By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Jerry Beau is a national treasure, not only for his service to his country but also for his service to his fellow Marines and their families.
Beau, 89, served 24 years in the Marine Corps and has spent the last 52 years as the unpaid historian of the Marine Raiders Association, meticulously collecting service records and other information on 7,600 men who served with the elite Marine Raiders during World War II.
"We only have about 200 of the original Raiders left," he said in a recent interview.
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| Family photo |
| Marine 1st Lt. Jerome Beau, North China, 1946 |
Beau has filled 20 file drawers with muster rolls, discharge papers, obituaries and other documents on his fellow Raiders. His files are a gold mine of information for historians, the Raiders and their families.
A few years back, he sent Mrs. Dorothy Lockhart of Peoria, Ill., the war records of her late husband Jess, a Raider doctor in the South Pacific.
"Oh, my, he did a wonderful job," she said of Beau. "On a legal-sized piece of paper, the full front page and half of the back page, he had every place Jess was sent while he was in the Marines, every ship he was on and every landing he made. I was thrilled to death with what he did."
Beau began his own Marine career back in 1940, fresh out of Fond du Lac, Wis.
"They gave me a blanket and a railroad ticket and sent me to Parris Island, South Carolina," he said.
He volunteered when the Raiders were formed in 1942 to operate behind Japanese lines and conduct guerilla-type operations.
"We were special people, you know what I mean?" he said.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Aug. 14 doesn't have the ring of Dec. 7 (Pearl Harbor) or June 6 (D-Day) in the annals of World War II history, but on that summer day in 1945 Japan surrendered to the United States and its allies, ending the deadliest conflict in human history.
It's a date etched in the memories of three centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show.
"We kept the radio on," Winifred Jeeves, 100, said in a recent interview. "We didn't have television in those days. When the word came through, we were whooping it up and being so happy and relieved. You never knew what was going to happen until then."
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| Family photo |
| Win Jeeves and family, circa 1941 |
Three and a half years earlier, Win, her husband, their 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter had been on the last ship out of Manila before the Japanese invaded the Philippine capital in December of 1941.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
WASHINGTON - Patricia Angus was a senior at Rosary High School in San Diego and Chuck Scharf was a sophomore at San Diego State College when they first met through Chuck’s younger sister in 1952.
"He was my steady from the very beginning, which my mother was against because she thought I should be meeting other men,” Patricia said in an interview. “But I said, 'No, Mother, this is the young man I want to date.'"
Chuck and Patricia were married two years later, in 1954; he was 21 and she was 19.
"He was a sweetheart," she said, "handsome, loving, caring, just perfect."
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| Family photos |
| Chuck and Patricia Scharf, the early '60s |
Fast forward to 1965. Chuck was an Air Force fighter pilot about to take off for Vietnam. Patricia was there to see him off, the pregnant wife of another pilot alongside her.
"He looked over at me, and I'm waving my scarf, and he salutes me," Patricia said. "And Donna Jewel turned and said, 'We're never going to see them again,' and I said, 'Yes, we are.' Well, guess what?"
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By Scott Foster, NBC News Pentagon Producer
At the Pentagon this week, officials held a ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of President Truman's then controversial executive order to integrate the U.S. armed forces.
The 93-year-old Truman speech writer and long time West Virginia politician Ken Hechler was on hand and recalled just how courageous that order was - given the prevailing attitude in the late 1940's held by many senior officers as well as a majority of Americans that Blacks shouldn't be treated as equals.
One historian described Truman's executive orders 9980 and 9981 of July 26,1948 as "revolutionary and politically reckless."
Hechler, who proudly displayed his blue and gold West Virginia mountaineer tie, declared, "Harry Truman, although he was brought up as a racist, became such a great champion of civil rights."
Missouri native Harry Truman had grandparents who owned slaves and as historian Michael Gardner describes, "was conditioned to be a racist."
Despite that background, Hechler noted his bosses' mantra, borrowed from Thomas Jefferson: "equal rights for all, special privileges for none."
The assembled audience of Pentagon senior officials, members of the fabled Tuskegee Airmen, several from the Montford Point Marines, and troops currently serving in the military listened intently to the words from one of the few remaining members of Truman's administration.
Even though true racial integration of the military proved to be a difficult and painful process for many African-Americans years after his order, Truman is credited with taking that first critical step in achieving equality for all in the armed services. It wasn't until 1954 when the last all African-American unit integrated.
Hechler recalled how as commander-in-chief Truman fought that pervasive racism in the senior ranks and took his generals to task for not initially falling in line with his civil rights initiative.
He noted one instance when five star Army General Omar Bradley, the so-called "GI's general" given his popularity amongst the rank and file, remarked that the Army "was no place for social experiments."
Truman's reaction to the Army Chief of Staff, Hechler recalled, was blunt.
"Believe me, he was called onto the carpet - Harry Truman talked to him in good old Missouri english and Omar Bradley changed his position pretty quickly," he said.
With Gallup polls in 1948 finding that 82 percent of Americans disagreed with his civil rights program, President Truman faced an uphill battle integrating the military. Coming just 100 days before the national election, the order sparked a revolt amongst Southern Democrats led by Dixicrat Strom Thurmond. Hechler noted that during this time Truman penned a diary entry showing his resolve, writing "how far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?"
Although Truman's order was merely a first step along a long road to racial equality in the U.S. military, Hechler's first-hand account reveals Truman in many respects was a decisive leader who sought meaningful improvement in race relations.
Hechler, who interestingly was the only member of Congress to march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma in 1965, summed it up, saying "it takes forthrightness for people in positions of leadership and that was Harry Truman's moral compass - his moral compass showed up in those two fantastic executive orders."
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
Mary Hoffman, 101, still remembers coming to America from Russia in 1912, arriving on a ship the same week the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic.
She's one of three centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show who talked about immigrating to this country many years ago.
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| Family photo |
| Mary Hoffman arrives in America, 1912 |
"I was 5 years old," Mary said in a recent interview. "They knew I could sing good, and at 5 o'clock in the morning they would go through the boat with lunches and stuff like that, and they would throw me a bun or something to eat, you know, something good."
In return, Mary and her grandfather sang religious songs.
"I know I sang a lot, because whenever they wanted us to sing for 'em, we would sing," she said. "At that time, you was glad when you had something to eat, and we were awful poor, and if somebody fed you something, you appreciated it."
Mary, her parents and her grandfather settled in Michigan, but the rest of her family never made it out of Russia.
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By Scott Foster, NBC News Pentagon Producer
As security continues to improve in Iraq and the U.S. plots the eventual drawdown of American combat troops, a former top military commander said Tuesday that the U.S. faces the "new challenge" of restoring neglected diplomatic relations with allies in the Persian Gulf.
Retired Naval commander Admiral William "Fox" Fallon says the U.S. now must "rebuild relationships that have been pushed aside during the war effort."
That pointed critique of American foreign policy over the course of the Iraq war comes from the former top commander of the U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose resignation earlier this year sparked a firestorm over a perceived schism in the Bush administration's Iran policy.
Fallon added that as the current $3 billion a week being spent in Iraq winds down, the U.S.should redirect some of that money to other initiatives in the region.
Speaking to an audience of national security analysts from various think-tanks in Washington, Fallon acknowledged that while many American allies in the Persian Gulf will continue to look to the United States for leadership, we should focus on greater security cooperation amongst regional partners.
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By John Rutherford, NBC News Producer
WASHINGTON – Marine Sgt. Michael Strank received his citizenship papers Tuesday, 63 years after he helped raise the American flag over Mount Suribachi and was later killed in the battle of Iwo Jima.
His certificate of citizenship was presented to his sister at a brief ceremony in the shadows of the Iwo Jima Memorial overlooking the nation's capital.
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| USCIS |
| Sgt. Michael Strank, USMC. |
"I am just so honored and proud to be here today to accept this citizenship in honor of my brother," Mary Pero, 75, of Pittsburgh, said.
Strank, four other Marines and a Navy corpsman are depicted on the huge bronze memorial hoisting the flag over the volcanic island on Feb. 23, 1945.
"He wouldn't have wanted the fame," Pero said after the ceremony. "He was there, and he did his job."
Michael Strank's journey to Iwo Jima began in 1919 in Jarabenia, Czechoslovakia, where he was born. He came to America at the age of 3 and grew up playing baseball and the French horn in western Pennsylvania.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News, Washington
WASHINGTON – Ruth Huzzard, 104, likes to tell the story of how she came to the rescue of a familiar face while going to the store in Princeton, N.J., in the late 1940s.
"As I came along, I said, 'Boy, there's a man down in a manhole,' and I went closer and I discovered it was [Albert] Einstein," she said in a recent interview. "He was walking along the street, and he stepped into this manhole. I helped him out, brushed him off, and took him back to his home."
Huzzard, who had never met the famous scientist before, said Einstein was shaken but not hurt in the mishap.
"No wonder he fell in the hole," she quipped. "He always had his head in the clouds."
Huzzard is one of several centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show who've had encounters with famous people over the past century.
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By Mark Potter, NBC News Correspondent
ISLAMORADA, Fla. – At sunrise, a daily ritual begins at charter boat docks throughout the Florida Keys.
In the fresh morning breeze, captains prepare their big fishing boats for another day in the Gulf Stream. Mates rig the rods, store the bait and fill the coolers with ice. Paying clients then step aboard and settle in for an exciting, but increasingly expensive, day on the water chasing billfish, mahi mahi, kingfish, snapper and other species.
Charter fishing is an integral and historic part of South Florida and other coastal areas around the United States. Here in the Keys, the lore of the sport features colorful and famous anglers, among them novelists Ernest Hemingway and Zane Grey.
Offshore angling is also important to the region’s economy, luring sportsmen and tourists from around the world. Not only do they charter the big fishing boats, they also book rooms in local motels, dine in the restaurants and spend money in clothing and tackle shops.
The problem, though, is that those visitors have begun to thin out, partly because of their own economic troubles these days, but also due to an increase in charter prices largely blamed on soaring fuel costs.
"I'm actually worried, fearful that this could literally lead to the extinction, so to speak, of the charter industry as we know it," said Richard Stanczyk, the owner-operator of Bud and Mary's Marina in Islamorada. "I mean like the dinosaurs, it might just become non-existent."
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By Courtney Kube, NBC News Pentagon producer
WASHINGTON – The Navy uniform is going retro.
About 100 U.S. sailors around the world are testing out the Navy's new service dress khaki uniform.
The look isn't really new though – it is actually a throwback to the old World War II-style uniform which was worn through the Vietnam era – and includes a black tie worn with a khaki coat that has large black shoulder boards.
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| U.S. Navy/ Chad J. McNeeley |
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Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sports the "new" Navy look at a press conference at the Pentagon on July 2. |
The dress khakis, which are worn for events ranging from business meetings and promotion ceremonies to meetings at the White House and testimony on Capitol Hill, can be worn year round.
While the new uniform will add to the larger collections of uniforms rather than replacing one, Navy officers and Chiefs will ultimately be allowed to wear it in place of three other existing uniforms – the less formal service khakis, the formal dress blues, and the formal whites.
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