Your Favorite Blockhead!

George Henderson was only six years old when he watched the Lusitania sink from ashore. His words to a news crew in ’94 were, “I can still sit here now…and see that great liner just sliding below the waves.” In June, 1906, the Lusitania was launched by Cunard to seize transatlantic traffic back from the Germans. She had completed more than a hundred Atlantic crossings. The Lusitania left New York for the last time on May 1 st , 1915, the same day that the German Embassy had printed a warning that travelers sailing on British ships in the war zone around the British Isles did so ‘at their own risk’. [1] The German submarine U-20 had already torpedoed three British cargo vessels off the Irish coast. Germany’s professed exclusion zone had been in effect since February, asserting emphatically that all Allied ships that invaded this zone were liable to be searched and/or attacked. [2] On May 7 th , Captain Walther Schwieger, sighted a four-stack passenger liner. A single torp...

Dec. 7, 1941: "The destroyer Shaw’s forward magazine explodes after being struck during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor" (LA Times). Today, we remember the sailors who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor. *I will post a blog later about my experiences aboard the USS Pearl Harbor, but for now, let us honor these men and women.*

It would be so easy to regurgitate Blockhead's opinion about what 'really happened' in Dealey Plaza 54 years ago today... It would be interesting to 'stir the hornet's nest' and get all the conspiracy theorists and critical historians wound tighter than a snare drum... Instead, I would rather honor the memory of my favorite American president in U.S. history. **Disclaimer: I didn't say 'greatest' president. I said 'favorite' president. That's a discussion for another day.** If you have a moment, grab yourself cup of coffee ( preferably Koa Coffee that you can purchase through the link below ) or  your favorite glass of “holiday cheer”, and read along as I share my thoughts and walk you through the entire 50th Anniversary Commemoration event I attended in 2013. You, the reader, can visualize the event through the eyes of a curious Navy veteran/  U.S. history student… "Early in the morning on Nov. 22nd, 2013, I made my ...

Douglas Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Slavery by Another Name provides a sturdy contention, that the final demise of the system in the 1940’s was due partly to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse being used as a weapon against America at the beginning of World War II. Blackmon writes, “Millions of soldiers – black and white – had witnessed the horror of racial ideology exalted to its most violent extremes in Nazi Germany. Thousands of African American men who returned as fighting men, unwilling to capitulate again to the docile state of helplessness that preceded the war, abandoned the South altogether or joined in the agitation that would become the civil rights movement…It was a strange irony that after seventy-four years of hollow emancipation, the final delivery of African Americans from overt slavery and from the quiet complicity of the federal government in their servitude was precipitated only in response to the horrors perpetuated by an enemy coun...

I recollect how my peers and I were once asked by a coach in high school who are heroes were. At that particular period in time, I did not allow that question to process in my mind to give an ‘appropriate’ answer. Without a moment’s hesitation, I said, “Joe DiMaggio.” Granted, ‘the Yankee Clipper’ is truly an excellent candidate provided the discussion were centralized on the greatest names in professional baseball. But, being that one student to jump the gun way too early, I received that look in the coach’s eye that said, “Someone just missed the point…” Fast forward twelve years. There is no doubt that my true heroes consist of my father, grandfather, fellow sailors from my Navy days, the gentleman that baptized me, etc. However, after some thorough research and deep thought, I have found a few heroes from the past that have resonated a special place in my heart. And, one name that stands above most (other than John Kennedy) is the ’47 Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop, Pee Wee R...