Off The Editor’s Desk – 1-8-2020
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Those who passed in 2019
I was reading the St. Paul Pioneer Press of December 29, 2019, which carried a story of those famous and in some cases not so famous people that passed away in 2019.
Included in their list were a few that I could relate to, including John Paul Stevens, 99, on July 16. He served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1975 until 2010.
Harold Brown, 91, was the Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration, on January 4th.
Lyndon LaRouche Jr., 96, the political extremist who ran for president in every election from 1976 to 2004, on February 12.
Peter Mayhew, 74, the towering actor who played Chewbacca in the original “Star Wars” movie on April 30th.
Frank Robinson, 83, the first black manager in Major League Baseball on February 7.
Lee Radziwill, 85, Jackie Kennedy’s sister on February 15.
Tim Conway, 85, Carol Burnett’s sidekick on her television show on May 14.
Rafi Eitan, 92, the legendary Israeli Mossad spy who led the capture of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann on March 23. I just finished reading the book by Bill O’Reilly called “Killing the SS,” which tells the story of Eichmann’s life as a hunted Nazi and his trial and execution.
Lee Iacocca, 94, the auto executive who put out the Ford Mustang and brought Chrysler out of financial ruin, July 2.
Peter Fonda, 79, actor son of Henry Fonda and brother to “Hanoi Jane,” and wrote and starred in “Easy Rider,” August 16.
H. Ross Perot, 89, the self-made billionaire from Texas, ran for president twice. His 1992 presidential run collected about 19 percent of the national vote, which gave Bill Clinton the White House over George H. W. Bush, July 9.
William Doyle Ruckelhaus, 87, he quit his job in the Justice Department rather than carry out President Richard Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, Nov 27.
David H. Koch, 79, a billionaire industrialist, who with his older brother, Charles, poured their riches into conservative causes, August 23.
The final person that I would like to list is Richard E. Cole, 103. Cole was the last surviving member of Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo of April 18, 1942, just a little more than four months after the United States entered World War II.
President Franklin Roosevelt pushed early on for the military to take the war to the Japanese homeland as he felt that the nation needed a morale booster after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 which took the lives of 2,403 Americans.
Cole was assigned as the co-pilot of the first aircraft, after two other pilots became ill. The raid was daring not only because of the intended targets, the Japanese homeland and its capital, Tokyo, but because the pilots trained to take-off in a B-25 Mitchell bomber from the deck of an aircraft carrier, something neither the designers of the airplane nor the carrier ever envisioned.
Cole was the co-pilot of the first B-25 bomber to depart the deck of the USS Hornet. It was piloted by the leader of the raid, then-Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, giving him and the plane, the very least amount of runway available.
Sixteen B-25, with their crews of five, took off from the Hornet, 600 miles from Tokyo, reached Tokyo, bombed their target then headed for their recovery airfield in China. Doolittle and his crew bailed out safely over China when their plane ran out of fuel after flying 2,500 miles. By then, they had been flying for about 13 hours, it was nighttime, the weather was stormy, and Doolittle was unable to locate their landing field in Chuchow. He and his crew linked up after the bailout and were helped through Japanese lines by Chinese guerrillas and American missionary, John Birch.
The bombing raid killed about 50 people including civilians, injured about 400. Fifteen of the 16 aircraft reached China, but all crashed, while one landed at Vladivostok in the Soviet Union. Of the 80-crew members, 77 survived the mission. The Japanese Army captured eight airmen in China and executed three of them.
Information about the Cole and crew came from Wikipedia.
Thanks for reading! ~Carlton