Tag: family history

Today is Four Chaplains Day

On February 3rd, 1943, a small convoy named SG-19 was making its way across the Atlantic to Greenland from New York.  It consisted of the United States Army Transport Dorchester and two smaller merchant vessels, the SS Lutz and the SS Biscaya, escorted by three Coast Guard cutters: Tampa, Escanaba and Comanche.  Somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland at about 12:55 AM that morning, a German submarine torpedoed the Dorchester, knocking out her power as well as opening up her hull to the sea.  Below decks were hundreds of young American servicemen, many of them on their first ocean voyage.  They had been instructed to leave their life preservers on in case of attack, but the heat of the ship’s boilers and engines led many of them to take the jackets off.  And with the loss of power they were all suddenly in the dark.

Among the personnel on board were four Army Chaplains, all First Lieutenants: George Fox (a Methodist);  Alexander Goode (Reform-Rabbi); Clark Poling (Dutch Reformed);  and John Washington (a Roman Catholic priest).  The four had become fast friends at the Army Chaplains School on the Harvard University campus, right here in Cambridge.

Continue reading “Today is Four Chaplains Day”

My family and the Kennedys

Wow.  Fifty years.

JFK in state at WH
President Kennedy’s body lies in state in the East Room of the White House on November 23rd, 1963. His honor guard in this photo includes one member of each of the five armed services. His coffin rests on the same bier that held President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin in 1865.

It’s hard to describe the relationship I have had with a President who died before I was born, or the way that relationship was shaped even as I grew up in Alabama.  But there was, and still is, a relationship.  It led me to make  speeches in high school that evoked Kennedy’s own speeches on public service.  It led me to defend JFK vigorously even when I was still a dumb young Reagan Republican.  And it led me to make a point of visiting his grave at Arlington when I finally had the opportunity on a class trip.  Where I wept.

Continue reading “My family and the Kennedys”

Tacloban, Samar Island, and two very different storms

After more than a week, many survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines are still struggling to get basics like food, water and shelter.  And places like Samar, Leyte, and Tacloban are now getting mentioned in the news all over the world.  Samar and Leyte seem to have been hit the worst from the typhoon.

I know these place names.  Not because I have ever been there (I haven’t), but because of their famous place in history – specifically, in the fall of 1944, when the Allied invasion of the Japanese-occupied Philippines led to what was the largest naval battle in all of World War Two, and possibly the largest in recorded human history.

Continue reading “Tacloban, Samar Island, and two very different storms”

Trip to Newport, RI

My Uncle Paul and Aunt Pauline had their 50th Anniversary party this past weekend at the same place where they were married all those years ago.  The name of the venue has changed, but the place is still there: OceanCliff.

It was the first time that I had been to Newport since high school, I think.  And Kelly had not been there herself in at least a dozen years.  So we both managed to get the day off in advance so we could go.

Continue reading “Trip to Newport, RI”