A Change of Pace

[Judy Harder]

Ed  Freeman


You're  a 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying  in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley ,  11-14-1965,  LZ X-ray , Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8  - 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or
200  yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered  the MediVac helicopters to stop coming  in.

You're  lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and  you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way  around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never  see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out,  you know this is the  day. Then,  over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound  of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed  Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Medi-Vac  markings are on it... Ed  Freeman is coming for you... He's not Medi-Vac, so it's  not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the  machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not  to come. He's  coming anyway. And  he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire,  as they load
2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies  you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses. And,  he kept coming back.... 13 more times..... And took  about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never  have gotten out.

Medal  of Honor Recipient, Ed  Freeman,died last Wednesday at the age of
80, in Boise , ID  ........ May  God rest his  soul...... I  bet you didn't hear about this  hero's passing,  but we sure were told a  whole bunch  about some Hip-Hop  Coward beating  the crap out of his  "girlfriend"

Medal  of Honor Winner Ed  Freeman! Shame on  the American Media

...now,  pass this along on YOUR mailing list,  please.

[Diane Amberg]

Actually, we did hear about here. The passing of a great hero. It seems to me there had been a bit of a fuss as to whether to give him a medal or a Court Marshal for risking the chopper. Thank goodness it turned out right.

[Anmar]

Not a bleep of it out here in the bay area, thanks for the post, it's always good to hear a story like this and sad to hear of this hero's passing.

[Teresa]

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=29186886

[Diane Amberg]

Thanks Teresa.

[Warph]

A wonderful post, Judy.... Thank You!

[Teresa]

The last survivor of the Titanic also died on Sunday

,LONDON (AFP) – Millvina Dean, the last remaining survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, died in a care home in England on Sunday, media reports said. She was 97.

Elizabeth Gladys Dean, known to friends as Millvina, was only nine weeks old when the liner hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14, 1912, and sank killing 1,500 people.

She survived after being bundled up in a sack and carried to safety. Her mother Georgette Eva and brother Bertram also made it, but her father, Bertram Frank, was among those who died.

Dean died in a private nursing home near Ashurst in the southern English county of Hampshire, according to the BBC and Britain's domestic Press Association news agency. Staff there refused to comment late Sunday.

rest of the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090531/ts_afp/britaintitanichistorypeople

[larryJ]

As I have previously posted on the forum, I was a member of one of the worlds largest newspapers.  I had nothing to do with the editorial content, just running the presses to get the paper out on time.  But, over all those years I learned about Editors and Editorials and such.  I came to despise Editors.  If you called one to correct a misstatement before it hit the streets, you were always greeted with: "I'm an Editor and I know what I am doing!"  A few days later the paper would print a retraction on that story with no mention of who made the mistake.  Editors determine what is news and what is going to sell newspapers and most importantly, sell advertising.  

The reason I bring this up is that the story by Judy did not make the local paper or the local news so this is the first I heard about it.  Stories such as this one are generally always pulled from a major news agency off the Internet.  

The second reason I bring this up is that two days ago around 4 PM, there was a drive-by shooting at the local 7-11 around the corner from my house.  I live in a very safe neighborhood so incidents such as this are rare.  One young man died.  Probably a gang member but no one has said so yet.  My problem with this besides the obvious (in my neighborhood?) is with the local news.  I heard about the shooting on the news when a news helicopter reported it.  A fifteen second shot from the air of a familiar corner that I drive by everyday.  There was never anything more said about it that I could find on the local TV news.  The next morning in the local paper, there was an article about the shooting on page------------4, two paragraphs.  Other major events crowded it off page 1.  This morning the story made the front page because:

A.  Someone was shot outside a 7-11 in Covina
B.  This just doesn't happen here.
C.  This incident took place less than 2 miles from our newspaper offices.
D.  A Tribune news Editor was going home from work and turning at that intersection when the shooting happened.

You picked?  D is the correct answer.  There had to be a dozen or more other people who were in the area and at least one of them called the newspaper.  But he wasn't an Editor.  

My son and his wife who are currently traveling around the world sent an e-mail to me commenting of this shooting incident concerned about our safety.  He is currently in Nepal and his second note was about the local Radio Shack about a mile from my house being robbed the same night of the shooting.  Until I read his e-mail this morning I had no idea the robbery had taken place.  

So. to the family of Ed Freeman my sympathies to a true American hero.

Thank you Judy.

Larryj