Posted on 12/02/2005 5:57:53 AM PST by Moonraker
On December 7, future U.S. President George H.W. Bush was a 17-year-old student and captain of the baseball team at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. "I remember it well," he says. "We had just left church and started to walk across campus when someone shouted out, 'Pearl Harbor's been bombed.'"
On his 18th birthday, the following June, Bush signed up to become a Naval aviator. He completed flight school and earned his commission a few days before his 19th birthday making him the youngest aviator in the Navy at that time.
(Excerpt) Read more at worlddefensereview.com ...
Another relatively minor,but revealing,tidbit of info about what is rightly called "The Greatest Generation". Kerry,for one,wasn't nearly as easily embarrassed as was your Dad.
Sunday, December 7, 1941, was 'Bloody Sunday' for my dad who was a salesman in Shreveport, Louisiana at the time. He went on to serve in Euprope.
Sunday, December 7, 2003, was 'Bloody Sunday' for my son who was a soldier with the 101st in Mosul. An IED had killed his best friend just moments after they had parted on separate assignments. Later he helped wash the blood out of the Humvee and present the eulogy at the memorial service.
Both my father and my son have their on December 7ths to mark their lives and I sit here as a 'tweener'of sorts wondering at it all. My dad and my son are far better men than me.
There are things,IMO,that are more easily excused when one is 19 and single than when one is 40,married,with children.
I think it's widely believed that JFK was "gettin' it on" with Marilyn Monroe and Judith Exner while at the WH.If true,I think this goes beyond "youthful indiscrtions".
But,if true,JFK would *still* (IMO) be head and shoulders above the likes of Kerry,fitness-for-the-Presidency-wise.
I was around -- in Massachusetts. I was 10 and my family was visiting another family. When the news came over the radio, someone said ---"Where's Pearl Harbor"?. Julie, was the daughter of the family we were with, and when we were outside with some friends, she started to cry and wail, and carry on because she had relatives in California. My thoughts were that she'd do anything, as usual, to get attention. (nasty me)
Are you certain of that? After all,you *did* learn from your Dad.And from whom did your son learn?
My Dad was in the Army at the time, and most likely would have taken part in an invasion of Japan had we not dropped the bomb and forced their surrender. It is very possible that I am here today because of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
My dad had his orders cut to proceed to the Pacific theater . . . that's bad enough . . . but my father in law had HIS orders cut for the invasion of mainland Japan! He was Signal Corps at that time (later Army Air Corps and Air Force . . . retired as a bird colonel) and had already been thoroughly shot at on Iwo and Saipan, had his jeep blown out from under him on Iwo without so much as a scratch sustained. But I think his luck would have run out in a mainland invasion . . .
...until it ran up against the British Navy in the Falkland Islands.
Was your father around when the Phoenix met her doom? Torpedoed by a British submarine with the loss of hundreds of lives in icy waters. Brrrr!
7:00 AM Pearl - 12:00 PM Boston
As are millions of other Americans,Japanese and probably other nationalities as well.
Me, too. My Dad was in Navy language school learning Japanese when the war ended. He ended up using what he learned to become a missionary to Japan in the post-war years (where he met my Mom).
My dad and my son are far better men than me.
Oh, I have no doubt that Jack and Bobby were involved with her. I also have a humorous idea that when they ended their affairs with her, that they were attempting to pass her off to Teddy, and that Marilyn took her own life as a more acceptable, sociable way of getting out of dating him. :)
One of my father's cousins, John Finn, was at Kanoehoe on the other side of Oahu when the attack happened and he wrote extensively about it after the war.
He also earned the Medal of Honor for his efforts defending our country.
bump
And to think that the Uncle after whom I was named is buried about 50 feet from where Joseph and Rose Kennedy are buried in Brookline,MA.I was there just about a month ago.
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