Baseball Quiz – 160 or more RBI: The other day in our
Cleveland Indians test we learned that Manny Ramirez and Hal
Trosky each drove in 160 runs in a single season. Who are the
other 9 individuals to accomplish the feat? [Some did it multiple
times.] Answer below.
Memorial Day
In 1966, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson declared
Waterloo, N.Y., as the “birthplace” of Memorial Day, the town
having held a ceremony on May 5, 1866, honoring the local
veterans who had fought in the Civil War. While others make
the same claim, these observances were deemed to be informal or
one-time events.
Three years after the Civil War ended, the head of an
organization of Union veterans established Decoration Day as a
time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with
flowers, though it was not until after World War I that the day
was expanded to honor those who have died in all American
wars.
One of the great speeches in our nation’s history was given on
Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, at Keene, New Hampshire by
former Civil War officer, and later Associate Justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935).
Following are some excerpts.
—
Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up
Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the
answer that you and I should give to each other – not the
expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make
this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth –
but an answer which should command the assent of those who do
not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our
brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.
So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble.
The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt
less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were
not imperiled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than
one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on
the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I
know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed
that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed
in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; we, or many of us
at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that
slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that
those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that
were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every man
with a heart must respect those who came into the field more
bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those
indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible
because neither side would run as they ought when beaten,
without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for
the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south –
each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable
to get along without the other. As it was then, it is now. The
soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in
commemorating a soldier’s death with feelings not different in
kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.
But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for
those who do not share our memories. When men have
instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found
that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large
to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for
instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer
should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from
an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our
national but our moral independence and know it far too
profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman
can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the
temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the
moment when by common consent we pause to become
conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what
our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what
we can do for the country in return.
So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still
kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms
from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It
embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with
enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight
out a war, you must believe something and want something with
all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end
worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit
yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being
able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is
required of you is that you should go some whither as hard as
ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall – at the
beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no
other way can he reach the rewards of victory.
When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man
ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple
or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling
simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors
should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was
right – in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action
and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the
passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have
lived….
But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to
forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle
its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this
day is dear and sacred…
But as surely as this day comes round we are in the presence of
the dead. For one hour, twice a year at least – at the regimental
dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the
living, and on this day when we decorate their graves – the dead
come back and live with us.
I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on
this earth. They are the same bright figures, or their
counterparts, that come also before your eyes; and when I speak
of those who were my brothers, the same words describe yours.
I see a fair-haired lad, a lieutenant, and a captain on whom life
had begun somewhat to tell, but still young, sitting by the long
mess-table in camp before the regiment left the State, and
wondering how many of those who gathered in our tent could
hope to see the end of what was then beginning. For neither of
them was that destiny reserved. I remember, as I awoke from my
first long stupor in the hospital after the battle of Ball’s Bluff, I
heard the doctor say, “He was a beautiful boy,” and I knew that
one of those two speakers was no more. The other, after passing
through all the previous battles, went into Fredericksburg with
strange premonition of the end, and there met his fate.
I see another youthful lieutenant as I saw him in the Seven Days,
when I looked down the line at Glendale. The officers were at
the head of their companies. The advance was beginning. We
caught each other’s eye and saluted. When next I looked, he was
gone….
In the portraits of some of those who fell in the civil wars of
England, Van Dyke has fixed on canvas the type who stand
before my memory. Young and gracious faces, somewhat
remote and proud, but with a melancholy and sweet kindness.
There is upon their faces the shadow of approaching fate, and the
glory of generous acceptance of it….
I have spoken of some of the men who were near to me among
others very near and dear, not because their lives have become
historic, but because their lives are the type of what every soldier
has known and seen in his own company. In the great
democracy of self-devotion private and general stand side by
side. Unmarshalled save by their own deeds, the army of the
dead sweep before us, “wearing their wounds like stars.”
It is not of the dead alone that we think on this day. There are
those still living whose sex forbade them to offer their lives, but
who gave instead their happiness. Which of us has not been
lifted above himself by the sight of one of those lovely, lonely
women, around whom the wand of sorrow has traced its
excluding circle – set apart, even when surrounded by loving
friends who would fain bring back joy to their lives?….
Comrades, some of the associations of this day are not only
triumphant, but joyful. Not all of those with whom we once
stood shoulder to shoulder – not all of those whom we once
loved and revered – are gone. On this day we still meet our
companions in the freezing winter bivouacs and in those dreadful
summer marches where every faculty of the soul seemed to
depart one after another, leaving only a dumb animal power to
set the teeth and to persist – a blind belief that somewhere and at
last there was bread and water. On this day, at least, we still
meet and rejoice in the closest tie which is possible between men
– a tie which suffering has made indissoluble for better, for
worse.
When we meet thus, when we do honor to the dead in terms that
must sometimes embrace the living, we do not deceive ourselves.
We attribute no special merit to a man for having served when all
were serving. We know that, if the armies of our war did
anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to
the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also
know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past
alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we
must find new fields for action or thought, and make for
ourselves new careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been
set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in
our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to
learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do
not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we
have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields,
the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to
those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that
whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look
downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will
scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to
command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.
Such hearts – ah me, how many! – were stilled twenty years ago;
and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every
year – in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of
flowers and love and life – there comes a pause, and through the
silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers
wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep
grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled
figures stealing through the morning to a soldier’s grave. Year
after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor,
procession and commemorative flags and funeral march – honor
and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best
and noblest of our generation pass away.
But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march
become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a
hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us
think of life, not death – of life to which in their youth they lent
the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of
life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen
and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets
sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
—
D-Day Part II…Andrew Higgins
Nebraska-born in 1886, Andrew J. (for Jackson) Higgins was
an Irishman who is as responsible as any one individual for the
Allied victory in WW II. It was Higgins whose factories built
20,094 boats, his famous landing craft bearing his name, that put
our troops on the ground at North Africa, Sicily, the Pacific and
Normandy.
Higgins was quite the go-getter at an early age. Before he was
12, he had 17 boys (mostly older than him) mowing lawns under
his supervision. Then when 12, he built a full-size boat in his
parent’s basement. But when he realized it was too big to fit
through any doorway in the house, “he waited until his mother
left on an errand, took out the back wall of the basement and
moved the boat outside. He was rebricking the wall when his
mother returned.” [Time: D-Day – 24 Hours That Saved the
World.]
Higgins was also once tossed out of school for brawling and
eventually dropped out of high school to join the National
Guard. He drifted around, landing a job in New Orleans in 1910
managing a lumber-exporting firm. He ended up forming his
own company, A.J. Higgins Lumber and Export, which sold pine
planks and cypress blocks around the world.
But in order to ship his lumber he needed something to convey it
in so he built his own schooners. By 1937 he owned a little
boatyard that employed about 50 people. It was then after Pearl
Harbor that he designed a prototype landing craft. Said Higgins,
“The sad state of war has made it my duty to build.”
And build he did. And build. And build. Expanding into 8 plants
around New Orleans, Higgins soon employed 20,000 workers
who produced 700 boats per month. Since young men were
drafted into the army, Higgins had to rely on women, blacks, the
elderly and the handicapped. Everyone who had the same job
was paid an equal wage…very controversial for the time.
Higgins primarily constructed two different kinds of craft, high-
speed PT boats and various models of landing craft. Historian
Jerry Strahan wrote of the time, “Without Higgins”s uniquely
designed craft there could not have been a mass landing of troops
and materiel on European shores or the beaches of the Pacific
islands, at least not without a tremendously higher rate of
casualties.”
In 1964, historian Stephen Ambrose met former President
Dwight D. Eisenhower at his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Ambrose hailed from New Orleans and Eisenhower inquired if
he had ever met Andrew Higgins.
“No, sir,” Ambrose replied. “He died before I moved to the city.”
“That”s too bad,” Ike said. “You know he is the man who won
the war for us…that”s right. If Andy Higgins had not developed
and then built those landing craft, we never could have gone in
over an open beach. It would have changed the whole strategy of
the war.”
Ambrose relates that Ike explained that “without the landing craft
vehicle personnel (LCVP) – a flat-bottomed boat with a ramp that
could run right into shore and discharge 30 armed men, turn
around, and return to the transport for another load – the Allies
would have had to take a French or Belgian port, something that
was nearly impossible because the Germans had concentrated
their defense at those ports. Indeed, when the Canadians had
tried it in 1942 at Dieppe, they lost an entire division without
gaining one inch of continental Europe.”
In a Thanksgiving address to the nation in 1944, General
Eisenhower said, “Let us thank God for Higgins Industries”
management and labor which has given us the landing boats with
which to conduct our campaign.” A disgruntled Hitler called
Higgins the “new Noah.”
Higgins motto was “The Hell I Can”t.” Historian Douglas
Brinkley said “he always exceeded expectations.”
R.R.M. Emmett, who commanded landing forces in North Africa,
wrote “When the history of this war is finally written by
historians far enough removed from its present turmoil and
clamor to be cool and impartial, I predict they will place
Mr. Higgins very high on the list of those who deserve the
commendation and gratitude of all citizens.”
Andrew Higgins died in 1952. Today, his story is told at the
D-Day Museum in New Orleans.
Note: To be historically accurate, the first usage of the Higgins
boats was an unmitigated disaster as 94% of the first wave were
lost at Algiers. But there were no specialized beach recovery and
repair teams to salvage damaged craft, the boats (and troops)
were overburdened and there was a lack of training and adequate
surveys of the landing areas. We learned our lessons quickly.
[Source: American Heritage / Article by Douglas Brinkley]
Top 3 songs for the week of 5/27/72: #1 “Oh Girl” (Chi-Lites)
#2 “I’ll Take You There” (The Staple Singers) #3 “The First
Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (Roberta Flack)
Baseball Quiz: 160 or more RBI…
Hack Wilson, 191 (Chicago Cubs, 1930)
Lou Gehrig, 184 (Yankees, 1931)
Hank Greenberg, 183 (Detroit, 1937)
Lou Gehrig, 175 (Yankees, 1927)
Jimmie Foxx, 175 (Boston Red Sox, 1938)
Lou Gehrig, 174 (Yankees, 1930)
Babe Ruth, 171 (Yankees, 1921)
Chuck Klein, 170 (Philadelphia Phillies, 1930)
Hank Greenberg, 170 (Detroit, 1935)
Jimmie Foxx, 169 (Philadelphia A’s, 1932)
Joe DiMaggio, 167 (Yankees, 1937)
Al Simmons, 165 (Philadelphia A’s, 1930)
Lou Gehrig, 165 (Yankees, 1934)
Manny Ramirez, 165 (Cleveland, 1999)
Babe Ruth, 164 (Yankees, 1927)
Babe Ruth, 163 (Yankees, 1931)
Jimmie Foxx, 163 (Philadelphia A’s, 1933)
Hal Trosky, 162 (Cleveland, 1936)
Sammy Sosa, 160 (Chicago Cubs, 2001)
Next Bar Chat, Tuesday.
