Memoirs: From Families to Platoons

If the 10th anniversary of 9/ll teaches us anything, it is that keeping alive the memory of that event and the memory of those who were killed, is essential to our own emotional and physical survival. If the United States and its allies, forget that we were unprepared for this assault (and the others that followed,) it could happen again. If we forget what we were before the attack, we could self destruct, changed beyond recognition – our freedoms and values turned to dust in an effort to be safe from terror at all cost.
Mostly, for peace of mind, we need to remember each and every individual who lost his/her life on that day. We need to go beyond the splendid public memorial with its list of victims grouped according to the co-workers and friends they died with. The poet Yevtushenko wrote: “Not people die but worlds die in them. “ What a gift it would be for the victims’ loved ones and for all of us who mourned them, to re-generate those worlds. It is so much easier to remember one thousand individuals than a great mass. A Jewish friend of mine told me that even in her community, no one fully understood the full meaning of the holocaust until the diary of Anne Frank was published. Perhaps that is why Israel, at its Yad Vashem museum, has gone to such great lengths to find every remnant of information about every individual who died in the holocaust, thus re-generating many of of the victims’ lives. 2.2 million testimonies from survivors alone!
But if would be a boon to have the life stories of 9/11 victims on record to read when we want, to know what their moment in history was like, the same is true for all of us who think we lead ordinary lives but who generally step up to bat when required, just like the emergency services men and women did on 9/11, soldiers do and many of us do when required. Knowing this provides the security of our community based on shared values, the community that the 9/11 invaders tried but failed to destroy. To write someone’s life story or the story of an event go to our website www.myfamilymemoirs.com.

For The Record

By John (Jack) A. Rhind

MyFamilyMemoirs.com (To read this memoir go to the website and click on memoirs: read/view)

248 Pages

We live in a youth-focussed age when it is rare for anyone to point to the pluses of maturity : that feeling of accomplishment and of not having to prove something to the world, even if clearly still able to. Jack Rhind, without making an issue of it, does just that with this wonderful memoir. Seemingly effortlessly, he puts his personal life and career in context so that the reader gets not only the measure of the man and his family but also the culture and times he experienced and still actively contributes to.

Appropriately, he titles the book For The Record and what a gift that record is, not only for his family, but also for anyone with an interest in some of the history of Toronto Ontario beginning with his grandparents who, on one side, emigrated from Aberdeen, Scotland sometime in the mid nineteenth century and on the other emigrated from England at the height of the empire. Strong churchgoers all, they created an enviable life for themselves and their children who quickly took advantage of education and a mobile society to move into business and into the professions.

Rhind was born in 1920 and has a remarkable memory for the schools he attended, his friends and the look and feel of the community he grew up in. The reader becomes nostalgic for a time when kids could ski in neighbourhood ravines, and summers that “were golden.” A charmed university life moves on for Rhind, as a matter of course, to the hard reality of active infantry service in Europe during WWII. Rhind kept a diary and, for this book, pulls out the events that stand out in his memory and that provide the reader with a vivid picture of particularly the First and Fifth Canadian Divisions campaign in the south of Italy and then with the Second Canadian Corps in Northwest Europe. (Readers interested in Rhind’s war years can view an interview with him by clicking on the video at the end of his book on the MyFamilyMemoirs.com website.)

After the war Rhind started on a career that would lead to his becoming one of the great Canadian insurance men of the last century: An added plus for the reader of For the Record is to find out how business was done after WWII in some of the great citadels of insurance, particularly the National Life Assurance Company of which Rhind was both President and later Chairman of the board and Confederation Life, which Rhind headed as Chief Executive from 1976 to l985. Throughout his career he focussed on the people who were part of the institutions and events he helped to shape. In his writing he focuses on them again. His descriptions of news-making events in the insurance business – like the 1994 federally ordered closure and liquidation of Confederation Life — was, for this reader, the most interesting part of the book because he brings honesty and an insider’s original viewpoint to issues previously presented by a not always unbiased media. It is easy to follow Rhind’s storyline not only because he is a good writer, but because he also has an uncanny skill in effectively inserting photos of the people he writes about, as well as relevant letters and newspaper clippings, to enhance the flow of the story.

If Rhind’s business career is the most interesting part of the book, his storybook marriage to “Dibs,” his beloved wife, and the family they created, their circle of friends and their contribution to the community of Toronto is the most charming and heartfelt. It is a rare love story and Rhind presents it in a low key style that makes the reader hungry for more – always a good way to leave things.

At the end of the chapter about his time at National Life, Rhind describes how, long after he left the company, he entered its impressive building on the West Side of University Avenue in Toronto, a structure completed during his tenure as President. He recognizes his picture in a glass case containing corporate memorabilia but recognizes none of the staff members who pass by him. Resisting the temptation to point out to the man at the reception desk that he is the man in the picture; that he had worked for the company for thirty years and knew a lot about the building, he walks away. “He (the receptionist) would only be thinking, “tell it to someone who cares,” he writes, “so I told it to myself and walked out to the street.” Rhind was wrong. The receptionist would probably have been delighted to hear his story. Readers For the Record are lucky that Rhind decided to share it with us.

Visitors to this website may have noticed that the last memoir of the month dedicated to Col. Bob Howard has been up since February when the revered Medal of Honor recipient was honoured and buried in Arlington cemetery. The reason it was up so long was because it spoke to so many people in all walks of life – not just veterans. His bravery and courage was admired by all. How could it not, when the man was nominated three times for the MOH within a time span of little more than a year? But the admiration he evoked was for something even larger: a tremendous moral courage that made him take up causes that his government preferred to forget. Foremost among those causes was the return of his comrades who had been captured during the Vietnam War. At various times he put both his life and his reputation at risk in taking up the POW cause  — a bitter battle that would never be rewarded by the country he loved so dearly.

My favourite picture of the great man, in the memoir and shown above, is where he is carrying a young, wounded Viet Cong prisoner in his arms. There is integrity in his face, an honourable concern for the wounded enemy. It shows a side to the American soldier in Vietnam that was rarely covered by the media who sensationalized in the majority of their reports from Vietnam the atrocities Americans allegedly perpetrated on the enemy. In fact, a code of honour existed among many who fought on both sides of the conflict. As one Marine Corps Captain explained, he disobeyed orders only once. In the field, after a losing battle, his superior told him to leave his dead comrades behind because the surrounding enemy would pick off anyone who went back. The captain went back repeatedly to bring them out one by one, as did the men under his command. The NVA soldiers watched in silence without firing a shot.

Perhaps no one exemplified the code of honour described above more than Colonel Howard. It is a code that encompassed not only outstanding bravery but treating enemy POWs humanely and, most important, fighting his own country’s bureaucracy in trying to bring home captured comrades, even if that meant going back after the war to try to get them out.

There is much yet to be told about Col. Howard.  But, to paraphrase from a poem called “Talk,” written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Col. Howard, the man who was considered by many to be the greatest hero of his time, would have considered it shameful “that in so strange a time, common integrity could look like courage.”

Praise fro Colonel Howard from our site visitors:

“Being a veteran-this brought tears to my eyes!!. Long live the USA.”

John Tingley

Today we have few real heroes, now we have lost a true hero and a great American. He will be missed by many. But, we can be lelieved in the fact that he will be guarding the gates of heaven waiting for fellow soldiers. God rest his soul!

Bonnie Mori

With much difficulty and amids many tears, I just finished reading this wonderful tribute to Col Robert L. Howard (MOH) and the wonderful company of heroes that he was surrounded by. You, Sir, (Brasso, the author of the memoir,) have done a wonderful service To Col. Howard by posting this endearing tribute to the legend of a man that this country will miss for all time. I only wish I had the pleasure of meeting him. I cose by adding this: I shall forever be proud of my service during the same time in history. And I shall continue to do what I do to this day to honor the memory of this great man, and all those who have and continue to serve this country in ways that most do not appreciate or realize. God bless Col. Howard. God bless us everyone.

Ted Glover, Rolling Thunder Inc. , National Treasurer, Vietnam Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, Destroyer

Escort Sailors Association, Proud American

Coming from another time and place, the dedication to his country, and his single mided bravery marks Colonel Rober Howard as a man above others.

Kim McKenzie Galvez

First, thank you to Col. Howard for your life and service to our country. Words cannot express the magnitude, duty, honor and sacrifice you gave. Second, Thanks to the video maker, excellent work. As the son of a deceased Vietnam veteran, I respect their service tenfold. RIP, Col. Howard and well done. Sir.

WElshbluesman

A lot of people think that to create a memoir they have to write a whole book. Not so, even though a lot of memoirs are in the form of  a book. Most families have a living storehouse of memories (which can be any length)  in the form of grandparents and grand uncles and aunts  so close at hand they can talk to them on the phone or e-mail them every day. This was brought home to me in a recent article in the Toronto Globe and Mail entitled Grandma Taught Our Son A Lot. Written by Diane J. Strickland it tells the recent history of her  family, which  like most North Americans, has been affected by the recession.  As a result her son, fresh from his first year at university, was able to collar only a month of summer work.  His grandmother came to the rescue, if not with a lot of dollars, certainly with a job that the whole family will treasure for years to come and beyond.
Grandma hired her grandson to transcribe her remembrances of family history and print out copies.   So Strickland’’s son learned a lot of facts and something much more important. When he found out that grandma’s fiancee was killed during WWII, he also found out from someone close to him, that it is not only possible to surive tragedy, but to find love again after your heart is broken.  Most important,  his family history of which he is newly proud, has become an integral and important part of his life. His mom says with a tone of pride, he is different.
That change in outlook and appreciation of one’s background and family is a running theme in family memoirs.  When people take the time to make sure those stories are preserved for posterity, they provide ever member of the family with an immeasurable gift.
It’s wonderful that so many people now study their genealogies. It’s fun to find out that one is a distant cousin of the Queen of England or George Washington. But without the more immediate stories of grandparents who remember their grandparents and what they accomplished, one is left with unknown personalities and statistics.  How much more interesting to find out that great, great grandpa came from somewhere in Europe with nothing, met a lovely girl with the same background and together they built a solid business and family. And how about those ancestors who contributed mightily to their country during war, The Great Depression or the economic miracle after WWII? It’s only by telling the story of the great uncle who was mowed down during one of the slaughterhouse battles of WWI, that his life, finally, comes to have some meaning  — that the person he was comes to life.

Diana Strickland’s mother, by setting her grandson the task of transcribing and printing the family history has set a prototype, that so many of us can follow.  And the website www.myfamilymemoirs.com makes it more than possible.  It makes it downright easy.  Think about recording your family history in some way uploading it and archiving it on myfamilymemoirs. If you don’t want to do it yourself check out our order page.  Just sent us your photos and handwritten notes.  We’ll upload it for you.  It’s the perfect Christmas gift.

To read Grandma Taught Our Son a Lot click:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/grandma-taught-our-son-a-lot/article1332964/ or paste in, or google Title, Globe and Mail, Oct. 22, 2009/

To read grandmother Merri Joy Kellner’s exciting memoir, “On Turning Eighty” go to home page and click memoirs click:http://www.myfamilymemoirs.com/viewer.jsp?memoirId=12

Click the photo to order from the My Family Memoirs Book Store

High On Arrival
by Mackenzie Phillips

In the field of memoirs, like drugs, nothing sells like heroin and its attendant degradations. So, once, again, a book about a minor celebrity — who in this case, is the daughter of major celebrity John Phillips, the lead singer/co-founder of the Mamas and Papas — is featured prominently on Larry King Live and Ophrah. Yet again, the memoir is about a person who has reached rock bottom emotionally, physically and morally and uses that very fact to achieve come-back celebrity.

Unlike members of her family who are aghast at the revealations in Mackenzie’s book, High On Arrival, that she was raped by her father and then went on to have a long term incestuous relationship with him, this reader sympathises with her need to tell the story. When she says, “I have gone to great lengths to rearrange my life and change from the inside,” it echoes great Greek dramas like Oedipus Rex. Human beings have always found it necessary to tell their own family stories. If Freud was right about the Oedipus complex playing a subterranean role in our psyches, we all have the need to come out with it. But Sophocles’ Oedepus Rex includes constant warnings of the horrors that await those who might want to emulate the incesteuous relationship he dramatizes.  Oedipus, when he realizes what he has done, blinds himself to atone.  Papa Phillips, in a habitual drug induced stupor, it appears, not only felt no remorse, he wanted to set up housekeeping and raise kids with Mackenzie in remote Pacific Island.

The problem I have is with the flalse aura surrounding High On Arrival; the idea projected by celebrity gurus that in order for a memoir to create big bucks and make its author instantly a household name, the subject of the book must have come as close to damnation as it is possible to get and then, redeem herself by tellling every sordid detail of her fall and rise to memoir heaven.  The message sent to all of us — but   particularly young people, who have talent and want to write or otherwise be storytellers — is that success is more likely if they sink into a hell of drug and/or sexually aberrant behavior first and then, somehow, rehabilitate themselves by telling all about it.

No better example of this topsy turvy kind of outlook exists than James Frey who, though a talented writer with plenty of good story ideas, felt  obliged to make up a personal odyssey of drug addiction, degeneration and finally redemption through the tellling of  his fable in a memoir entitled A Million Little Pieces.  The sad thing is, that it worked, for a while anyway.  He was taken up by Ophrah who promoted him and A Million Little Pieces into  stratospheric  bestsellerdom.  It all fell apart when Frey’s story turned out to be fraudulent.  The sad thing is that Frey is a really good writer as his next book, the novel, Bright Shining Morning, proved.  But Bright Shiny Morning didn’t and would never get the attention provided the first book, even though the fact that he produced it after being shamed and castigated by almost all medial pundits and celebrities, including his onetime mentor, Ophrah, took guts and is a much better example of a come-back than his first book ever was.  (I have an uneasy feeling that had his fall from being Ophrah’s chosen author, led to his becoming a hopeless addict first and then rehabilitate himself , he might be doing interviews on the celebrity circuit again.)  So what does that that teach us?  Few of us want to sink into drug addiction and the degeneracy it fuels even if it brins us a moment of fame and celebrity.  But I’ll wager that all of us want to be recognized for real accomplishments and that we all have a good story in us.

I recommend reading High On Arrival as a modern day tragedy and a warning;  but there is nothing in Mackenzie Phillips book to emulate.

To order High On Arrival at the best price click to visit the My Family Memoirs book store for your region: USA, UK, Canada

The 60 Minutes Correspondents in 1983 when the author was a producer.

Since Don Hewitt died yesterday, August 20th, 2009, the media has been swamped with stories about him.  This is apt since Don was, arguably, the greatest modern story teller of all,even titling his 2001 memoir, Tell Me A Story.” Since I  knew Don well having worked with him as a producer at Sixty Minutes during more than the first half of the eighties, I have a few stories about him that haven’t shown up in the obits.  Professionally he has been the inspiration for almost all my work as a reporter, TV producer, author and my latest venture, the website www.myfamilymemoirs.com which allows the ordinary  people who were Sixty Minutes constant audience “to tell a story.”  Hewitt taught me that the most fascinating stories come, not necessaryily from celebrities, but from cops, firemen, soldiers, business people and working women.

I was a young producer, coming from Canada’s W5 newsmagazine when I started at 60 Minutes as Ed Bradley’s producer.  It was truly the heyday of Sixty Minutes. I can’t remember a week when we weren’t number one in the ratings.  Ed and I  joined the program at the same time.  Don was a boss like no one I had before.  Mercurial, brilliant and almost always on the run except for those brief  periods when we producers were called into his office to go over a story idea we had submitted.  These brief sessions were categorically not meetings.  The very first lesson I learned from Don Hewitt was that story meetings were a waste of time.  He had tried one once early in l968 when Sixty Minutes was launched and never went there again.  If you had a story idea your wrote it out on a “blue sheet” which was not colored blue.  It had to be concise (never more than ten-fifteen short lines) and the story line including the people who would be interviewed had to be clearly outlined.  The expectation was that by the time you handed Don your blue sheet, the background to the story would have been checked out thoroughly and it was feasible to do the story.  When he called you into his office a few days later you found out if he approved it.    If Don liked it, he quickly got it cleared with  the CBS brass.  More often than not, on a big story like the interview I produced with Arafat after the Phalangist massacre of PLO camps Sabra and Shatila in 1981, Don went directly to Bill Paley, the legendary founder of CBS who was still going strong then.  As far as I knew, Don was the only one who had that kind of access to Paley. When he brought Paley around to congratulate Ed and myself the Monday after the story ran, I was almost struck speechless by the power in the room.

Once Don approved the blue sheet a producer had carte blanche to supervise research of the story, direct it, prepare the correspondents and write it.  (That seems to have changed somewhat under Sixty Minutes’ new administration because I note that, more often than not, stories are now produced by more than one producer.)  Don became directly involved again, only for the screening which always held in Sixty Minutes exclusive and posh screening room,  included the correspondent and  a team of CBS”s top lawyers.  I don’t know of a single producer who didn’t anticipate these screenings with trepidation because no matter how good you were, Don was always better.  He was simply brilliant at knowing precisely how a good story should be put together and although there were occasional muted yelps of outrage, the proceedings were always civil. Don was always right.  Really right!  Not just because he was the boss.  The only people who could supersede his judgment were the CBS  lawyers: he never argued with them, which is probably why, at least when I was there, Sixty Minutes had never been sued successfully.  Here’s  the standing joke that was told among us producers.  “Don Hewitt hires a new producer named Will Shakespeare, a very talented young man who comes up with a terrific story about the Danish crown prince, Hamlet.  Will, who has outdone himself, getting interviews, not only with the Queen,  but her new husband and King, suspected of murdering his brother the former king and the crown prince Hamlet.  After the screening, there is complete silence while Don thinks.  Then Don turns to Will Shakespeare and says with a broad smile.  “It’s great, really great!  I just have a few small suggestions:  I think the biginning should go at the end and the end at the beginning.  And, uh, one really small thing.  You know that line, ‘To be or not, to be?’  I don’t get it.  Take it out.”

Don Hewitt had one absolute rule for all Sixty Minutes producers and other staff.  It could not be broken and if someone was hapless enough to do so inadvertently, woe to her.  The correspondents — Mike Wallace, Ed Reasoner, Morley Safer and Ed Bradley, all men when I was there — were always right and you never, ever stood up to them.  If they made a mistake, Hewitt would magically fix it so it appeared never to have happened.  In more recent interviews he called his correspondents the covers for  his television magazine.  When I was there, he referred to them as his tigers.  True to tiger form, they each had their own territory and their own producers.  With their team, the tigers  hunted silently and surreptitiously and then fronted  the  stories that would make them the biggest stars in the business.  The correspondents were, of course, highly competitive with each other, but it never showed on the program.  Don Hewitt turned all of them into great stars and, as far as I could tell,  not a single one ever argued with him.

That’s because in the television world, as in the world of nature he was that rare tiger who leads a pack.

I generally ignore books by celebrities especially when the author has become famous for interviewing other celebrities. Most such glitterati authors, despite “telling all,” share nothing that most of us can understand. The life they display is generally part of a fake world the rest of us can’t connect with except to say, I wish I had that house, those clothes or that dough.

Something, though made me pick up King’s book, maybe because the famous man pictured on the cover comes across as quite ordinary, despite the suspenders, or maybe because I remember being interviewed by him on his old radio show about my best-selling book, Kiss The Boys Goodbye and was pleasantly surprised that he had actually read it. Meaning to just skim through My Remarkable Story, I was hooked when I read this at the very beginning. “Memories are all we have. Lose them and we have nothing. But memories touched by humor, those are the best memories of all.” And that is precisely what King’s book is about. His memories of a sometimes deeply flawed man, who somehow or other always had luck on his side and the ability to make friends with important entertainers like Jackie Gleason who were willing to give him a leg up. Most important he always had the ability to laugh at himself even on the point of bankruptcy and facing charges of larcency (He was cleared of all charges but the episode nearly destroyed his career.)

By today’s standards his childhood could be considered difficult, but only in a material sense. The father he was crazy about died when he was nine. His mother. an extraordinary hard working and resilient woman who never failed to keep a roof over her family, found it necessary in one short period during the depression, to go on relief which embarrassed young Larry. In the most important sense, though, King had a  storybook childhood, beloved and supported by family and and a tightly knit group of friends who are still his friends today.   Some of them he sees almost every morning at Nate n’Al’s deli in Los Angeles. The group of friends left a trail of pranks – many of which were more than unsettling to family and teachers, but they were also, almost always  so  funny, the reader sometimes has to laugh aloud. Larry King is a great storyteller as is perhaps best proven by the impact his stories have had on his children. Not so long ago, he took his nine year old son Chance back to Brooklyn to show him the apartment he grew up in. They walked around the neighbourhood and where his favorite hangout, Ebbers (baseball) field, used to be.  Everything is  completely changed with looming Housing Projects and bars over store windows. But Chance, filled with his father’s stories asked him, “Can we move back here?” When King explained that would be impossible Chance asked, “Can we move this to Beverly Hills?”

There are a lot of other stories in King’s memoir. A good portion of the book deals with his memories of famous people he has interviewed including most show biz talents and every President from Nixon onwards. He had a brief acquaintance with Jack Kennedy which began when he bumped Kennedy’s car by mistake in Miami where he was making a career in radio; he knew Nixon well enough to be able to call him up on short notice to get an appointment and  Nancy Reagan, indicates — in a signed picture  in the book — that he is her favorite interviewer.

But those stories are to be expected. What I didn’t expect was his honesty about his own life – particularly about his personal failings of which there have been many. Eight marriages culminating surprisingly in his very happy current family life which includes all of his children. Larry comes across as everybody’s uncle who against heavy odds — outweighed by a uncanny luck and a talent for connecting to people — made it really, really big and never forgot where he came from.

This book is available on MyFamilyMemoirs bookstore. http//astore.amazon.camyfamilymemoi-20

Since I wrote the piece “Where Are Michael Jackson’s Memoirs.” I have been chided by  friends and readers for adding to the barrage of information being disseminated about Michael Jackson’s death: what drugs led up to it, what will happen to his fortune, his children and on and on.  It isn’t that people mind Jacko’s death being appropriately noted. What they mind is the total national  blackout of news about  others who died in the same period of time, no matter how  important and/or heroic the contributions to their country and culture.

This failure on the part of  US television networks and national newspapers was brought home by the people of Henry County in Georgia when the body of Staff Sergeant John C. Beale, killed in Afghanistan  was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City, Georgia on June 11, 2009.  A simple notice  in local papers noted the route to be taken to the funeral home in McDomough County, Georgia, enough information so that the almost ten mile route was filled with people determined to honor the young man who had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.  http://blip.tv/play/AYGJ5h6YgmE

Staff Sergeant Beale was just one of the unusually high number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan during the same period Michael Jackson’s life and death was reported on by morning shows to prime time news and talk shows, particularly Larry King Live.  There was almost nothing about any of the dead heroes in the national news.

Chuck Yaeger Jr. (Not “Brigadier General Chuck Yaeger of  The Right Stuff fame) had enough.  In the e-mail below he shows us what we are  missing  in our own life and times by forgetting, — or worse, overlooking  the contributions made by  those who — to borrow a phrase that describes his more famous namesake — genuinely have “the right stuff.”   If you agree, please forward this blog to as many people as you can.

We’re hearing a lot today about big splashy memorial services.
I want a nationwide memorial service for Darrell “Shifty” Powers.

Shifty volunteered for the airborne in WWII and served with Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Infantry. If you’ve seen Band of Brothers on HBO or the
History Channel, you know Shifty. His character appears in all 10 episodes, and Shifty himself is interviewed in several of them.

I met Shifty in the Philadelphia airport several years ago. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just saw an elderly gentleman having trouble reading his ticket. I offered to help, assured him that he was at the right gate, and noticed the “Screaming Eagle,” the symbol of the 101st Airborne, on his hat.

Making conversation, I asked him if he’d been in the 101st Airborne or if his son was serving. He said quietly that he had been in the 101st. I thanked him for his service, then asked him when he served, and how many jumps he made.

Quietly and humbly, he said “Well, I guess I signed up in 1941 or so, and was in until sometime in 1945.” at which point my heart skipped.

At that point, again, very humbly, he said “I made the 5 training jumps at Toccoa, and then jumped into Normandy . . . . do you know where Normandy is?” At this point my heart stopped.

I told him “yes, I know exactly where Normandy is, and I know what D-Day was.” At that point he said “I also made a second jump into Holland, into Arnhem.” I was standing with a genuine war hero . . and then I realized that it was June, just after the anniversary of D-Day..

I asked Shifty if he was on his way back from France, and he said “Yes. And it’s real sad because, these days, so few of the guys are left, and those that are, lots of them can’t make the trip.” My heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to say.

I helped Shifty get onto the plane and then realized he was back in Coach while I was in First Class. I sent the flight attendant back to get him and said that I wanted to switch seats. When Shifty came forward, I got up out of the seat and told him I wanted him to have it, that I’d take his in coach.

He said “No, son, you enjoy that seat. Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and who still care is enough to make an old man very happy.” His eyes were filling up as he said it..
And mine are brimming up now as I write this.

Shifty died on June 17 after fighting cancer.

There was no parade.
No big event in Staples Center.
No wall to wall back to back 24×7 news coverage.
No weeping fans on television.
And that’s not right.

Let’s give Shifty his own Memorial Service, online, in our own quiet way. Please forward this email to everyone you know. Especially to the veterans.

Rest in peace, Shifty.

If there is anything to be learned from the media circus surrounding Michael Jackson’s afterlife, it is that he should have put his own thoughts on the record. That way he would have had at least a chance to get his side  told, of a story  that has over the span of one week become a tightly focussed big business for the media.  From the blogs to Larry King and even the high priest of news, Anderson Cooper, Jacko’s story is being designed  and adjusted to  get at and manipulate the huge  audience that makes up his fans and the huge crowd which loves anyone famous.  Depending on who you believe he was a civil rights hero or ashamed of his black looks, a great humanitarian or a perverted creep.  As it stands, his memoirs will be writ large, produced for every medium with perhaps a blockbuster movie scheduled sometime in the future, but it won’t be his story.  It appears that there is no one to defend him as Mark Anthony defended Ceaser with Shakespeare’s famous lines, “The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones. . . .”  Even his good friend Elizabeth Taylor, who stood by his side so often has not come forward during this critical time.  One wonders if his children were  old enough when he died to ever be able to take up his cause for posterity.

The presentation of his life will most likely  be left to  investors who put up the most money.  And, if like Princess Diana’s detractors, his enemies  continue to chip away at the good that was in him,  it won’t take long before the memory of Michael Jackson will have nothing to do with his reality, however wonderful or strange.  It is likely that he will — at least until a successor comes forward –  keep the title “King of Pop” that he was so proud of, but what about the rest of his life?   Would he have cared when he was alive, that people will continue to speculate endlessly about the “evil”   issues — child molestation, apparent shame about his black features  and strange behavior, eg.  dangling his baby over the over the balcony — that so dogged him in life.  Is it possible that “King” Michael was so naive, he tried to emulate the Royal House of England which always shows off its progeny on the balcony of Buckingham Palace?  If so, that’s very sad, dangerous even, but perhaps not evil.  It would be interesting to read his diary, if there were one, about that incident, and so many others.  He could teach us something about what is important in life.

One has the feeling that the King of Pop cared mightily about his image, particulary  the  image left for his children, nephews, nieces and  the generations that will follow.  As it is, we have the videos of his grand performances and,  perhaps, one genuine and heartfelt appeal from him made on video when he told us that he did not molest children and asked us to wait to see the evidence before we judge him.  It was one time when there was no make-up, no costume disguise just Michael  pleading with us.  “I am innocent, he said.”   Add the word “an” and that phrase – I Am An Innocent – would have made a great title for his memoir.

No, I haven’t mispelled the word. I am not talking about Taps, the somber ceremony that sounds the final farewell for our heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. I am talking about tats, the name Vietnam (and other) veterans use for the tattoos that commemorate comrades they lost in war: whether because they were killed in action(KIA,) abandoned by their own country as known prisoners of war (POWs,) or missing in action whose bodies have not been recovered( MIA’s.) For the men who carry them, tats have a serious and lifelong connection to Taps because they are a way to honor those lost and try, every minute of every day, to remain mindful that some might still come home, dead or alive. Each tat not only commemorates real people, but keeps them alive in the most intimate way possible, in the memory of the wearer and in the eyes and minds of those who come in contact with the wearer. This is a particular goal of Vietnam veterans who wear tats symbolizing in one way or another the POWs who were literally written off during the Carter administration, despite what was considered miraculous Intelligence by the most outstanding Intel officials, indicating that they were still alive and held under abominable conditions. There are veterans whose entire arms are filled with tats of names of the missing and many whose torsos and arms depict the evolving symbols of the POW issue like the POW flag, barbed wire and/or the symbols of the wearer’s military units, each of which lost untold numbers of men. There has been a growing number of veterans from all of the conflicts since Vietnam who are also displaying their tats, to show their losses and their unity in the fight for the return of those who are missing. As in Vietnam there is overwhelming evidence that some of those MIA’s were captured alive. Recent scientific research has found that the behavior of heart transplant patients changes radically over times, often reflecting the emotional and behavior patterns of the donor. Scientists are continuing to explore indications that the DNA of the donors heart becomes part of the receiver’s system. There is no science behind tats but there appears to be a vast spiritual impetus, among Vietnam veterans that has transformed their lives. Dismissed to ignominy when they came back from the war, despite their courageous and honorable service, they have ensured that those who gave all — and those who were willing — would never be forgotten as long as the last of their brethren draws breath. So, beginning each Memorial Day Weekend, motorcycle caravans — distinguished by specific attire right down to the tats on their skin, finely honed driving skills and respectful behavior — travel to attend memorial services at The Wall, The Moving Wall, The Wall South, Angel Fire and other memorials. More than the DNA of their brothers, they carry in their hearts the lives that lost comrades might have lived. Tats are the windows to their heart. And they will NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

The TATS used for this article were provided by members of the Viet Nam Vets/Legacy Vets MC. U.S.A “whose main missions are to demand full accountability for all POW/MIA’s from all conflicts and respect and fair treatment for all veterans. GIVE NONE . .. TAKE NONE.” (For “A Glimpse Into (their) Our World, click:

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