Dorothy Johnston was born on January 18, 1915 and will be celebrating her 100th birthday next year. She attended and graduated Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, an all women’s college founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist female seminary by Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles. During the onset of WWII, Dorothy along with many of her classmates signed up after chapel talks about the military. Her assignment as Private First Class was with a transfer with the U.S……
Margaret Irene (Parks) Hill was born on October 21, 1921 in Kirkland, Washington and was the middle child of seven. Her mother (Susie Parks) was a Concert Violinist. Her Father (Garnet Parks) started up newspapers in small towns so he would work away frequently. He died when she was 8 years old of lead poisoning due to the lead used for the newspaper ink. She was sent to live with her Uncle Jim and Aunt Eva on 50 acres of…..
People in wartime during WWII lived very ‘green’ as almost anything was recycled and used. Nothing was thrown away. Milk bottles, for example, were rinsed out with water to create ‘milk-water’ for use in making batters. I remember my mother doing this in the 1950s! I suppose old habits die hard. Kitchen scraps were used to feed the animals. Wastage was avoided at all costs. In the 1930s and 1940s, Britain was even at it’s healthiest diet wise! Many nutritionists…..
LEO E. PICHLER – AN ALL AMERICAN HERO 101ST AIRBORNE 502ND PIR “I’m going to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” ~ Muhammed Ali Yes, Muhammad floated around the boxing ring, just as Leo Pichler did when fighting and thought to a possible world contender before answering the call to arms during WWII. He enlisted with the 101st Airborne Division, 502nd PIR, 1st Battalion Hq. and became part of the regimental boxing team. Leo was considered a…..
“In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.” ~ Herodotus My 18 year old father, David Clinton Tharp, joined the Army in January 1943 and buried his young 41 year old father, Ibren Tharp in March 1943, just prior to heading off to paratrooper training in Georgia. Grandpa Ibren (see photo inset) died of a heart attack at age 40, leaving 4 younger children who then went to live with his mother, Dad’s Grandmother Amelia (see…..
After a traumatic experience, it is normal to feel frightened, sad, anxious, and disconnected. The word “disconnected” plays a huge part for anyone experiencing a traumatic event, as it removes the individual from all aspects of living a normal life for a period of time. But if the upset doesn’t fade and one feels stuck with a constant sense of danger and painful memories, they may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It can seem as though they will…..
A little history most people will never know with interesting Veterans Statistics off of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall, including those added in 2010. The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 57 years since the first casualty. The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of…..
DUTY * HONOR * COURAGE * COMMITMENT * INTEGRITY * COUNTRY * SERVICE In Remembrance of those who serve past, present and future, WATCH & SHARE A Soldier’s Whisper youtu.be/EJ1H9N-gIU0 Comes A Soldier’s Whisper, remembering the past to protect the future. www.facebook.com/ComesASoldiersWhisper twitter.com/Jennylas
Like my father, who was a country boy from Petersburg, Indiana, Red Skelton was from the neighboring town of Vincennes, Indiana. Red Skelton was drafted in March 1944 and shipped overseas to serve with an Army entertainment unit as a private. He is pictured here entertaining the troops on board ship, destined for Europe in April, 1945. Red would later have a nervous breakdown in Italy, spent three months in a hospital and was discharged in September, 1945. He once…..
“No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not fortell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … Hitler’s fate…..
