History - less with us

Frank Avruch, who played Bozo the Clown from 1959 to 1970, has died.

The final surviving Medal of Honor awarded US Marine from the Pacific Campaign of World War II. CWO4 Hershel "Woody" Williams, USMCR Retired. Semper Fidelis Gunner.

According to Wikipedia, three US Army soldiers who were awarded the MOH in the Pacific are still alive.

Sadly we are losing these treasures far too quickly.

What good is answering items in the Morning Report thread when all the commenters have moved on?

First thing I read today is Chuckie Manson is dead again? Can't be sure until the body is burned. In the sun.

In response, cranky old JJ ranted: "About the most I can say is that "peace, love and understanding" is not the legacy of the 60s and the Baby Boom generation. That myth has been exploded…"

<mini-rant ON>
Manson is what the 60s were about! Woodstock was an illusion! Altamont is the truth! Donovan was secretly a terrorist. Hippies = Antifa!

Whhhuut? Yeah, let's boil it all down to one thing so we can dismiss it all. Works for the Left.

My personal takeaway from the 60s was not so myopic or monodimensional. Neither typified by the violence nor the pretensions to utopian ideals, it was … complicated. So much awful, so much beautiful. However, by every measure, thems wuz certainly interesting times. Consciousness razors.
<mini-rant OFF>

Stay dead, this time, Chuck.

Donald (Don) Pleines Shaub was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1923. … He served in the U. S. Army in World War II in the European Theater. On December 24, 1944, Don was serving with the 66th Infantry Division and while being transported from Southampton, UK to Cherbourg, France survived the torpedoing of his transport ship, the SS Leopoldville, by jumping onto the deck of the HMS Brilliant, which had come to the aid of his sinking ship. That night 763 other soldiers on board lost their lives.… As recently as October of this year, he was still using the riding mower on the lawn and helping his daughter move into the home he and Pat vacated this summer to move into Green Country Village in Bartlesville.…

…Vee skyrocketed to top of the pop charts in the early 1960s, scoring five gold records and 38 chart hits. His most memorable songs included “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “Devil or Angel,” “Rubber Ball,” “More Than I Can Say” and “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.”…

Shimon Peres, the 93-year-old former president and prime minister of Israel, died in his sleep early Wednesday morning surrounded by family members… Over a seven-decade career, the elder statesman of Israeli politics and one of the country’s most admired symbols has held virtually every senior political office, including two stints as prime minister and extended terms as foreign, defense and finance minister. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in reaching an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.…

“Phyllis Schlafly spent an astounding 70 years in public service of her fellow Americans,” said the Eagle Forum in a statement. “Her focus from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life.

… She had a pie smashed into her face and pig’s blood thrown on her, and feminist Betty Friedan once told Schlafly: “I’d like to burn you at the stake.” She was chastised in a 1970s “Doonesbury” a framed copy of which hung on her office wall.

“What I am defending is the real rights of women,” Schlafly said at the time. “A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.”

Thirty-five states ratified the (Equal Rights) amendment, three short of the necessary 38. Schlafly said amendment supporters couldn’t prove it was needed.

“They were never able to show women would get any benefit out of it,” she told the Associated Press in 2007. “It (the U.S. Constitution) is already sex-neutral. Women already have all the rights that men have.”

…Sitting about half a mile from Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed, I got a whirlwind course in Liberal History 101.…

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — One of the two remaining Doolittle Raiders died Wednesday morning in Missoula. David Thatcher was 94. …corporal during the 1942 mission and was an engineer/gunner in the back end of a B-25 bomber and a member of Flight Crew No. 7.… There is now just one surviving Doolittle Raider — Lt. Col. Richard Cole — of the 80…

Alan Young, the amiable comedic actor who became a TV icon in the early 1960s starring opposite a talking horse named Mister Ed, died Thursday. He was 96. …later career included doing the voices for Scrooge McDuck and other cartoon characters…

The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest famous for his anti-war and anti-capitalism protests, died Saturday in New York at the age of 94.… sprang into the spotlight in 1968 when he and several other activists seized 600 draft cards of troops about to be deployed in Vietnam and burned the files in rubbish bins with homemade napalm.…

Jesse M Baltazar, a survivor of the notorious Bataan Death March during World War II, has died from cancer aged 95.

The Filipino native joined the US military after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and was wounded in the leg by Japanese bombing during the three-month Battle of Bataan in March of 1942.…

Sir Nicholas Winton, who has died at the age of 106, is credited with rescuing 669 children - mostly Jewish - from the impending Nazi holocaust in 1939. …it is poignant that he died on the anniversary in July 1939 of the train carrying the largest number of children - 241 - to leave Prague. … Winton kept quiet about his exploits for 50 years, not even telling his wife, and it was not until 1988 that the true story of his selflessness in the face of evil came to light, bringing plaudits, honours and, best of all, reunions with those children who, without him, would undoubtedly have been destined for the gas chamber. …

Japan's last ninja: Engineer, 63, who can hear a needle drop in the next room and kill from 20 paces is last in 500-year line of Japanese assassins
• Jinichi Kawakami is 21st head of the Ban clan, a dynasty of secret ninjas
• He began training in ancient art of ninjutsu aged six under Buddhist master
• For concentration, he would stare into a candle until he was 'inside' flame
• For hearing he would practice listening to needle dropping on wood floor
• Says he will let the art die with him because ninjas 'don't fit with modern day'
• 'We can't try out murder or poisons. Even if we can learn, we can't try it out'