Saturday, June 27, 2009

I could hear the bullets hitting the side of the ship

By Douglas Graves © 2009



“I thought about stabbing myself in the heart with the two wooden pencils the North Korean had given me to sign the confession,” said former Navy man Frank Ginther as he described wanting to end his 11-month ordeal after his ship had been surrounded and then captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “But I wasn’t sure where my heart was. What if I missed?”
“It was the most alone feeling I ever had in my life,” said the veteran.
Ginther was speaking Sunday night at the Agape New Testament Fellowship Church in Schnecksville. Pastor Dave Farnholtz had arranged the short program with veterans in mind. Several veterans and their families were in the audience.
In January 1968 twenty five-year old Ginther was a communications specialist aboard the USS Pueblo, a communications surveillance ship in international waters but very near North Korea’s maritime exclusion zone. It was his first time aboard a ship. Commanded by Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, the ship and its 84 crewmen were captured and tortured until they signed confessions stating that they were spying.
The ship had specific orders to keep watch on Soviet naval activity in the Tsushima Straits and to gather radio messages and to record electronic intelligence from North Korea but to stay outside the 13-mile limit considered to be international waters.
When they came under attack, the captain maneuvered the ship to keep from being boarded by Koreans while the crew, including Ginther, attempted to destroy secret documents and cryptographic equipment.
One man, Duane Hodges of Cresswell, OR was killed when the Koreans opened fire on the American ship.
“I could hear the bullets hitting the side of the ship,” said Ginther. “I told the men with me, ‘If you guys know any prayers, now is the time to start saying them.’”
Though armed with two 50-caliber machine guns mounted on the deck, Bucher decided not to man the two guns but left the protective canvas, now frozen stiff, on the guns. The ship’s .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns remained locked below decks.
The recently married father of a baby daughter, a native of Pottsville, had been captured and now was being tortured by the Communists.
He described the events leading up to what he described as “the first [U. S. Navy] ship captured in over 150 years.” (In fact, it is the second; Japanese forces captured the USS Wake (PR-3) on Dec. 8, 1941 in Shanghai, China).
“It was very cold,” said Ginther describing the day before the attack. “We had been seen by two fishing boats so we knew our mission was compromised.”
“The next day we were approached at high speed by a sub chaser and soon were looking down the barrels of two cannon.”
“We started destroying classified equipment and papers, but the shredders were useless,” said Ginther reliving his baptism of fire. “They could only shred a couple of pages at a time. The incinerators were on the deck which was under fire by machine guns.”
Ginther and his fellow Sailors and Marines started burning the documents in trash cans below the decks. Soon the spaces were choked with acrid smoke.
The captain couldn’t scuttle the ship because the former Army supply ship had no scuttle valves to let in sea water. Even so, the ship was in 30 fathoms or about 180 feet of water. Captain Bucher reportedly felt that even if he could sink the ship, North Korean salvage divers could easily recover the classified equipment and documents.
The idea of sinking the ship did not appeal to crew who knew that the near freezing water would take its toll. “If we had got in the water we wouldn’t have lasted,” said Ginther.
After the North Koreans escorted the Pueblo and the crew into the port of Wonson on the Pacific side of the Korean Peninsula, the ordeal began in earnest.
Commander Bucher, who had been injured by North Korean shell fragments, was subjected to a mock execution and beatings. Finally, after the North Korean’s threatened to kill his crew, Bucher signed a confession stating that he and the Pueblo were operating in North Korean waters.
“Whatever he did,” said Ginther, “he did it for us. Years later I personally thanked him for saving my life.”
Ginther, too, was tortured. “Three officers kicked me and beat me with a leather belt, hitting me in the head with the metal buckle.”
He picked up a chair and holding it over his head, demonstrated how he had been forced to hold a chair while being interrogated.
“They would strip a man naked and tie his hands and ankles together and put a two-by-four behind his knees,” said Ginther. “Then he would be forced to squat. They would open the windows and leave him in the freezing room.”
“I prayed: ‘Lord, please help me,’” said Ginther. “I heard a deep, powerful voice—I heard it in my mind, not my ear. ‘Trust me; every thing is going to be alright.’ It was so powerful that the feeling came over me from top to bottom.”
Still Bucher and his men found ways to fight back. Ginther showed propaganda photographs taken by his Communist captors with the crewmen each displaying a middle finger in the classic American symbol of disdain. However, because they told their captors that it was “the Hawaiian good luck sign,” the Communists released the photographs to the world’s press.
Ginther said that he had to write a confession and to say that he was being well treated. “I wrote that ‘these people are very nice; just like the people at St. Elizabeth’s [a then well-known mental hospital in Washington, D. C.]”
According to other sources, the widely-read Bucher selected a seldom-used word, “paean,” to let the world know he was repudiating his forced confession. A paean is a work that praises or honors its subject. The Koreans verified the technical meaning of his words: "We paean the North Korean state. We paean their great leader Kim Il-Sung." What they missed was that the pronunciation of “paean” is similar to “pee on.”
Ginther credited his faith in God with helping him through the 11 months of torture, privation and abuse. He said that two plaques given to him by a Sunday school teacher help him remember his faith in God.
“Two things helped me,” he said. “My faith in God and my faith in my country. My faith in God is unshaken.”
“My faith in my country is getting a little shaky,” he added. Still, he had chosen to wear an American flag-themed neck tie for the occasion.
“The message I bring to you,” said Ginther, “is that you’re going to have troubles in life. Just remember that God is love. Jesus never fails.
Ginther’s career combines his communications training and his faith in God. He is the station manager of WJCS 89.3 FM in Allentown, a station featuring a religious format. He lives in Bethlehem with his wife, Judy.
The Navy awarded him the Purple Heart Medal recognizing the torture he endured. He also wears the Prisoner of War Medal.
Pastor Dave Farnholtz concluded the evening by inviting local veterans to give their personal testimony and to offer prayers. The audience then sang patriotic songs.
The USS Pueblo remains a commissioned ship of the United States Navy. It is also still in North Korea.

Friday, June 26, 2009

My Number is A91432

By Douglas Graves © 2009

“The Germans came into our house while we were eating dinner,” said the trim, elderly lady. “They threw our food on the floor—and they kicked us out of our house with what we were wearing. We ended up in some form of a big place—people walking about—with Germans quietly killing people.”
Her name was Lieberman then but seventy years later 83-year old Yolanda Hamer was telling her story to her children in Bethlehem—a story about losing her parents and her brothers to the Holocaust. She had written a short story for her children--one of savagery relating how a young Jewish girl was ripped from her loving family in Roztoky, Czechoslovakia and sent on a terrible journey.
“We started hearing news from Germany about the Nuremberg laws [that] were coming into effect. We felt very secure, [that] this [would] not happen to us. We went to school, spoke about Hitler in class and [tried] to make sense of it all. ‘The Nuremberg laws will never reach us’ was our answer. He left us alone for two years.”
“We were expelled from school [and] were not allowed in public places,” she said. “Our new I D was a yellow star with black letters: Juole or Jew.
“One day we heard a rumor [that we would] be deported. Shortly we were instructed to pack a small bag; little food and nothing else. They pushed us into trucks and brought us into a brick factory which they converted into a ghetto.” There single families were crammed into squalid ten-foot by ten-foot cubicles with no water nor toilets. “Within a week we were infested with body [lice] and head lice. This was the first lesson of Hell on earth.”
“One morning we got up and saw trucks lined up. They loaded the trucks and off we went to the train station. We were pushed into cattle cars, 120 per car. The two little windows were about one foot long. We couldn’t count on fresh air. We were given a bucket for a toilet—no food or water. Soon people started fainting from the heat and thirst.”
Yolanda said she thought it was in May. “We were heading east. We spent four days traveling. Half the people were dead. The stench was horrible. It was a big, big train.”
“After a few days . . . we reached [Auschwitz],” she wrote in her story for her children. [We were] greeted by Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death. He made his selection. My sister [Jean] and I . . . remained together. My mother and two brothers went by ambulance to the gas chambers. My father was sent to a work line. That was the last time I saw them.
“They took our clothes and shaved all of our hair. Next came a permanent mark on [our arms]. My number is A91432,” said Yolanda showing the bluish, faded tattoo. “I think the nine stands for 1939.”
“I asked one of the men . . . ‘How do we get out of here?’ His answer was very simple. ‘You see the chimney? That’s your exit.’ I had no idea what he was talking about.”
“We spent endless hours just standing while we were being counted. Every morning when we came out the barbed wire [fence] was laced with bodies. They served as examples in case we decided to escape.”
“A slice of bread [and] a cup of water (they called it soup) sustained us for a day. We cleaned the streets—picked up garbage. [We were] supervised by SS [guards] and German Shepherds [dogs]. If there was no work, we stood in line. If they didn’t like the way you stood, there was no food for the next two days. [It was] another way of eliminating a body from the roster. We hoped for a miracle but none came.”
After about six months at Auschwitz the two girls were sent to Plaszow, a concentration camp near Krakow, Poland. The place was known as a slave labor camp that provided slave workers to several nearby armament factories. The death rate at Plaszow was very high.
“There we worked like true slaves: loading bricks on trucks, unloading coal, and shoveling coal down a shaft. From there we moved to unloading trains [coming] from the Russian front. [The trains were packed with] uniforms which were full of blood, body parts and, primarily, lice—we had enough of our own.”
“A bright side [for us] were the 200 children in the camp. They gave us hope for a new world. But one night we heard screams from the parents of the children and [we heard] children crying ‘Don’t take us away from our parents!’ They were taken to Auschwitz, their final trip.”
“Shortly afterwards we were shipped back to Auschwitz. We didn’t work, just stood in line, rain or shine. Our bodies were full of sores from the lice. We tried to hide it, otherwise we would be gassed. We slept in bunks—four to a bunk with one blanket. I don’t know how we survived on the ration of food. If you moved from your spot in line, you were the dogs’ next meal. If you had an itch you’d better not scratch.”
“The worst night was Kol-Nidre night [the first evening of Yom Kippur]. They brought a transport of Hungarian Jews. Among them were quite a few rabbis. They put the loud-speaker near the gas chamber to make sure we heard their cries and prayers calling to the Almighty while they were being pushed [into the gas chambers].
“Later they walked us [to a place] to watch the shooting of prisoners. After they shot them they threw them into ditches where the fire was ready for them.”
A few days later Yolanda and Jean were shipped out to Oberalstadt [Czechoslovakia]. On the way their train was attacked by Allied aircraft. “They must have known what the cargo was [as] they hit only the locomotive. The doors opened. We started jumping out—right into the SS’ hands. I [fell] on my knee, severely injuring it. We tried to get back on the train [but] they started beating us with their clubs. We were rounded up, re-counted and [forced] to walk to our barracks. I don’t ever remember being so hungry . . .”
Yolanda and her sister while at Oberalstadt worked in a yarn factory owned by Siemens [then, and now, a major manufacturer of electrical components]. “Our shift was 16 hours a day [with] one meal and very little sleep.” Yolanda now had a straw-filled pillow to go with their one blanket and four-to-a-person bed.
Some sources put the number of Jewish women working for Siemens as virtual slaves in 1941 at approximately 900.
Her knee, injured during the attack on the train and now and infected and gangrenous, didn’t stop the Germans from forcing her to dig ditches while watched by the SS and their growling dogs. “At this point I was praying and hoping I would die soon. The pain was unbearable. I was unable to work any longer. They took me to an infirmary [with] no medicine, not even an aspirin.”
“In spite of not having even anesthetic, a captured Russian woman doctor decided to operate. She was the angel who saved my life.”
Yolanda was transferred to a typhoid ward to recover. “I was positive I’d never walk out of there. The patients were delirious with fever. They screamed and . . . were praying for an end. Every few hours the orderly came in and pulled out a body or two. Those screams and cries! I still hear them sometimes at night.”
But they made it. “We started hearing rumors [that] the war was ending. Sure enough, one morning when we came out to go to work—no more SS! American and British soldiers greeted us. ‘You are free,’ they said.”
But, according to Yolanda, the next day the Americans and British left. Their zone belonged to Russians according to agreements made at Yalta. “Later that day the Russians rolled in. They saw girls and they were ready to party.” Yolanda’s expression as she tells the story reveals that “party” was a euphemism to describe much worse intentions. “We jumped out of windows and ran into the woods.”
After running into what she described as a regiment of Nazis, they came back to the barracks. But soon they were able to return to their childhood home in Roztoky.
According to Robert B. Pynsent of the University College at London’s School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, “Jews returning [to Czechoslovakia] from concentration camps were often faced with being treated as Germans.”
“There was a priest living in [our] house. He was rude to us telling us point-blank [to] ‘beat it’. [This] was my first mis-giving about surviving.”
The sisters went to Prague where they read in a Jewish newspaper that an aunt and uncle in the United States were advertising for Lieberman family survivors. Abraham and Margaret Howe, living in The Bronx, agreed to sponsor both Yolanda and Jean. They got permission to travel to the United States but, “It took four years of waiting . . . under constant scrutiny [by the Communists] because they knew we were leaving they country.”
Yolanda made it to Canada and then to New York. There, on a blind date, she met her husband, Barry, at a dance. They married in 1952 and made their home, first in Brooklyn and then in Queens, raising two children, Sharon and Joseph. Yolanda and Barry now make their home with Sharon. They attend the Brith Sholom Congregation in Bethlehem.
“When I look back [on my life]--the hunger, the beatings, the lice and the abuse were worthwhile. When somebody says ‘the Holocaust is a Jewish myth’ I am here to tell them I was there! It really happened!

A Lonely Ceremony on Saturday

By Douglas Graves
© 2009

A lonely ceremony on Saturday, May 30 marked the service and sacrifice of the men and women who lay in the South Bethlehem hillside cemetery. Many lay in unmarked graves, the ground sunken in on them when their wooden coffins gave way. Some lay with toppled granite obelisks beside their resting place, the bases, the shafts, and the crowns all asunder.
“The ones with level bases were knocked over by vandals,” said one of the men who supervise the county-provided work release grass cutters that do their community service time here. “The ones with un-level bases were knocked down by Mother Nature.”
“Some people just treat the cemetery as a vacant lot,” he said.
The memorial organizers have been meeting here on May 30 for the past couple of years because that is the traditional date of the old “Decoration Day” that was supplanted by “Memorial Day.”
Decoration Day was when families took the children to the cemetery to remember their ancestors and decorate their graves and tombs. Usually, they would tidy up the grave site. It is a tradition largely given over to trips to the beach or mountains to make the most of a long weekend--or for shopping for “Memorial Day Specials.”
A cooling breeze came up the slope from South 4th Street bringing relief from the bright mid-morning sun. A group of about 20 gathered in the shade to commemorate the dead. The officials, veterans and clergy out numbered those without an official duty to perform.
The pastor of the church, Monsignor Robert Biszek, came to offer a prayer. “We remember with a sense of gratitude and humility the thousands and thousands of people and the torch of freedom they so gallantly carried,” prayed the pastor.
Representative Joe Brennan was there with his son. Mayor John Callahan offered a brief history of Memorial Day, saying that its beginning was in the simple task of mothers and wives of dead Confederate soldiers who, while cleaning up and caring their men folk, decided to extend the kindness to the dead Federal soldiers.
Three Cub Scouts were there with their Den Mother, Paula Gabriel and Assistant Den Mother, Sonia Moser. They represented Pack 397 sponsored by the Holy Infancy School. Gianni Gonzales, 8, Angel Negron, 9, and Luis St-Amand weren’t the only ones in uniform.
About 75 feet up the hill American Legion squad of veterans, armed with 30-06 M-1 rifles, prepared to render honors with a salute. American Legion Post 379 members Eric Shimer, Steve Melnick, Ralph Romano, and John M. McCulloch shouldered their weapons and fired in quick, sharp volleys.
A baby, startled from deep sleep in her stroller, began a fitful cry. She seemed to calm as the bugler, Marine Ralph Brodt III, began to sound “Taps.”
The Holy Infancy Church has responsibility for the cemetery that is owned by the Allentown Diocese. All of the mowing and minimal maintenance is done by volunteers and people sentenced to community service.
Many of the grave stones in the St. Michael’s Cemetery bear the names of Civil War era soldiers who ensured that their country would endure.
There are no new graves in St. Michael’s said the monsignor. He pointed to the crest of the hill toward some trees. There are more graves overgrown in the woods, he said.
The proud Bethlehem Iron men and their families who are buried here surely never imagined that their grave markers—some magnificent and expensive, others humble—would some day be tumbled about. They must have thought that being buried in the church’s cemetery would assure them of perpetual care and respect.
The vandals have been no respecters of nationality. Stone memorials with Italian names lay cast down in the same grass as do those with Irish names.
The cemetery faces a row of squeezed-together houses that once would have been tidy and well cared for—filled with citizens who built the community and the church and entrusted their loved ones to its perpetual care. They couldn’t have known that their faith was so misplaced.
The wind-swept hillside with its graves and head stones is still a solemn and once beautiful place but it contrasts sadly with the carefully maintained and honored graveyards in the care of the American government who make an honest effort to keep faith with fallen veterans around the world.
According to the pastor, there is very little money for maintenance and repair of the sacred site. Any one that wants to donate money or labor for the care and restoration of the formerly magnificent resting place can call the church at 610-866-1121.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

“We Have Warm, Empty Buildings. Why Not Share Them?”

By Douglas Graves C 2009
First printed in the Catasauqua [PA] Press March 5, © 2009

It looked like a sleep-over for adults in the basement efficiency apartment of a nice home. Sleeping bags, some on cots, most spread on the tile floor. The hosts were serving a hot meal; cookies waited at the end of the serving line.
The 14 guests, the homeless people who were spending the night, for the most part had already had dinner.
But a party atmosphere was absent from the basement of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Pennsylvania Avenue in Hanover Township on Friday, Feb. 20. While a small group at a table shared some laughs, the overall mood was somber. Several resigned women sat at one of the tables. No trace of makeup softened their faces, no high-lights livened their salt and pepper hair.
A thin young man in his twenties seemed out of place as he stood at the serving line for a second serving. As for the older men, the main difference between them and any other was a fresh haircut.
This was an emergency rescue operation to take ordinary but homeless men and women off the streets during a bitterly cold winter in the Lehigh Valley.
The Reverend T. Scott Allen and his volunteers were “sharing [their] faith, welcoming and serving others”—the motto on the reverend’s calling card.
Bob and Rita Sorenson of Hanover Township cleaned up in the kitchen after cooking the night’s supper of chicken noodle soup, beef stew and baked ziti.
“The church has been doing this for weeks,” said Rita Sorenson. “We wanted to volunteer. Our sons also helped by baking cookies and rolls.”
It was Reverend Allen who first responded to the request for help sent out by the Trinity Episcopal Church on East Market Street in Bethlehem. Six other area churches agreed to help said Reverend Elizabeth Miller, director of the soup kitchen at Trinity Episcopal Church. Asked if the township authorities have contributed to or tried to interfere with his activities, Allen said, “No.”
In Brookville, Pennsylvania last year, a district judge fined the pastor of the First Apostles Doctrine Church $500 for allowing three homeless men to stay in the church parsonage. Brookville’s solicitor reportedly said, “We’re not going let someone violate the zoning laws because they do it in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Each night a different church takes in a group, feeds them supper, beds them down, and fixes them a breakfast the following morning before they have to go back to the street. Volunteers bring and prepare the food; two of them spend the night with their charges as the homeless get a warm and dry sleep. A second shift of volunteers will come in around 6 a. m. to prepare breakfast.
And what’s for breakfast? “Oatmeal, Hot Pockets, waffles, cereal, coffee and juices,” said Rita Sorenson.
“We could use some more cots,” said Reverend Allen when asked what else he needs. “We haven’t needed money. People have donated their time.” To help or donate money, cots or blankets call (610) 865-3603 or go to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue between Catasauqua Road and Union Boulevard.
Asked if this is a year-round program, he said “No. Only when it’s cold—when the temperature falls below 32 degrees or the wind-chill factor is below 32 degrees.”
Cindy Bowlby from Slatington said, “It was something very important. We were worried about the people.”
Does it worry her to work with and spend the night with strangers? “Everything is fine. It’s very enjoyable.” She has volunteered to spend the night twice. Bowlby grew up as a member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church but now drives down from Slatington to fellowship with her congregation.
These people were homeless for a variety of reasons. One had sold his house when he got cancer but had no insurance or money to pay for the treatments. The thin young man had been kicked out of his house by his father.
One man told his story but was fearful that any detail in the newspaper would attract the attention of an abusive family member whom he wants to avoid.
Only Julio Millan agreed to be interviewed by the Press, the others being too private or too proud.
Millan, originally from Puerto Rico but most recently from Florida, said he came to the area in June of 2008 looking for work as a truck driver. He said he has a commercial driver’s license but the depression has dried up jobs. “I’ve had to sleep in the woods,” he said. “I’ve even slept under the Minsi Trail Bridge.”
“They let me shower at New Bethany Ministries,” he said. “I can do my laundry there.”
Another’s story was a cautionary tale; how a skilled, self-employed tradesperson, injured on the job and without medical insurance can, in short order, be on the streets. No longer able to ply a trade due to a crippling injury, this person is hoping to qualify for some kind of disability payment. The homeless person’s spouse works part-time for minimum wages and with no benefits to barely survive. “We’ll be OK,” said the homeless person.
The Reverend Joel Atkinson, Canon Missioner from the Cathedral Church of the Nativity was there. He had just brought a group from his church where they had spent Thursday night.
“We have warm, empty buildings,” said Reverend Allen. “Why not share them?”
Other churches participating: Church of the Manger at1401 Greenview Dr
Bethlehem, the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Lehigh Valley at 424 Center St. Bethlehem, the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 514 Third Ave. in Bethlehem and the New Covenant Church at 23 E Broad St. Bethlehem, the El Shaddai Ministries’ Christian Training Center 529 East Broad St. in Bethlehem and the Cathedral Church of the Nativity at 321 Wyandotte St. in Bethlehem.

“People Need to Go Where the Silence Is."

Douglas Graves © 2009
Published in the Bethlehem [PA] Press March 4, 2009
“They raped 40 girls and their teachers,” said the Darfuri woman in the film shown at Bethlehem’s Congregation Brith Shalom Feb. 11. “They were bleeding. I saw them.”
About 40 area residents, mostly middle aged to elderly — and several teenagers, gathered to watch “One Night, One Voice,” a film that posits Sudan is using rape as a weapon of war.
The meeting was sponsored by the local chapter of the Save Darfur Coalition.
Liberty High School student Sam Newman was there with his mother, Tova Goldstein.
“I read ‘The Translator’ and it opened my eyes about Darfur,” Newman said.
The group was encouraged by the report of an arrest warrant issued that day for Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. No arrest seems imminent.
Hosted by Rabbi Allen Juda, the local premier of the film was one of 200 simultaneously seen across the United States.
Monsignor John Mraz of Emmaus’ St. Ann Parish read passages urging mercy and forbearance from the teachings of the great religions rooted in the Holy Land.
Patti Price of Moravian College said the 7,500-member African Union force is on the verge of collapse.
The 22,500 UN peacekeepers were not allowed by Khartoum to be stationed in Darfur. “Without this force, there is little or no security on the ground,” said Price. Darfur is about the size of France.
She said that while estimates vary, 400,000 people have died. Besides the violence, illness, malnutrition, and neglect, rape is widely used as a weapon of war.
The camera fixed on the burned bodies of two children, their torsos sprawled in the desolate brown dust; their youth confirmed by a delicate hand sticking out of a torn sleeve that carbonized close to the blackened torso. The child’s face was burned away. The other’s head, also black in the dirt, was charred and laying some inches away from its sunken, sooty torso.
“The Janjaweed came and burned them alive,” testified another woman. “[They were] throwing the children to the fire.”
“The children are being abused with something as dirty as this,” said Rose Laxar from Tamaqua, as she signed a “Save Darfur” petition.
Projected on the screen were eight dead infants, their heads just visible under a straw mat covered with light green brush held down by stones.
“When someone rapes a woman,” said Adrianne Fricke, an international human rights attorney speaking in the film, “they rape her entire tribe. It’s considered, in the traditional sense, the deepest affront. By raping a woman in front of her male relatives it ensures the destruction of the fabric of that family.”
“There is no justice for the women of Darfur,” said the narrator.
“There has been just one rape conviction in Sudan and that was because of a confession,” said Dr. Kelly Askin, a moderator on the telecast.
“The stigma on women gives power to the rapists,” said Dr. Askin. “We need to be taking the stigma and putting it on the rapists.”
“Help Darfur” petitions to the new president were being circulated by earnest young women.
Charlie Vaccaro and Miranda Johnson displayed a tinfoil cardboard-backed solar cooker as an example of a simple gift that will give employment to Darfuri women while reducing their need to risk attack and rape while foraging for firewood.
Jim Powers of Allentown, a retired airline pilot, spoke quietly with several people after the film. “I work for Air Serv International,” he said, “We fly aid workers all over Darfur. The roads are dangerous.”
“People need to go where the silence is,” said Maria Bella, an actor from Pennsylvania and member of the televised discussion panel. Another panelist quoted Ellie Wiesel: “What hurts the victim the most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander.”
April is Genocide Prevention Month. Go to www.savedarfur.org. Call 1-800-GENOCIDE to leave a message for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Call 888-473-7885, Extension 1 to record a message that will be broadcast to the women in Darfur. Contact Rabbi Juda at 610-866-8990 for more information.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

“Our Work Isn’t Done.”

By Douglas Graves © 2009


High spirits and hope for the future filled the crowd as the Star of Bethlehem aligned with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision from the mountain top and coincided with the next day’s inauguration of the 44th president, Barack Obama, and his vision for change in the way that America does business.
About 150 people crammed into Sayre Hall at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity on Wyandotte Street in Bethlehem on Monday, Jan. 19 to commemorate the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The hosting clergy had to scramble, bringing more chairs into the large room to accommodate the more than expected number of attendees.
Master of Ceremony duties were ably done by Liberty High School student and student leader Stephen Font-Toomer. He was there, he said, “To honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—he was so great. No one stepped up to the plate to do what he did.”
Sponsored by the Bethlehem Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the event featured dances by two youth groups and a chorale performance by the Lepoco Peace Singers. Aspiring opera singer Krizia Nelson, a Freedom High School senior and the Show Case Choir president gave good evidence of her bright future by singing a solo to entertain the room. Nelson, the daughter of Carl and Millie Nelson, hopes to attend the Oberlin Conservatory for Music in Ohio.
“Martin Luther King was inspirational; not just to me, to all people,” said Nelson. “It’s all a chain reaction. Martin Luther King opened up doors for change and non-violence.
A troupe led by Liberty High School ninth grader Yasmine Dowdell performed a step dance to everyone’s delight. The Wings For Life dancers also entertained.
However, the festive mood changed when the guest speakers began to access racial justice in America.
“We are all enamored with the results of the election and with Barack Obama,” said Stephanie Hnatiw, the Executive Director of the YWCA. “But I think one consequence of the Obama victory is that Americans who are not black will figure racism and its legacy has finally been defeated.” This would be wrong according to Hnatiw.
“Our work isn’t done,” she said. We still have a very, very long way to go.”
The YWCA director then gave some statistics to illustrate her point: Medium income for a black household is $25,000 while for a white household its $40,477; high school graduation rates—80 percent for whites, 60 percent for blacks; the chances of going to prison—16.2 percent for a black person but 2.8 percent for a white; black men in college in 2000—603,032 were outnumbered by black men in prison—791,600. Hnatiw provide additional evidence illustrating the racial disparity in other areas such as health, drug abuse and housing.
“We can’t stop now,” she said. “We have to continue the struggle. Racial justice will be here when there is no disparity among the races.”
Bethlehem Area School District executives Dr. Joseph Lewis and Thomas Washington had front row seats at the event so heavily attended by Liberty High School students and alumni. Among the students present was Liberty High School’s tenth grade class president, Kevin Peterman who, wearing a necktie under an Obama tee-shirt, had just returned from Martin Luther King Park where he had given a speech.
When Liberty High School alumnus Dr. Ernest H. Smith, a retired medical doctor now living in Los Angeles, spoke he reminded the audience of Bethlehem’s long history of racial tolerance. He said he had been in the Liberty High School marching band when it was invited to President Harry Truman’s inaugural parade in 1949. “It was the only integrated unit marching in the parade,” he said. He related how, on orders from the Secret Service, he and his brother were moved from the ends of the ranks they were in and placed in the middle so that potential racists in the crowd would not be able to attack them easily.
[It was an Executive Order by President Truman in 1948 that directed the Armed Forces and the Civil Service to integrate. As a result, his popularity was so low that most observers thought it would cost him re-election.]
While Martin Luther King “had a dream,” Dr. Smith recalled that the Civil War-era heroine, Harriet Tubman, also “had a dream.” [Tubman, born a slave in Maryland, had escaped. She took on the mission to rescue other slaves from bondage, making 13 trips and rescuing over 70 slaves.]
Dr. Smith, while sharing in the general euphoria of the moment, had a cautionary view of the meaning of Obama’s election.
Dr. Smith reminded the audience that while the ancestors of African-Americans came to this country involuntarily, dragged in the chains of slavery, Barack Obama who he describes as an American-African, was born in the United States of a father who came voluntarily as a free man.
“If you don’t have that root of slavery, you can’t claim to be an African-American,” he said. “Americans can’t think that because Obama is the president that the issue of African-American slavery is solved because it is not. The issue is still on the table.”
He said that African-Americans were emancipated by war and law; that Barack Obama cannot carry that baggage for them.
Dr. Smith also compared the reparations that interned Japanese-Americans got with the “40 acres and a mule” that he said some Union generals thought freed slaves should have been awarded but were not. [“The (United States’) redress program made $20,000 payments to 82,210 Japanese Americans or their heirs,” according to Democracy Now.]
The celebration wrapped up with the crowd joining hands in small groups and singing the civil rights hymn, “We Shall Overcome,” ending with the line, “ . . . oh deep in my heart, I do believe, the Lord will see us through some day.”

'We Need to Tell the Marine Story’

By Douglas Graves © 2009

Orginally published Semper Fi Magazine Jan/Feb 2009


Meeting the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps in his Pentagon office made it clear that enlisted Marines, the staff non-commissioned officer and the non-commissioned officer corps of the Marine Corps have a superlative representative standing next to the Commandant. When Sergeant Major Carlton Kent spoke with Semper Fi Magazine in November, the 16th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps discussed a wide range of issues but the conversation had a recurring theme: Kent has very high opinions of his Marines, Staff NCOs and NCOs—and high expectations from them.
“The Commandant [General James T. Conway] did a great thing recently,” he said. “The Marine Corps was the first service to nominate staff non-commissioned officers to the congressional fellowship program. No other service has put an enlisted service member up for the fellows program.”
The program assigns some of the country’s best and brightest service men and women (up until now, officers only) to serve on the staffs of U. S. Senators and Representatives.
“We had eighty-some nominations,” he said. “Eighty per cent of those Staff NCOs had college degrees.”
The Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps is very proud of the two senior enlisted Marines selected for the program; his pride and enthusiasm for the enlisted leadership of the whole Corps was evident.
He first experienced the Marine Corps’ staff non-commissioned officer leadership as a student and athlete at South Side High School in Memphis, Tennessee. “Gunnery Sergeant Bill Adams always had a story to tell,” said Kent about his recruiter. “He walked around talking to everybody. He was a very impressive guy.”
It was the gunny’s “hip-pocket” stories that first got Carlton Kent to consider the Marine Corps. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in November1975.
Boot camp was also Kent’s first opportunity to shine as a leader. He was a squad leader in his Parris Island recruit platoon. Recruits don’t get a squad leader’s job by just standing around doing enough to get by—they are selected by drill instructors for their leadership potential revealed by the high intensity demands and stresses of recruit training. The next time he was in a recruit training regiment (in San Diego) as a staff sergeant drill instructor, he was meritoriously promoted to gunnery sergeant.
However, at end of his first enlistment, Kent, then in Hawaii, was considering whether to stay in the Marines or to get out and go to college. “A gunnery sergeant knew I was thinking of getting out,” said Kent. “He said, ‘Let me tell you some of your options. You can go and do other great things in the Marine Corps.’
“He also told me that the grass is not always greener on the other side—and it’s not,” said Kent. “From that day on I knew my place was in the Marine Corps because there’s nothing like the Marine Corps family—the common bond we all have.
“The Staff NCOs and NCOs have to be positive examples. Their Marines are going to listen to them,” said Kent about the role of the enlisted leaders. “They have to talk to their young Marines.”
He sees the work of the enlisted leaders as being key to the Corps’ re-enlistment rate. “We have a combat-hardened Staff NCO and NCO corps. When they talk to their Marines and tell them their options we have Marines re-enlisting at a high rate,” said Kent.
“The majority who re-enlist want to stay in the operating forces. We have to make sure we give them a break, however, and not constantly have them in a deployment cycle. They have to be well-rounded in the Marine Corps.”
Asked for an example of the success of the Corps’ retention program, Kent talked about 2/5.
“Second Battalion, Fifth Marines [5th Marine Regiment] was getting ready to re-deploy,” said Kent. “Two hundred Marines volunteered to extend past their EAS [expiration date of active service] and go back to Iraq with their unit and fight. That’s one of many positive examples of the outlook that the Marine Corps has today.”
However, Sergeant Major Kent sees the need to look past Iraq. “We’ve been focused on Iraq. That was our initial focus—to get over there and kick some butt; however, we have lost some of our corps competencies; for example, jungle training and amphibious operations. We use our Navy brothers and sisters to get us there—and they fight with us, but the average young Marine has not even been on a ship. We haven’t had Marines going to Bridgeport [California--for cold weather training] like we used to do. We need to do combined arms exercises at 29 Palms. We haven’t done those in several years. We need to get back our corps competencies. That’s what the Commandant is doing and Marines are excited about it.”
Sergeant Major Kent is proud of what his Marines have accomplished in Iraq, but shares the Commandant’s concept of focusing greater effort in Afghanistan.
“All those places [Ramadi, Al Anbar, and Fallujah] used to be [scenes of] bloody, bloody battles. They are very good right now. And now the Iraqi people want to take back control of their country.
“The Marines have done a great job of crushing the insurgency,” said Kent.
“The Commandant said we need to focus more on Afghanistan,” said the Sergeant Major. If you talk to the average Marine in Iraq they will tell you they are bored. They say, ‘We don’t have any bad guys to kill.’
“We have Marines in Afghanistan and it’s very austere. There’s nothing out there. We don’t need a big PX, mess halls, Burger Kings and Popeyes,” said Kent. “We are an expeditionary force. The Marines are taking it to the enemy over in Afghanistan.
“We [Sergeant Major Kent and Commandant General Conway] went to visit these Marines [in Afghanistan]. The Commandant asked, ‘What do you need?’ They just smiled. They were ankle deep in dust, they were sleeping on MRE boxes and they said ‘Nothing, sir. We’re just happy because we can go and engage the enemy all the time.’ And that’s the kind of attitude our Marines have, said Kent. “That’s why the Commandant says ‘It’s our type of fight’—it really is.”
Are Marines up to the highly technical equipment that is being fielded? “We are constantly training; we trust the commanders [to get the training done]. We have new equipment throughout the Marine Corps,” he said.
The quality of recruits is fine according to the Sergeant Major. “Our recruiters go after high standards They don’t go after sub-standard recruits. We don’t have any issues with the education level of people coming in. The Commandant and I just have to tell the Marine Corps’ story.”
When asked to describe the value of the Marine Corps’ martial arts program, the Sergeant Major quickly made the point that it is not just all about hand-to-hand combat.
“It actually works because these Marines have used these techniques in combat. It’s not just the physical part—it’s where we teach important corps values: honor, courage and commitment. But yes, it does work; Marines have proven that it works. It builds a lot of confidence in Marines.”
How does some of the battles fought in Iraq stack up against such icons of Marine Corps history as Belleau Woods, Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir and Hue City?
“I think Fallujah is up there,” said the Sergeant Major. “I witnessed what those Marines were doing there. It was heroic.
“Marines don’t want to let down the Marines who came before them. They are going to continue to live up to the legacy. They fight for their country and their fellow Marines. And they take pride in that.”
The Sergeant Major believes that the Corps’ young heroes are getting their share of recognition. As the sergeant major of the Marine Forces at Central Command he was on the board that reviewed combat citations for Marines. “I can tell you that the Marine Corps has the most fair [awards approval] process of any of the services.
“The first thing that should go through a Marine’s mind when he sees someone wearing an award is, ‘That Marine earned it.’ More young Marines are getting combat V’s [a device affixed to a medal’s ribbon denoting valor] because they are the ones out there hooking and jabbing.
“Corporal Jason Dunham is the only Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor,” said the Sergeant Major. “But I could go down a list: Navy Crosses, Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, Navy Commendation and Navy Achievement medals with Combat V’s, Purple Hearts . . .
“One example of [valorous conduct] is a corporal that died protecting his fellow Marines,” said Sergeant Major Kent. “His convoy was hit by an IED [improvised explosive device] and he was trapped—he was burning. When Marines tried to rescue him he yelled, ‘You all get away from the vehicle! It’s going to explode!’ He didn’t survive, but he was thinking of his Marines, not himself. His comrades continued to try to get him out, to no avail.”
He told another story of a brave lance corporal who died laying down a base of fire while urging his fellow Marines to evacuate a building in Fallujah. Sergeant Major Kent’s voice resonates with pride as he tells his stories about individual Marines.
How are their families holding up?
“One of the things that the Commandant has done is to improve the Family Readiness Program by hiring Family Readiness Officers instead of relying on volunteers from military spouses. It’s a great program that the Commandant kicked off to assist our families.”
What can the Marine Corps League do to help?
“The Marine Corps League is one of our biggest fans, they really are. We love them,” said Kent. “They are part of our legacy.
“They can assist by continuing to tell the Marine Corps story. That would be a great thing that would attract a lot of people as far as recruiting.
“They are involved with the Marine-for-Life program—helping Marines find employment. They are a great network and they assist our Corps with numerous things like the Toys-For-Tots program. They are truly part of the ‘Once a Marine, Always a Marine’ tradition. Their [former Marines’] legacy will be continued by the great Marines we have in our Corps today.”
Sergeant Major Kent concluded on a personal note, “It’s an honor for me to serve as Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps.”

“Happy Obama Day!”

By Douglas Graves © 2009


“Happy Obama Day!” shouted Bethlehem Township’s Brenda M. Brown to some friends as they entered the Bethlehem Room at the Comfort Suites on 3rd Street.
The Bethlehem Chapter of the National Association of Colored People’s (NAACP) post-inauguration party in honor of President Barack Obama’s meteoric ascension to the office of President of the United States was like a close family getting together with a few community friends. Pride and maybe some surprise mixed with elation defined the mood of the group.
Kids were invited, some as young as three or four. Several teenagers were in the crowd of about 55 people. “We kept it non-alcoholic because we wanted to include children so they could understand the meaning of today,” said Cordelia Miller, the First Vice President of the Bethlehem NAACP. “This is totally new beginning for this country. We, as a black community, are celebrating with the world today.”
Seven-year old Nyah Best, a second grader at Thomas Jefferson Elementary, had her own take on things. “It’s Barack Obama’s birthday,” she said, prompting some help from her mother, Shakima Dowdell. After a consultation with her mom, Nyah added, “He held his hand up and they told him to say something and then he was the president.”
She was perfectly clear about what she wants to be when she grows up: “I want to be a nurse, like my aunt.”
Her sister, Yasmin Dowdell, a ninth grader at Liberty High School, when asked how she felt about the inauguration said, “I’m very happy and surprised be born into a time when history is being made. It was almost as if Martin Luther King was on TV speaking this afternoon.”
Laura Lawrence, the treasurer of the Bethlehem NAACP, was more emphatic. “This is the best day that this country ever had,” she said. “We are making a sea-change: this the first day of our maturity. He said every thing I wanted him to say—including to ‘nurture your children.’”
As the room filled up, the band, On Fire, played the Bill Wither’s song It’s a Lovely Day while adding the refrain, “Obama, Obama, Obama . . .” The room started to warm up. Then a man, an impromptu cheer leader, shouted “Give me an O! Give me a B!” Soon the crowd was shouting along and getting excited while on a television in the background played footage of the new president and his family.
“Obama came from a varied background that qualified him for president,” said Esther Lee, president of the Bethlehem NAACP. “Dr. Martin Luther King led the way so that anyone coming behind can succeed.” Lee gave credit to higher powers. “God in his divine providence determines what we will or won’t do.”
Lee also gave credit to Obama’s mother and grandparents: “His mother prepared him for the task; his grandparents raised him.”
Lee is a former board member of the Bethlehem Area School District and former president of the Parent-Teacher’s Association.
Lieutenant Colonel Jerome Hatfield of the New Jersey State Police, wearing civilian clothes, celebrated Obama’s inauguration with family. The big former Grenadier is a 1977 graduate of Liberty High School. When asked what Obama's inauguration means to him, he said, "It represents an opportunity for change. In looking at the National Mall during the inauguration, it truly represented the melting pot of America. This occasion instills the hope and faith necessary to move this country forward. Hopefully, other countries will be inspired at this administration's outward ability to recognize and respect differences amongst people. I hope that the results would lend itself to greater peace in our world.”
The officers and matrons of the association had come early to fill up long tables with sandwiches, snacks, and cold drinks for the celebratory, yet reflective crowd.
Lincoln Elementary School principal Benita Draper-Terry arrived to join the festivities. “I’m here to celebrate the election of President Obama,” she said. “I was telling my students today that it was just 45 years ago that Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial.
“Another part of his dream has been realized today,” said Draper-Terry. “I think the whole campaign has been remarkable. It’s one country—we have to work together. As Barack Obama has said, it's not about him, it's about the people coming together to make this a better nation."