If you can find it Boyington's own book entitled Baa Baa Blacksheep) read it. It is actually a well told story of his life, successes and failures and ultimate self-reconciliation.
Posted on 02/10/2006 1:57:56 PM PST by llevrok
We don't need to honor any more rich white males
So says one member of the University of Washington Student Senate.
Gregory Pappy Boyington...graduate of the Univeristy of Washington (went to High School in Tacoma), winner of the medal of honor, shot down 28 enemy aircraft, was a prisoner of war for 20 months, and apparently does not - according to the student senate - deserve a memorial on campus. Apparently we are told that he "is not the type of person we want to honor" and some even went so far as to liken his duty in WW2 to murder. One of the biggest antagonists of the proposal was apparently the leader of the student Democratic Party. How sad.
This issue is particularly interesting to me because I personally knew Pappy Boyington, not so much as a friend, but as a regular visitor to the Chino Air Museum and Air Show. I met him on numerous occassions and thoroughly enjoyed his willingness to tell me stories about his experiences - and I must say it was HEAVEN to this young man who'd rather feel his way around a restored Corsair than hang out at the mall with his contemporaries.
Pappy was famous for once saying: "Just name a hero and I'll prove he's a bum." And he knew this from personal experience. Pappy's childhood wasn't easy and he and his mother had to work VERY hard to get him through school - he was no rich boy and neither did he live off government grants...personally I wonder if those students who "shot this memorial down" could remotely say the same? And he was a real human being who did not hide his faults, particularly with alcohol and marital problems. Like all heros, no one is a "super" hero. While Pappy could work hard, he could "play" hard too and landed himself in trouble from time to time. Here is a more detailed story...from the University of Washington oddly enough.
Also, clearly, the student who made the racist statement never met him because I will tell you that you could not mistake the Sioux in him. And while he did write a best-selling book (best selling authors are a dime a dozen), he was never really a rich man...rather he spent most of his last days wandering through Air Shows reliving the glory days, never in any grand luxury that I saw. He seemed a very nice man, who despite his personal problems did some extraordinary things to help defend freedom and defeat tyranny and injustice.
But, have our Washington youth revised history so much as this? To compare Boyington (or for that matter any of our WW2 vets) to murderers? What are these kids being taught today? They don't deserve those 20 months Pappy spent being tortured and beaten in a Japanese prison camp...they don't deserve any of what our grandfathers and grandmothers sacrificed to free Europe and the Pacific. Is it perhaps because those precious people are soon to be gone that we feel free to engage in leftist amnesia? I'm angry about this...how dare these snot nose, hemp-wearing, pot smoking, drum beating, dreadlock wearing, "gee when is the financial aid check going to arrive", brat kids diss Pappy Boyington?
Maybe REAL rich white guys ought to be offended (like Bill Gates and Paul Allen) and stop donating money to the UW and then the Student Senators will find they don't have the time to be in the student senate because they need to get themselves real jobs.
If any WW2 vets read this blog, please accept my apology on behalf of the University of Washington - and particularly thier ignorant student senate. We remember what you all have done. My kids will remember too.
UW-Ithaca on Puget Sound.
surplus population should be recycled for methane to power model corsairs
Were it not for people like Boyington, they would be forced to honor rich white nazis, or get sent off to labor camps.
bump for WW II
Those are the men who should be honored.
Recall, Seattle has a statue of Lenin in one of their more "hip" neighborhoods, Freemont.
Lincoln High Schools most famous graduate! Michael Medved was covering this yesterday too. Just another reason to not send my boys up I-5 to UW. Turns my stomache
With all the remakes of 70s TV shows that Hollywood has been putting out lately, it would be nice to see them do a big screen version of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (Just as long as they don't have Peter Frampton in it)
If you can find it Boyington's own book entitled Baa Baa Blacksheep) read it. It is actually a well told story of his life, successes and failures and ultimate self-reconciliation.
what a bunch of idiots!
If I remember correctly, Boyington was "Native American", in whole or in part. He deserves to be highly honored as do all vets of all America's conflicts.
Patty Murray voters ...
Reposted, as I don't know what happened the first time... *shrug
No doubt they would prefer to honor Ward Churchill, Calypso Louie, Mama Sheehan and assorted homosexual "acivists."
University of Washington. Sounds like a bunch of pot smoking bums that should get a life. It's just to damned bad that they can't be drafted. I guess that is a bad idea because real men would not associate with them.
And these idiots are going to school with my tax money and more than likely will never pay back the loan. They should be denied any federal money if in fact they said WW II was the US murdering Nazi and followers of the Japanese sun god. I guess they believe like the President of Iran that there was no death camps in Europe and in the far East.
Freaking communist wastes of flesh. Their no better than the Islamaniacs.
Yet more proof that leftists are only comfortable viewing US troops as either victims or villains, but never heroes.
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