Three people died last week. Who do we honor?

Via email (Hat tip: Patricia Anderson)

Michael Jackson
Farah Fawcett
Bert Bank

We know what Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett are known for. But what about Bert Bank? ∴ Bert Bank was 94 years old and a survivor of The Bataan Death March in WWII. Most of you are familiar with it, but here is a short reminder:

78,000 prisoners were taken captive in the Phillipines by the Japanese and forced to march over a 100 miles in the tropical heat. Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common and merciful actions - compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week (for the slowest survivors like General Jacob Vass) in tropical heat.

Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.

Prisoners were attacked for assisting someone failing due to weakness, or for no apparent reason whatsoever. Strings of Japanese trucks were known to drive over anyone who fell. Riders in vehicles would casually stick out a rifle bayonet and cut a string of throats in the 20 lines of men marching alongside the road. Accounts of being forcibly marched for five to six days with no food and a single sip of water are in postwar archives including filmed reports 78,000 started the march. 54,000 finished it.

Out of the 54,000 who made it to the POW camp, 1 out of every 6 died by the end of the war.For those who survived, the average body weight loss was about 35%. So if a man weighed 150 lbs when it began, he weighed about 98 lbs when it was over.

Thank you Mr. Bank. I appreciate what you did.

Today I choose to honor you.

Note: This was likely written before the death of Billy Mays on June 28, 2009. Mays was a memorable and outstanding American pitchman for various products sold through television or Internet direct advertising. Read More......

A Family's Valor, a Nation's Freedom

WSJ OPINION JOURNAL, 7/2/2009 by Karl Rove - Why would a 61-year-old civilian surgeon volunteer for Iraq? At a dinner last week in California, I was reminded of the debt we owe to those who have, for 233 years, sustained our freedom and independence. One remarkable family in particular exemplifies the best in the American spirit of courage and sacrifice. Read more at Opinion Journal... Read More......

Father's Day Inspiration: Team Hoyt

Psted here for Father's Day 2007 (h/t: Blackfive)
Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated Issue date: June 20, 2005, p. 88

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

Team Hoyt

Read More......

D-Day Remembered

Mary Katherine Ham has put together a collection of D-Day photos, video clips, recordings and remembrances of heroes of this day in 1944 at Townhall.com. The title is, D-Day: On the Beaches, Over the Cliffs, and Behind the Lines. She ends her piece with, "God rest all their souls."

Photo: General Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Combat Report has put together a parody video leaving something to think about. Would it have made a difference in the outcome of WWII had the greatest generation been burdened with today's media? D-Day: Crisis on Omaha Read More......