoon. The second session was also crowded with local residents who wanted to hear the stories of these two remarkable veterans.
Hennes, after his capture in North Africa had been in 16 POW camps in six countries when he finally was transported on the Queen Mary across the Atlantic Ocean and finally to Crossville, Tennessee.
He described his experience as a POW in America in generally positive terms even to the point of describing how his father, also a POW held in Colorado, had paid the train fare for himself and a guard and got himself transferred to Tennessee to be with his son, Gerhardt.
Phillips, telling his own improbable story to the standing room only audience, described how he had the bad luck to be a prisoner of war of both the German army and later of the Japanese army.
After enlisting in the army in November of 1942, Phillips, then a student at the Crane School of Music, was trained as an infantry soldier and then as a radio operator.
As a radio operator he found himself transporting ammunition and other supplies in a two-engine C-47 cargo plane from a base in Grove, England to American Army forces fighting their way through France and Belgium.
“We would land on steel mat landing strips, and after unloading our supplies, we would hang stretchers with wounded men on the cargo straps, and place ambulatory wounded on canvas flight seats and fly them back to England,” said Phillips. “Those were some of the first air evacuations of wounded from a battlefield.”
“In September, [1944] on my last trip, we had problems in one of the engines. The pilot landed safely and we off-loaded our supplies. The pilot decided not to take wounded out on this trip because of the engine problem—he wasn’t sure we would make it back. We took off but immediately lost power in one engine. We were having trouble making altitude and were flying low when German ground fire took out the other engine.”
“Pilots had parachutes. We [radio operators] did not. We were expected to go down with the plane--but we were too low for the parachutes.”
“We crashed in a field and both pilots were killed. I was still strapped in my seat with a dislocated shoulder when German soldiers captured me.”
Phillips was loaded on a truck and taken to a temporary prison hospital compound which he believes was in Belgium.
“There were other prisoners there. Germans treated us well. They took our uniforms and gave us one piece jumpers to wear. They took our shoes and gave us old worn out shoes. We didn’t have socks or underwear. We had bunks and a pot-belly stove. Three of us, me from New York, a guy from Arkansas and, I think, a guy from Oklahoma, decided to escape. We saw that the fence was questionable where two sections were overlapped. It had an electric wire running through it but that didn’t matter; we were going anyway.”
“It came a foggy, foggy night. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face and it was snowing hard—wet, heavy snow. We waited until the guard and the dog had gone by. We waited, then we hit that fence right beside the post were we thought it was weak. It broke apart. We got a little electric shock but we went out anyway. We split up three ways. I started running—all night. I hid during the day.”
On the fourth day Phillips found himself in a goat barn owned by a sympathetic farmer who brought a friendly French Catholic priest who had been educated at Notre Dame. Soon after, he was back with the Army.
Gerhard Hennes, a lieutenant in the German army, was, like Phillips, in communications. He was in the Afrika Korps and fought in the Battles of Tobruk and El Alamain.
Hennes started his narrative by describing his first visit to a prison of war camp, one run by the Germany army in Europe.
“I was the Officer of the Day [at the army base] in Baumholder [in Birkenfeld, Rhineland-Palatinate] and one of my duties was to see the prison camp hidden away on the base. And so I decided to go there.
“When I came to the gate the sergeant snapped to attention. ‘Is every thing in order, sir?’”
There he saw Russian prisoners starving and living in squalor. “I thought I should report in my daily sheet saying that I thought a superior officer should examine the condition of these camps. But then I had second thoughts.”
“They [his friends that he discussed it with] thought I had better not say any thing.”
Hennes went on to describe an incident after the tables were turned and he himself was first interned in a POW camp in Africa. He was being punished for attempting to escape and was serving 30 days on bread and water in a barbed-wire compound.
“A French first lieutenant came up to the fence with a loaf of bread in his hand. He said something clearly rehearsed. ‘I was a prisoner of war in Germany. The wife of a farmer gave me a piece of bread. Here it is returned to you. I don’t want to owe you anything!”
It was later toward the end of the war when, as a POW in Tennessee that Hennes and his fellow POWs were ordered into the movie theater to see documentary films about the death camps that the Nazi’s had operated.
“We saw emaciated bodies and empty eyes of those who survived. We saw the piles of naked bodies. We saw mass graves. We saw ovens where tens of thousands had been cremated.”
“We saw and stared in silence—struggling, but unable to believe what we Germans had done to Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war and any others deemed inferior or expendable. None of us that were in Crossfield, Tennessee will forget it, that documentary.”
Meanwhile, as Hennes was sitting in an American POW camp, Phillips had just begun the incredible bookend to his story. Having escaped from the German POW camp in Europe and made his was back to American lines with the help of the French-Catholic underground, he was reassigned to the China-Burma-India theatre.
There he continued his career as a radio operator on C-47s and C-46’s flying from China to India and back ferrying supplies over “The Hump”—the Himalayan Mountains.
“Pilots really learned to fly there,” he said. “We didn’t fly over the mountains but through them--in all kinds of weather.”
After 116 flights through the Himalayans his luck ran out again. While ferrying supplies from bases to base inside China, the aircraft lost hydraulic power. “The C-47 leaked hydraulic fluid,” he said. “I always carried an extra five gallons of hydraulic fluid.”
But with no hydraulics the plane was uncontrollable, according to Phillips. The airplane crashed in a rice paddy in China killing both pilots. The C-47 was quickly surrounded by Japanese forces which captured Phillips and literally “tossed” him into a truck.
He was imprisoned in the International YMC in Shanghai. Here he was beaten, starved and tortured while being kept in a closet deep within the building in Japanese-occupied China.
It was here, suffering at the hands of Japanese guards that he began to compare his treatment with that that he had received at the hands of the Germans. “The Japanese were animals,” Phillips said, his voice full of remembered fury.
Then one day in August 1945 his tormentors quit coming to his locked closet and for three and half days he lay in the dark, starving. Then a military police team, a Brit and a GI, kicked the door open. The war was over.
The seminar featuring these two veterans from opposite sides in World War II ended with the rapt audience giving them an ovation, followed by intense questioning. Many were there who had themselves been POWs and a few asked questions and shared their stories.
Though both live in Whitehall, Phillips and Hennes, who immigrated to the United States in January 1953, did not know each other until they met at the Heritage Center in Allentown.
“This was also the day when I turned, in one profound transformation, from being a hero to being a villain,” said former First Lieutenant Gerhard G. Hennes. The former Afrika Korps soldier under legendary Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was describing the day that as a prisoner of war in Crossville, Tennessee he and his fellow POWs were assembled in a movie theater and shown documentary films depicting the carnage and inhumanity of the German concentration camps in Europe.
“I had no idea of the extent and ferocity [to which concentration camps were] murdering innocent people. I have never totally recovered from the shock sustained in that dark and suddenly uncomfortably hot movie theater in Crossville.”
Hennes, now 86, and Wendall A. Phillips, 84, were at the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum on January 26 to share experiences with local citizens of all ages.
Phillips who, as a U. S. Army Air Force – Air Transport Command radio operator, had twice during World War II been a prisoner of war—once a prisoner of the Germans in or near the French-Belgium border and later a prisoner of the Japanese in Shanghai.
Phillips and Hennes, who had never met, were sitting side by side, both speakers in a living history symposium organized by museum director Joseph Garrera.
The attendance exceeded expectations of the museum staff and the overflow lined the walls and jammed the entrance to the lecture hall. Museum staffers quickly arranged a second session for later in the afternoon. The second session was also crowded with local residents who wanted to hear the stories of these two remarkable veterans.
Hennes, after his capture in North Africa had been in 16 POW camps in six countries when he finally was transported on the Queen Mary across the Atlantic Ocean and finally to Crossville, Tennessee.
He described his experience as a POW in America in generally positive terms even to the point of describing how his father, also a POW held in Colorado, had paid the train fare for himself and a guard and got himself transferred to Tennessee to be with his son, Gerhardt.
Phillips, telling his own improbable story to the standing room only audience, described how he had the bad luck to be a prisoner of war of both the German army and later of the Japanese army.
After enlisting in the army in November of 1942, Phillips, then a student at the Crane School of Music, was trained as an infantry soldier and then as a radio operator.
As a radio operator he found himself transporting ammunition and other supplies in a two-engine C-47 cargo plane from a base in Grove, England to American Army forces fighting their way through France and Belgium.
“We would land on steel mat landing strips, and after unloading our supplies, we would hang stretchers with wounded men on the cargo straps, and place ambulatory wounded on canvas flight seats and fly them back to England,” said Phillips. “Those were some of the first air evacuations of wounded from a battlefield.”
“In September, [1944] on my last trip, we had problems in one of the engines. The pilot landed safely and we off-loaded our supplies. The pilot decided not to take wounded out on this trip because of the engine problem—he wasn’t sure we would make it back. We took off but immediately lost power in one engine. We were having trouble making altitude and were flying low when German ground fire took out the other engine.”
“Pilots had parachutes. We [radio operators] did not. We were expected to go down with the plane--but we were too low for the parachutes.”
“We crashed in a field and both pilots were killed. I was still strapped in my seat with a dislocated shoulder when German soldiers captured me.”
Phillips was loaded on a truck and taken to a temporary prison hospital compound which he believes was in Belgium.
“There were other prisoners there. Germans treated us well. They took our uniforms and gave us one piece jumpers to wear. They took our shoes and gave us old worn out shoes. We didn’t have socks or underwear. We had bunks and a pot-belly stove. Three of us, me from New York, a guy from Arkansas and, I think, a guy from Oklahoma, decided to escape. We saw that the fence was questionable where two sections were overlapped. It had an electric wire running through it but that didn’t matter; we were going anyway.”
“It came a foggy, foggy night. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face and it was snowing hard—wet, heavy snow. We waited until the guard and the dog had gone by. We waited, then we hit that fence right beside the post were we thought it was weak. It broke apart. We got a little electric shock but we went out anyway. We split up three ways. I started running—all night. I hid during the day.”
On the fourth day Phillips found himself in a goat barn owned by a sympathetic farmer who brought a friendly French Catholic priest who had been educated at Notre Dame. Soon after, he was back with the Army.
Gerhard Hennes, a lieutenant in the German army, was, like Phillips, in communications. He was in the Afrika Korps and fought in the Battles of Tobruk and El Alamain.
Hennes started his narrative by describing his first visit to a prison of war camp, one run by the Germany army in Europe.
“I was the Officer of the Day [at the army base] in Baumholder [in Birkenfeld, Rhineland-Palatinate] and one of my duties was to see the prison camp hidden away on the base. And so I decided to go there.
“When I came to the gate the sergeant snapped to attention. ‘Is every thing in order, sir?’”
There he saw Russian prisoners starving and living in squalor. “I thought I should report in my daily sheet saying that I thought a superior officer should examine the condition of these camps. But then I had second thoughts.”
“They [his friends that he discussed it with] thought I had better not say any thing.”
Hennes went on to describe an incident after the tables were turned and he himself was first interned in a POW camp in Africa. He was being punished for attempting to escape and was serving 30 days on bread and water in a barbed-wire compound.
“A French first lieutenant came up to the fence with a loaf of bread in his hand. He said something clearly rehearsed. ‘I was a prisoner of war in Germany. The wife of a farmer gave me a piece of bread. Here it is returned to you. I don’t want to owe you anything!”
It was later toward the end of the war when, as a POW in Tennessee that Hennes and his fellow POWs were ordered into the movie theater to see documentary films about the death camps that the Nazi’s had operated.
“We saw emaciated bodies and empty eyes of those who survived. We saw the piles of naked bodies. We saw mass graves. We saw ovens where tens of thousands had been cremated.”
“We saw and stared in silence—struggling, but unable to believe what we Germans had done to Jews, Gypsies, prisoners of war and any others deemed inferior or expendable. None of us that were in Crossfield, Tennessee will forget it, that documentary.”
Meanwhile, as Hennes was sitting in an American POW camp, Phillips had just begun the incredible bookend to his story. Having escaped from the German POW camp in Europe and made his was back to American lines with the help of the French-Catholic underground, he was reassigned to the China-Burma-India theatre.
There he continued his career as a radio operator on C-47s and C-46’s flying from China to India and back ferrying supplies over “The Hump”—the Himalayan Mountains.
“Pilots really learned to fly there,” he said. “We didn’t fly over the mountains but through them--in all kinds of weather.”
After 116 flights through the Himalayans his luck ran out again. While ferrying supplies from bases to base inside China, the aircraft lost hydraulic power. “The C-47 leaked hydraulic fluid,” he said. “I always carried an extra five gallons of hydraulic fluid.”
But with no hydraulics the plane was uncontrollable, according to Phillips. The airplane crashed in a rice paddy in China killing both pilots. The C-47 was quickly surrounded by Japanese forces which captured Phillips and literally “tossed” him into a truck.
He was imprisoned in the International YMC in Shanghai. Here he was beaten, starved and tortured while being kept in a closet deep within the building in Japanese-occupied China.
It was here, suffering at the hands of Japanese guards that he began to compare his treatment with that that he had received at the hands of the Germans. “The Japanese were animals,” Phillips said, his voice full of remembered fury.
Then one day in August 1945 his tormentors quit coming to his locked closet and for three and half days he lay in the dark, starving. Then a military police team, a Brit and a GI, kicked the door open. The war was over.
The seminar featuring these two veterans from opposite sides in World War II ended with the rapt audience giving them an ovation, followed by intense questioning. Many were there who had themselves been POWs and a few asked questions and shared their stories.
Though both live in Whitehall, Phillips and Hennes, who immigrated to the United States in January 1953, did not know each other until they met at the Heritage Center in Allentown.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Same Name, Same Ship, Different War
Doug Graves © 2007
In a parallel universe it might have made sense. But in the early 60’s when Harry C. Knecht was working in the air mail cage at the Allentown Post Office, he processed a letter addressed to a Harry W. Knecht aboard the USS Epperson (DDE -719). It was the same destroyer that Navy veteran Harry C. Knecht had served on as a radarman from 1950 to 1952.
“My first thought was that the Navy still had me on their crew roster,” Harry C. recalled recently. “I went ahead and forwarded the letter, but I thought about it for years afterward.” It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that postal worker Harry C. contacted Harry W. Knecht, by that time discharged from the Navy, and married to the former Michele Trescak of Bethlehem. He was still in uniform, but as a fire fighter in Bethlehem. The two Harry Knechts quickly found that not only did they share the same name; they were, indeed, both U. S. Navy veterans who had served on the same “tin can” although during two different tours of duty.
Harry C. Knecht, now 82, was a radarman in World War II on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV -16). It was dubbed the “Blue Ghost” by Tokyo Rose because the Japanese military thought it had been sunk several times. While Knecht was aboard the Lexington it earned eleven battle stars in rugged action. “In November, 1944, we were hit by a kamikaze suicide plane. It hit the secondary con [control room located in the “island” or superstructure] wiping out the bomber pilots but missing me in the radar room. It missed me by about 40 feet.” Near the end of the war, “the ship was rattled by the blast from an atomic bomb,” recalled the veteran of two wars.
Following his service in World War II, Harry C., the senior of the two Knechts, was honorably discharged from the Navy. He married his Emmaus High School sweetheart, the former Edna Eschbach. They settled down to married life when, in September, 1950, Harry C. was recalled to active duty for the Korean War. “I didn’t like it a bit,” said his wife, Edna. “We had a house and a young son. In those days when they went to war they were gone for years.” They now live in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
He joined the crew of the USS Epperson and sailed from Pearl Harbor. The Epperson was the flagship for Escort Division 12 and entered the Korean War in June 1951. “We did carrier screening duty, did coastal patrols, and provided naval gun fire for the soldiers and marines on shore. We won 3 battle stars,” recounted Knecht. He left the Epperson in March, 1952. An impressive wall-mounted shadow box showcases a chest full of medals attesting to Harry C. Knecht’s service to his country.
After the Korean War, Petty Officer 1st Class (Radarman) Harry C. Knecht resumed his life as a Post Office employee in Allentown. It was there that he saw the letter that eventually led him to meet Harry W. Knecht, now a retired Bethlehem firefighter living in Allentown.
Five years ago, when they met for the first time, they shared stories about their service aboard the Epperson. The veteran destroyer men became friends and still see each other occasionally.
Harry W. Knecht, now 66, is a graduate of Catasauqua High School. His Navy experience began when he enlisted in June 1959 in Allentown and went to Great Lakes, Illinois for training. After duty in several posts and stations around the world he was sent to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There he sailed with the destroyer USS Epperson as a Petty Officer 2nd Class (Boilerman).
“One of our most memorable missions was to stand by in support of Astronaut Walter Schirra who splashed down with the Apollo IV space mission in 1962,”said Harry W. “I had the same blood type as Wally Schirra, therefore I could not eat for 24 hours prior to splash time in case my blood was needed for Wally.”
“In 1961, recalled Harry W., “the Eppe picked up three Air Force divers and the important piece, the nose cone, from Discoverer 29 three hundred miles north of Oahu.” “A support team photographer gave me a NASA shoulder patch when I found his lens cap that he had lost in the bilges,” Harry said.
“Another exciting time”, he laughed, “was when we got torpedoed by one of our own submarines! The Eppe was steaming off the coast of Hawaii and offering itself as a target for our subs to practice launching [inert] torpedoes. The sub usually set the depth of the ‘fish’ deep enough to clear the hull of the ship by going underneath it. On this occasion the ‘fish’ surfaced and hit the starboard side. It struck an I-beam which prevented the torpedo from piercing the skin of the ship and causing havoc inside. There was more damage to everyone’s pride than there was damage to the ship.”
Harry W. Knecht now works part time as a City Center Monitor in Bethlehem.
Though they had no idea when they met that they were related, the two Harry Knechts have since discovered that they are descended from Peter Knecht, a Hession soldier who settled in Pennsylvania after the Revolutionary War.
The USS Epperson was named in honor of U. S. Marine Corps private Harold Glenn Epperson killed on Saipan when he saved the lives of his fellow marines by covering a hand grenade with his body.
On her second tour of duty off the coast of Korea, she earned the nickname “The Interim Mayor of Wonson Harbor” for her dominance of those waters while shelling enemy positions from Wonson Harbor, according to an on-line history of the ship.
The USS Epperson, in January 1954, served as a monitor ship for the detonation of six nuclear devices at the Bikini and Eniwetok test sites in the Pacific Ocean.
The warship was decommissioned in 1973. She was rescued from moth balls in 1977 and sold to the Pakistani navy where she served as the Taimur (D-166). Pakistan decommissioned the Taimur in 1999 and sunk her as a target ship in 2000.
In a parallel universe it might have made sense. But in the early 60’s when Harry C. Knecht was working in the air mail cage at the Allentown Post Office, he processed a letter addressed to a Harry W. Knecht aboard the USS Epperson (DDE -719). It was the same destroyer that Navy veteran Harry C. Knecht had served on as a radarman from 1950 to 1952.
“My first thought was that the Navy still had me on their crew roster,” Harry C. recalled recently. “I went ahead and forwarded the letter, but I thought about it for years afterward.” It wasn’t until about 5 years ago that postal worker Harry C. contacted Harry W. Knecht, by that time discharged from the Navy, and married to the former Michele Trescak of Bethlehem. He was still in uniform, but as a fire fighter in Bethlehem. The two Harry Knechts quickly found that not only did they share the same name; they were, indeed, both U. S. Navy veterans who had served on the same “tin can” although during two different tours of duty.
Harry C. Knecht, now 82, was a radarman in World War II on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV -16). It was dubbed the “Blue Ghost” by Tokyo Rose because the Japanese military thought it had been sunk several times. While Knecht was aboard the Lexington it earned eleven battle stars in rugged action. “In November, 1944, we were hit by a kamikaze suicide plane. It hit the secondary con [control room located in the “island” or superstructure] wiping out the bomber pilots but missing me in the radar room. It missed me by about 40 feet.” Near the end of the war, “the ship was rattled by the blast from an atomic bomb,” recalled the veteran of two wars.
Following his service in World War II, Harry C., the senior of the two Knechts, was honorably discharged from the Navy. He married his Emmaus High School sweetheart, the former Edna Eschbach. They settled down to married life when, in September, 1950, Harry C. was recalled to active duty for the Korean War. “I didn’t like it a bit,” said his wife, Edna. “We had a house and a young son. In those days when they went to war they were gone for years.” They now live in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
He joined the crew of the USS Epperson and sailed from Pearl Harbor. The Epperson was the flagship for Escort Division 12 and entered the Korean War in June 1951. “We did carrier screening duty, did coastal patrols, and provided naval gun fire for the soldiers and marines on shore. We won 3 battle stars,” recounted Knecht. He left the Epperson in March, 1952. An impressive wall-mounted shadow box showcases a chest full of medals attesting to Harry C. Knecht’s service to his country.
After the Korean War, Petty Officer 1st Class (Radarman) Harry C. Knecht resumed his life as a Post Office employee in Allentown. It was there that he saw the letter that eventually led him to meet Harry W. Knecht, now a retired Bethlehem firefighter living in Allentown.
Five years ago, when they met for the first time, they shared stories about their service aboard the Epperson. The veteran destroyer men became friends and still see each other occasionally.
Harry W. Knecht, now 66, is a graduate of Catasauqua High School. His Navy experience began when he enlisted in June 1959 in Allentown and went to Great Lakes, Illinois for training. After duty in several posts and stations around the world he was sent to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. There he sailed with the destroyer USS Epperson as a Petty Officer 2nd Class (Boilerman).
“One of our most memorable missions was to stand by in support of Astronaut Walter Schirra who splashed down with the Apollo IV space mission in 1962,”said Harry W. “I had the same blood type as Wally Schirra, therefore I could not eat for 24 hours prior to splash time in case my blood was needed for Wally.”
“In 1961, recalled Harry W., “the Eppe picked up three Air Force divers and the important piece, the nose cone, from Discoverer 29 three hundred miles north of Oahu.” “A support team photographer gave me a NASA shoulder patch when I found his lens cap that he had lost in the bilges,” Harry said.
“Another exciting time”, he laughed, “was when we got torpedoed by one of our own submarines! The Eppe was steaming off the coast of Hawaii and offering itself as a target for our subs to practice launching [inert] torpedoes. The sub usually set the depth of the ‘fish’ deep enough to clear the hull of the ship by going underneath it. On this occasion the ‘fish’ surfaced and hit the starboard side. It struck an I-beam which prevented the torpedo from piercing the skin of the ship and causing havoc inside. There was more damage to everyone’s pride than there was damage to the ship.”
Harry W. Knecht now works part time as a City Center Monitor in Bethlehem.
Though they had no idea when they met that they were related, the two Harry Knechts have since discovered that they are descended from Peter Knecht, a Hession soldier who settled in Pennsylvania after the Revolutionary War.
The USS Epperson was named in honor of U. S. Marine Corps private Harold Glenn Epperson killed on Saipan when he saved the lives of his fellow marines by covering a hand grenade with his body.
On her second tour of duty off the coast of Korea, she earned the nickname “The Interim Mayor of Wonson Harbor” for her dominance of those waters while shelling enemy positions from Wonson Harbor, according to an on-line history of the ship.
The USS Epperson, in January 1954, served as a monitor ship for the detonation of six nuclear devices at the Bikini and Eniwetok test sites in the Pacific Ocean.
The warship was decommissioned in 1973. She was rescued from moth balls in 1977 and sold to the Pakistani navy where she served as the Taimur (D-166). Pakistan decommissioned the Taimur in 1999 and sunk her as a target ship in 2000.
One Day On Tarawa It All Made Sense
By Doug Graves © 2007
Originally published in Semper Fi Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008 issue
“One day on Tarawa it all made sense,” said General Alfred M. Gray, recounting the words of a former battalion commander, speaking of his former doubts about the value of the annual observance that Marines at every post and station around the world hold in such high regard.
The guest of honor at the 232nd Marine Corps Birthday Ball in Seoul was recalling the words of then Lieutenant Colonel Mike Ryan speaking at a Marine Corps Birthday remembrance in 1953. Gray was a young lieutenant and a company commander in Korea with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at the end of the Korean War. At Tarawa, then Major Ryan had been awarded the Navy Cross in one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the Marines.
“We do three things at our Marine Corps birthday,” said General Gray, retired 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps, dressed in his trademark formal camouflage dinner jacket, “We remember our dead and our traditions--we remember our comrades who have made great sacrifice; that’s very, very important for all of our Marines to do that. We get together and have some camaraderie . . . and tighten up the bonds that, we think, make Marines special. And the third thing and most important part of the Marine Corps Birthday Ball is that--all you Marines who are here tonight--that you dedicate yourselves again to the future and to do the very best you can for the greatest nation on earth.”
General Gray went on to acknowledge the Korean guests and recalled their great sacrifices during the Korean War. He expressed his faith in the U S - ROK friendship as a “bond that will never be broken. That bond tells you something. It says that we can get together when there is conflict.”
Referring to the current war on terrorism, his voice resolute and his bearing every inch a battle leader, he said, “We can get together and we can prevail. We will prevail!”
The General concluded his remarks urging his Marines to “Take care of your selves, take care of each other and, as we say in the nation’s corps of Marines, ‘Semper Fidelis!’”
At every table men came to their feet in a thunderous and raucous applause giving good evidence that this old Commandant still commands the respect, admiration and, perhaps, even the love of his fellow Marines.
General and Mrs. Gray had arrived in Korea just a couple days before. They had a full week of obligations ahead of them.
As they flew into Korea the rugged Deokjeok Islands off the west coast of Korea were their first glimpse of the Land of the Morning Calm as the KAL flight began its descent into Incheon International Airport. Late morning sunlight slanted in, back lighting the fog-shrouded islands and giving the scene a golden yellow glow appropriate for the Yellow Sea below.
Light fog obscured shorelines but still revealed the flat, calm bay where, in 1950, a great naval armada was poised to strike one of history’s great strategic victories.
Gray was a private in 1950, having been just sworn in at New York City by Medal of Honor holder Major Louis H. Wilson. He had begun an illustrious career that would elevate him to the commandancy of the Marine Corps. Gray, like Wilson, would one day also be known as a “warrior commandant”.
General Gray and his wife, Jan Gray, were guests of the Korean Veteran’s Association and of the commanding general of the Marine Corps Forces in Korea. They had been invited as part of the KVA’s Re-visit Korea program. Since 1975 the program has been bringing veterans of the 21 nations who won what the KVA proudly calls the “Forgotten Victory.”
General Gray holds many post-retirement positions on corporate and academic boards but he is proud to be the Honorary National Commandant of the Marine Corps League. “I am the first commandant to hold that post since General Lejuene,” he said, referring to the Marine Corps’ legendary 13th commandant, Major General John A. Lejeune.
“I’m proud to be a part of the Marine Corps League,” he said in a conversation in the KAL lounge at Dulles International Airport prior to his flight to Korea. “They do fantastic work supporting [Marine] wounded all around the country. They personify the idea of ‘once a Marine, always a Marine.’ They provide tremendous support to wounded Marines with their Semper Fi Fund.”
On his first day in Korea General Gray had lunch with the Marines at the Navy Club at Yongson Army Garrison. There, the former commandant seemed to be in his most comfortable element—with fellow Marines
Major General Frank Panter, head of Marine Forces, Korea, invited General Gray to join him at an intelligence briefing and a Korea update at his headquarters.
After the briefing, the Marines around the conference table enjoyed talking with General Gray. They listened with rapt attention as the former commandant delivered what could have been a post graduate course in the art of being a Marine. Amphibious operations: “We come from the sea—other people come over the sea.” Expeditionary warfare: “Expeditionary warfare means light enough to get there, heavy enough to win.” On building alliances: “You’ve got to be with them and share their hardships.” Reflecting on being one of the service chiefs: “Only one is a ‘commandant’—the Commandant commands the Marine Corps--the others have titles like ‘chief of staff.’”
“What are some of the things you are most proud of?” asked Colonel Douglas Fegenbush, the Deputy Commander for Marine Forces, Korea.
“One of the things we tried to do was turn the Marine Corps loose; to show that we could do more. There has been a greatly increased understanding of the capabilities of Marine generals in the last 20 years.”
“And,” General Gray said, “I wanted a Marine Corps University.” In keeping with his interest in the professional military education of officers, staff non-commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers, he had established the ‘Commandant’s Reading List,’ an extensive list of books that every Marine leader is expected to read.
By the next morning the Alexandria, Virginia-based Military Historical Tours group had arrived in Seoul with a strong contingent of Marine Corps League members. They joined General Gray and staffers from the United Nations Command for breakfast and for a current assessment of the political and military situation in Korea. Then as the weather rapidly deteriorated, they boarded buses and drove to Panmunjom in the DMZ.
Once arrived at Camp Bonifas, the rain reinforced the fog, restricting vision in every direction to a few hundred yards.
The tour group moved to Observation Post Dora which in good weather offers a panoramic view of the DMZ near Panmunjom. But today there was little to see as the rain and fog combined to limit observation to the huge 3-dimensional map table in the lecture hall. After a briefing the veterans went to pay homage to their fallen comrades at the grey, stone U. S. War Memorial at Imjingak.
As the crowd of veterans formed a semi-circle in front of the memorial, General Gray said, in a clear voice, “Can we have a moment of silence.” Then as the National Anthem started to play, he and his fellow veterans, many of them Marines, stood at attention, their hands over their hearts, remembering their comrades, some of whom had fallen within sight of the memorial.
General Gray, who had fought in the “Outpost Wars,” disregarding the steady rain and refusing an offered umbrella, then laid a ceremonial wreath at the memorial.
“It was quite touching,” said Gerald Ravino, a veteran flame tank commander who had also fought in the “Outpost Wars,” the struggle for tactical advantage that raged while peace talks were being held in Panmunjom. “I lost it a little bit when I found the names of some of the guys that I went to boot camp with on the memorial,” said Gerald Ravino. Ravino, a member of the Marine Corps League and co-author of a book about flame tank actions at the DMZ, was himself injured here.
That evening the Korean War veterans in the group were themselves honored by the KVA at a reception and banquet. They received something that, for the most part, never happened when they came home from the Korean War--be genuinely recognized and thanked for their service in liberating South Korea.
“My dear comrades-in-arms,” said retired Major General Seh Jik Park. “When war threatened you came and sacrificed. On behalf of the Korean people, thank you for your dedication. You deserve the noble title of ‘Ambassador for Peace’.
“You won the war. You will be in the hearts of the Korean people forever. We will do our best to repay our debt to you.”
General Gray addressed the American and the Korean war veterans. “You taught the Communists a valuable lesson,” he said. Then General Gray and 33 other veterans of the Korean War were invited to the dais and awarded a medal commemorating their service over 50 years ago.
“It was humbling,” said Raymond Miller, a Marine from Hutchinson, Kansas. “It gave me goose bumps.” Miller was speaking of the medal ceremony and his experiences since returning to Korea. “The whole trip has been heart warming. It is amazing what they have done.” Later, Miller and his wife, Dena, were shopping in Itaewon when a Korean seamstress asked him when he had last been in Korea. Miller, who had made the landing at Incheon as a BAR man with Able Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, told the woman that he had come in 1950. “She hugged me and bowed. She said, ‘Thank you.’”
The following day, November 10, the veterans went to Dongjak-gu in Seoul to visit the National Cemetery. There they honored the Korean patriots who died in the service of their country.
General Gray, as senior officer present, took the lead. From the great, blue tile-roofed gate building, he led the veterans up the broad avenue flanked by Republic of Korea military honor guards. For almost 200 yards, in measured step, they marched up to the shrine where a memorial wreath waited. There, amid the strains of the Korean National Anthem and under a blue sky, prayers were offered for those interred in the hallowed grounds. The General advanced the wreath to its place of honor. Before starting on this journey he had said, “I want to show my respect to the South Koreans.” Mission accomplished.
The Marine Corps League members and other veterans boarded their buses and headed toward Incheon Harbor and the Incheon Landing Operations Hall.
At the museum a collection of photographs, dioramas, weapons and uniforms told the story of that dramatic day and night of September 15, 1950.
Luther Leguire of Lake City, Florida paused beside a fully restored and painted amtrac where he recalled coming ashore in the first wave with 1st Marines as an infantryman. Ten days later Leguire gained national recognition when he was photographed in the act of replacing a North Korean flag flying over the U. S. Consulate with an American flag. By November 7th he was wounded by a bullet through his knee.
The following day at the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, the largest memorial of its kind in the world, brought Marine Corps League members Dick Oxnam and John Camara face to face with their past. Oxnam had been a first lieutenant platoon commander of 2nd Recon Platoon, Reconnaissance Company near the MLR (Main Line of Resistance—now known as the DMZ) and John Camara had been one of his squad leaders. “First Platoon was assigned to get live prisoners,” said Camara.
It was 2000 [hours] on February 27, 1953 when the platoon crossed the MLR. But First Platoon walked into the kill zone of some Chinese machine guns and was cut up badly in the initial burst, then pinned down.
“The bright moonlight reflecting of the snow made it almost as bright as daylight,” said Oxnam, his voice full of emotion.
“Second Lieutenant [later Major General and Medal of Honor recipient] Jim Day and I took our platoons out to help get First Platoon back in. “Gunnery Sergeant Joe Errgang and two others were missing. Enemy fire was intense and we were exposing ourselves to more casualties. We searched for them until 1400 [the next day] but never found them.”
“Corporal Jerry Day was my radio man. He was killed [during that operation] when a mortar round dropped into our fox hole,” said Oxnam.
Oxnam found the names he was looking for. They were two of the thousands honored in the long Korean War Memorial hallway.
“ERRGANG, JOSEPH R.”
“DAY, GERALD”
Oxnam looked at the names for a while, his fingers running slowly over the raised letters. Then the two comrades-in-arms slowly walked out of the hall of heroes.
The veterans wrapped up their visit to the Land of Morning Calm, peaceful now. But before they left Korea, a group of young school children on a field trip saw Oxnam and his wife on the street. A teacher asked if he was a Marine, and then she explained to the kids that Oxnam was, indeed, a Marine.
“The school children broke ranks and ran up to us, hugging us,” Oxnam said. “They said ‘Thank you, sir, for saving our country.’”
Originally published in Semper Fi Magazine, Jan-Feb 2008 issue
“One day on Tarawa it all made sense,” said General Alfred M. Gray, recounting the words of a former battalion commander, speaking of his former doubts about the value of the annual observance that Marines at every post and station around the world hold in such high regard.
The guest of honor at the 232nd Marine Corps Birthday Ball in Seoul was recalling the words of then Lieutenant Colonel Mike Ryan speaking at a Marine Corps Birthday remembrance in 1953. Gray was a young lieutenant and a company commander in Korea with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at the end of the Korean War. At Tarawa, then Major Ryan had been awarded the Navy Cross in one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the Marines.
“We do three things at our Marine Corps birthday,” said General Gray, retired 29th Commandant of the Marine Corps, dressed in his trademark formal camouflage dinner jacket, “We remember our dead and our traditions--we remember our comrades who have made great sacrifice; that’s very, very important for all of our Marines to do that. We get together and have some camaraderie . . . and tighten up the bonds that, we think, make Marines special. And the third thing and most important part of the Marine Corps Birthday Ball is that--all you Marines who are here tonight--that you dedicate yourselves again to the future and to do the very best you can for the greatest nation on earth.”
General Gray went on to acknowledge the Korean guests and recalled their great sacrifices during the Korean War. He expressed his faith in the U S - ROK friendship as a “bond that will never be broken. That bond tells you something. It says that we can get together when there is conflict.”
Referring to the current war on terrorism, his voice resolute and his bearing every inch a battle leader, he said, “We can get together and we can prevail. We will prevail!”
The General concluded his remarks urging his Marines to “Take care of your selves, take care of each other and, as we say in the nation’s corps of Marines, ‘Semper Fidelis!’”
At every table men came to their feet in a thunderous and raucous applause giving good evidence that this old Commandant still commands the respect, admiration and, perhaps, even the love of his fellow Marines.
General and Mrs. Gray had arrived in Korea just a couple days before. They had a full week of obligations ahead of them.
As they flew into Korea the rugged Deokjeok Islands off the west coast of Korea were their first glimpse of the Land of the Morning Calm as the KAL flight began its descent into Incheon International Airport. Late morning sunlight slanted in, back lighting the fog-shrouded islands and giving the scene a golden yellow glow appropriate for the Yellow Sea below.
Light fog obscured shorelines but still revealed the flat, calm bay where, in 1950, a great naval armada was poised to strike one of history’s great strategic victories.
Gray was a private in 1950, having been just sworn in at New York City by Medal of Honor holder Major Louis H. Wilson. He had begun an illustrious career that would elevate him to the commandancy of the Marine Corps. Gray, like Wilson, would one day also be known as a “warrior commandant”.
General Gray and his wife, Jan Gray, were guests of the Korean Veteran’s Association and of the commanding general of the Marine Corps Forces in Korea. They had been invited as part of the KVA’s Re-visit Korea program. Since 1975 the program has been bringing veterans of the 21 nations who won what the KVA proudly calls the “Forgotten Victory.”
General Gray holds many post-retirement positions on corporate and academic boards but he is proud to be the Honorary National Commandant of the Marine Corps League. “I am the first commandant to hold that post since General Lejuene,” he said, referring to the Marine Corps’ legendary 13th commandant, Major General John A. Lejeune.
“I’m proud to be a part of the Marine Corps League,” he said in a conversation in the KAL lounge at Dulles International Airport prior to his flight to Korea. “They do fantastic work supporting [Marine] wounded all around the country. They personify the idea of ‘once a Marine, always a Marine.’ They provide tremendous support to wounded Marines with their Semper Fi Fund.”
On his first day in Korea General Gray had lunch with the Marines at the Navy Club at Yongson Army Garrison. There, the former commandant seemed to be in his most comfortable element—with fellow Marines
Major General Frank Panter, head of Marine Forces, Korea, invited General Gray to join him at an intelligence briefing and a Korea update at his headquarters.
After the briefing, the Marines around the conference table enjoyed talking with General Gray. They listened with rapt attention as the former commandant delivered what could have been a post graduate course in the art of being a Marine. Amphibious operations: “We come from the sea—other people come over the sea.” Expeditionary warfare: “Expeditionary warfare means light enough to get there, heavy enough to win.” On building alliances: “You’ve got to be with them and share their hardships.” Reflecting on being one of the service chiefs: “Only one is a ‘commandant’—the Commandant commands the Marine Corps--the others have titles like ‘chief of staff.’”
“What are some of the things you are most proud of?” asked Colonel Douglas Fegenbush, the Deputy Commander for Marine Forces, Korea.
“One of the things we tried to do was turn the Marine Corps loose; to show that we could do more. There has been a greatly increased understanding of the capabilities of Marine generals in the last 20 years.”
“And,” General Gray said, “I wanted a Marine Corps University.” In keeping with his interest in the professional military education of officers, staff non-commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers, he had established the ‘Commandant’s Reading List,’ an extensive list of books that every Marine leader is expected to read.
By the next morning the Alexandria, Virginia-based Military Historical Tours group had arrived in Seoul with a strong contingent of Marine Corps League members. They joined General Gray and staffers from the United Nations Command for breakfast and for a current assessment of the political and military situation in Korea. Then as the weather rapidly deteriorated, they boarded buses and drove to Panmunjom in the DMZ.
Once arrived at Camp Bonifas, the rain reinforced the fog, restricting vision in every direction to a few hundred yards.
The tour group moved to Observation Post Dora which in good weather offers a panoramic view of the DMZ near Panmunjom. But today there was little to see as the rain and fog combined to limit observation to the huge 3-dimensional map table in the lecture hall. After a briefing the veterans went to pay homage to their fallen comrades at the grey, stone U. S. War Memorial at Imjingak.
As the crowd of veterans formed a semi-circle in front of the memorial, General Gray said, in a clear voice, “Can we have a moment of silence.” Then as the National Anthem started to play, he and his fellow veterans, many of them Marines, stood at attention, their hands over their hearts, remembering their comrades, some of whom had fallen within sight of the memorial.
General Gray, who had fought in the “Outpost Wars,” disregarding the steady rain and refusing an offered umbrella, then laid a ceremonial wreath at the memorial.
“It was quite touching,” said Gerald Ravino, a veteran flame tank commander who had also fought in the “Outpost Wars,” the struggle for tactical advantage that raged while peace talks were being held in Panmunjom. “I lost it a little bit when I found the names of some of the guys that I went to boot camp with on the memorial,” said Gerald Ravino. Ravino, a member of the Marine Corps League and co-author of a book about flame tank actions at the DMZ, was himself injured here.
That evening the Korean War veterans in the group were themselves honored by the KVA at a reception and banquet. They received something that, for the most part, never happened when they came home from the Korean War--be genuinely recognized and thanked for their service in liberating South Korea.
“My dear comrades-in-arms,” said retired Major General Seh Jik Park. “When war threatened you came and sacrificed. On behalf of the Korean people, thank you for your dedication. You deserve the noble title of ‘Ambassador for Peace’.
“You won the war. You will be in the hearts of the Korean people forever. We will do our best to repay our debt to you.”
General Gray addressed the American and the Korean war veterans. “You taught the Communists a valuable lesson,” he said. Then General Gray and 33 other veterans of the Korean War were invited to the dais and awarded a medal commemorating their service over 50 years ago.
“It was humbling,” said Raymond Miller, a Marine from Hutchinson, Kansas. “It gave me goose bumps.” Miller was speaking of the medal ceremony and his experiences since returning to Korea. “The whole trip has been heart warming. It is amazing what they have done.” Later, Miller and his wife, Dena, were shopping in Itaewon when a Korean seamstress asked him when he had last been in Korea. Miller, who had made the landing at Incheon as a BAR man with Able Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, told the woman that he had come in 1950. “She hugged me and bowed. She said, ‘Thank you.’”
The following day, November 10, the veterans went to Dongjak-gu in Seoul to visit the National Cemetery. There they honored the Korean patriots who died in the service of their country.
General Gray, as senior officer present, took the lead. From the great, blue tile-roofed gate building, he led the veterans up the broad avenue flanked by Republic of Korea military honor guards. For almost 200 yards, in measured step, they marched up to the shrine where a memorial wreath waited. There, amid the strains of the Korean National Anthem and under a blue sky, prayers were offered for those interred in the hallowed grounds. The General advanced the wreath to its place of honor. Before starting on this journey he had said, “I want to show my respect to the South Koreans.” Mission accomplished.
The Marine Corps League members and other veterans boarded their buses and headed toward Incheon Harbor and the Incheon Landing Operations Hall.
At the museum a collection of photographs, dioramas, weapons and uniforms told the story of that dramatic day and night of September 15, 1950.
Luther Leguire of Lake City, Florida paused beside a fully restored and painted amtrac where he recalled coming ashore in the first wave with 1st Marines as an infantryman. Ten days later Leguire gained national recognition when he was photographed in the act of replacing a North Korean flag flying over the U. S. Consulate with an American flag. By November 7th he was wounded by a bullet through his knee.
The following day at the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, the largest memorial of its kind in the world, brought Marine Corps League members Dick Oxnam and John Camara face to face with their past. Oxnam had been a first lieutenant platoon commander of 2nd Recon Platoon, Reconnaissance Company near the MLR (Main Line of Resistance—now known as the DMZ) and John Camara had been one of his squad leaders. “First Platoon was assigned to get live prisoners,” said Camara.
It was 2000 [hours] on February 27, 1953 when the platoon crossed the MLR. But First Platoon walked into the kill zone of some Chinese machine guns and was cut up badly in the initial burst, then pinned down.
“The bright moonlight reflecting of the snow made it almost as bright as daylight,” said Oxnam, his voice full of emotion.
“Second Lieutenant [later Major General and Medal of Honor recipient] Jim Day and I took our platoons out to help get First Platoon back in. “Gunnery Sergeant Joe Errgang and two others were missing. Enemy fire was intense and we were exposing ourselves to more casualties. We searched for them until 1400 [the next day] but never found them.”
“Corporal Jerry Day was my radio man. He was killed [during that operation] when a mortar round dropped into our fox hole,” said Oxnam.
Oxnam found the names he was looking for. They were two of the thousands honored in the long Korean War Memorial hallway.
“ERRGANG, JOSEPH R.”
“DAY, GERALD”
Oxnam looked at the names for a while, his fingers running slowly over the raised letters. Then the two comrades-in-arms slowly walked out of the hall of heroes.
The veterans wrapped up their visit to the Land of Morning Calm, peaceful now. But before they left Korea, a group of young school children on a field trip saw Oxnam and his wife on the street. A teacher asked if he was a Marine, and then she explained to the kids that Oxnam was, indeed, a Marine.
“The school children broke ranks and ran up to us, hugging us,” Oxnam said. “They said ‘Thank you, sir, for saving our country.’”
Local Patriots Honor the First Defenders in Wreath Laying Ceremony
by Doug Graves © 2008
“The entire country owes the First Defenders a debt of gratitude,” said Mayor Ed Pawlowski on Friday, speaking to a small group of patriotic citizens attending a wreath laying ceremony in the Veteran’s Grove at West Park in Allentown. They were commemorating Allentown’s quick response to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for Pennsylvania men to come to the aid of the Nation’s capitol in the early, dark days of the Civil War.
The “Allen Rifles,” an infantry militia unit, was organized in 1859 by Allentown businessman Captain Thomas Yeager. After the attack on Fort Sumter Captain Yeager sought permission to bring his unit to full strength. On April 17, 1861 he joined his company with four others and marched toward the sound of the guns. Captain Yeager later accepted a commission as a major in the 53rd Regiment and was killed leading his men in action at the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862. He and 653 other Civil War veterans are buried in nearby Union Cemetery not far from his home on North Sixth Street near Chew Street.
One of his men, Corporal Ignatz Gresser, would many years later be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for helping a wounded comrade from the Antietam battlefield one of only three Medal of Honor awardees to have been a Lehigh Valley resident.
Mayor Pawlowski also proclaimed that, hereafter, April 18th will be known as “Honorary First Defenders Day” in Allentown.
“The entire country owes the First Defenders a debt of gratitude,” said Mayor Ed Pawlowski on Friday, speaking to a small group of patriotic citizens attending a wreath laying ceremony in the Veteran’s Grove at West Park in Allentown. They were commemorating Allentown’s quick response to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for Pennsylvania men to come to the aid of the Nation’s capitol in the early, dark days of the Civil War.
The “Allen Rifles,” an infantry militia unit, was organized in 1859 by Allentown businessman Captain Thomas Yeager. After the attack on Fort Sumter Captain Yeager sought permission to bring his unit to full strength. On April 17, 1861 he joined his company with four others and marched toward the sound of the guns. Captain Yeager later accepted a commission as a major in the 53rd Regiment and was killed leading his men in action at the Battle of Fair Oaks in 1862. He and 653 other Civil War veterans are buried in nearby Union Cemetery not far from his home on North Sixth Street near Chew Street.
One of his men, Corporal Ignatz Gresser, would many years later be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for helping a wounded comrade from the Antietam battlefield one of only three Medal of Honor awardees to have been a Lehigh Valley resident.
Mayor Pawlowski also proclaimed that, hereafter, April 18th will be known as “Honorary First Defenders Day” in Allentown.
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