Please send condolences to Wonderduck.
His mom passed away Sunday.

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 My Great Uncle John has passed away.

Born in 1921, he was one of 7 children.  He survived a bout of whooping cough in his early years. By the time he was 10 the nation was in the throes of the Great Depression and he frequently missed school doing odd jobs to help feed his parents and 7 siblings.

When the US finally became involved in World War 2, he enlisted in the Navy. After serving in various capacities in the battle of the Atlantic, he volunteered for a spot on an underwater demolition team. Despite their name, their concept of operations at the time involved rather little swimming. Rather, they planned to use rubber rafts to approach obstacles and plant their explosives, swimming only a fairly short distance and freediving. It was hoped that darkness and surprise would cover them.

On June 6 1944 the folly of this became clear.Uncle John's unit was tasked with clearing obstructions on what would be known to history as "Easy Red" sector of Omaha Beach.

On approach their raft bottomed out, forcing them to swim nearly half a mile under the tender ministrations of Rommel's crack machine gunners. The swimmers on ether side of  took rounds in their satchel charges, detonating them and blasting his shipmates to the four winds.

Uncle John found himself unable to contact anyone else in his squad but swam through a hellish fusillade of enemy fire to plant his charges. After that, he waded ashore with the first wave and, dodging machine gun fire, pulled several wounded allied soldiers and sailors from the blood red surf. He grabbed a rifle from a fallen soldier and, despite having next to no infantry training, moved inland off the beach.

Due to the fact that his insignia (and wetsuit) had been lost when his shipmates exploded, he entered battle wearing swim trunks, a scavenged rifle and an ammo belt. As he had no way to prove that he was navy, he was pressed into Army service wearing a dead mans uniform and served along with other members of his unit in France as an infantryman for several weeks before he was returned to what was left of his unit. Of 175 UDT swimmers engaged at Normandy, 91 were casualties, including all but one of the other members of John Talton's squad.

After the war, he went to college and became a mechanical engineer. He worked at the Radford Arsenal and for Hercules Engineering where he worked on rockets and missiles. He was involved in several NASA projects involving solid rockets, particularly trans-stages, and assisted in the development of the Nike-Ajax and Nike-Hercules AAA missiles. He was also instrumental in the development the innovative solid rocket motor for the ridiculously fast accelerating Sprint point defence ABM.

He did charitable works through the Masons and Kiwannis International for 50 years as well as his church.

He can be seen interviewed at length in Peter Jennings 50th anniversary D-Day special and in the History Channel's  Suicide Missions of D Day .

^{Update: Fixed link. Corrected text. (John Talton did not serve in the Pacific. His brother, my great uncle Doug, served as a Landing Craft Coxwain after commanding a landing craft at Normandy.)}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:41 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I always liked him, both as press secretary and as a talk radio host, he always came across as decent as well as smart.

The combination of courage, optimism and dignity he displayed in his last year in the face of his terminal cancer was nothing short of awe inspiring.

More  thoughts  here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sci Fi writer Thomas M. Disch commited suicide on July 4th.

Thoughts on his passing from Bruce Lewis and Colleen Doran.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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  Crap...

One of the giants of Sci Fi has passed.

Sir Arthur C Clarke, Royal air force officer, inventor of the communications satellite and the concept of the space elevator, undersea explorer and author has died.

Though it must be said that he led a full and long life, his is a loss dearly felt. He was a renaissance man, and a visionary the likes of which is far too rare.

Big roundup here, Jerry Pournelle, * has thoughts on his old friend here.

_{*who is himself undergoing treatment for brain cancer (and has a tip jar)}

UPDATE MARCH 22:via Instapundit, Clarkes final interview.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Crap.

Dave Stevens, creator of  the Rocketeer , pin-up artist extrordinaire and all round nice guy has died.

He is well remembered here .

I did not know him, but I am aware of one particular example of his classiness.

He made some money doing pictures of Betty Paige ( he based a character in the Rocketeer on her) long after she had retired.

No one knew who she was and her image was considered to be in the public domain.

Dave Stevens tracked her down….and paid her royalties.

Nice guy.
Class act.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Gary Gygax has died.

I actually played only a little Dungeons and Dragons, but I played a LOT of RPGs when I was younger. That entire niche industry was started by him.

Today, when people think of RPGs many are thinking in terms of computer games. Gygax was able to help people achieve a similar experience with pencil, paper a few dice and their imaginations.

The computer game industry actually owes him a greater debt than many know as his system was to varying degrees the inspiration for many of the most successful games out there. Indeed, the lucrative MMORPG genre was in effect "play tested" by Gygax and his players for 20 years before the tech caught up.

 Like many of those who played his games, Gary Gygax was a self described nerd, but in the final analysis, he brought a lot of people considerable enjoyment.

...and that is a better legacy than many will ever have.

Order of the Stick pays tribute here.

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My great uncle Tom died the other night.

He was born into comparative poverty, which became quite acute as the Depression hit 2 years later. He was the youngest of 6 children only 5 of whom made it to adulthood. During World war 2he served as a machinist mate in the Coast Guard, operating on patrol boats out of Wilmington...and....in a bizzare twist....for a brief time on a submarine. I never got details of this oddity except that he hated it and the sub was an old World war 1 relic that had been brought out of mothballs and was in terrible shape. ( I assume it was an O or R boat). This may have been part of ASW training. I know that the Coast Guard put a few officers on subs for that reason. In any event, his stint on that vessel was brief .

After the war he worked in the family farm, built and either sold or rented out several houses and eventually became a commercial fisherman. In 1958 he took possession of the FV Tom and Jerry and ran charters...participating in every fishing tournament from 1960-2007. With my late grandfather, he was one of the first along the Moorehead NC charter boat piers to accept  African American parties in the late 1950s.

Uncle Tom was a well known fixture along the waterfront in Moorehead for a great many years.  He was recognized as an expert seaman and respected captain. He is survived by my Aunt Jerry, his sister Thelma and his three surviving brothers, two of whom are also WW2 veterans.

No few words can do justice to the tapestry of a persons life, especially one as long and complex as his. The things and the changes people his age have seen in their lifetime are almost beyond belief.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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 I have just been informed that William F. Buckley has died.

   Few people have made as much difference as he did and fewer still have made it peacefully, intellectually and for the cause of liberty.

   When Buckley founded National Review, conservatives, and what would now be called libertarians were utterly in the wilderness. The notion of any meaningful restriction on the role and function of government, indeed the very concept of the US as a Republic was a minority view....almost a fringe one.

   Through sheer determination, and his considerable skills as a debater and writer, Buckley used his little intellectual magazine the way the founders of this republic used their pamphlets, to spread ideas about liberty, the threats to the nation and what role government should actually have. These were arguments that the left had effectively all but silenced for quite a while, and for some years, Buckley was a lone voice echoing in the wilderness...

He was however, a quite erudite voice and he caught peoples attention with his impressive knowledge, wit and idiosyncratic mannerisms.

Buckley helped to bring about a sea change in American politics. He helped to show  that a conservative interpretation of the US constitution, did not mean being a political ostrich.Through sheer intellectual excellence he  jump started a movement. He famously joked that  a conservative intellectual was required to 'stand athwart history, yelling stop'. This was occasionally used to malign him as an unthinking reactionary, but, in fact, was likely a reference to the "progressive" view of history inexorably leading to more and more centralization and ultimately "utopia" a very dark place which has little place for individualism.

Buckley was certainly not unthinking nor was he hide bound. He did change his views over time particularly with regards to civil rights and always on the side of greater freedom. Ultimately, he straddled the dividing lines between conservative and libertarian philosophies and tended to come down, particularly in later years more often than not on the side of liberty (he came to be convinced that drug legalization was the best course for instance) .

He will be missed.

More here.

UPDATE: Even more here, here, here, and.... here.

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One of the more important writers in the world of comics, Steve Gerber has passed away after a long and terrible illness. Gerber's quirky charachters (Howard the Duck, The Defenders) and stories were superb and he brought joy to many people including me. He is remembered here, here and here.

Via The Beat, comes a list of some of the charachters he created.

• A. Bizarro
• All-Night Party
• Angar the Screamer
• Princess Ariel
• Baphomet (comics)
• Cybernary
• Death-Stalker
• Destiny
• Destroyer Duck
• Doctor Bong
• Doctor Fate (Kent V. Nelson) (Replacement version)
• Exiles (Malibu Comics)
• Foolkiller
• Hard Time
• Headmen
• Howard the Duck
• Amber Hunt
• Hydro-Base
• Hydro-Men
• Ikthalon
• Jennifer Kale
• Kamuu
• KISS (Marvel Universe versions)
• Korrek
• Korvac
• Lord Pumpkin
• Mandrill
• Montesi
• N’Kantu, the Living Mummy
• Nekra
• Nevada
• Nikki
• Aleta Ogord
• Omega the Unknown
• Ookla the Mok
• Phantom Blonde
• Poison
• Red Guardian (later known as Starlight)
• Ruby Thursday
• Richard Rory
• Shanna the She-Devil
• Silver Samurai
• Sludge
• Starhawk
• Stewart the Rat
• Therea
• Thog
• Thundarr the Barbarian
• Void Indigo
• Wundarr the Aquarian

We have lost a lot...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The great ones pass....

Some of you may have inferred that among my less productive interests is Japanese Animation. Jinzo Toriumi is a person who helped make that hobby possible.

In the late 60's and early 70's Tatsunoko studios produced and released a string of animated TV productions that made anime a cultural force.

Inspired in part by the American comic books that the founders obtained from US Servicemen, shows like Mach GoGoGo(Speed Racer) and Gatchaman were far ahead of their contemporaries in art, animation quality and writing. The creative team that Mr. Toriumi was a part of caused a surge of interest in the then small Anime industry and other companies put more money in their animation departments. Toriumi was one of that original team He joined the company in 1965 and was a writer on some of the most important series of the early years of Anime.

The members of the Tatsunoko team were NOT the originators of Anime in Japan, but via their extremely popular shows, they had become a major catalyst for the industry. For a few years they were the gold standard and other companies strove mightily to catch up, by the early to mid 80s this had reached critical mass and the Anime explosion of that era was a result.

Like many of the original creative crew he left in the early 80s, in his case to work for Sunrise.

Although Tatsunoko is pretty much just a subsidiary of a toy company now, the members of Tatsunoko's initial creative team eventually  founded Studio Pierrot, Production IG and XEBEC, which are, even today, major creative and production forces in the world of anime.

Jinzo Toriumi helped to make a vast ammount of what we enjoy today possible. Few have made such a difference, fewer still have made one for the better.

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One of the most respected of the actual MilBloggers, Major Andrew Olmstead, was killed in the line of duty yesterday. His final post is here.

The Major led from the front.

Via everybody....

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Damn....

Benazir Bhutto, the first female Prime Minister of any Islamic nation, has been assassinated.

It took 4 tries but the bastards finally got her.

More here, here and here.
She may have been the best chance to pull Pakistan from the brink.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:00 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Evel Knievel has died.

Knievel, a barnstorming motorcycle stuntman who gained as much notoriety from his spectacular crashes as his successes, was indeed a loon, but he was a brave and talented loon. He dressed in red white and blue which he wore like a like a superhero, complete with a cape!  Despite his ostentatious outfits, and the hucksterish nature of his profession, he was a rare dash of sincerity and optimism in a revoltingly cynical and despondent time.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Via Colleen Doran comes the unhappy news that Doug Marlette, creator of the syndicated strip Kudzu, has died in an auto accident.

 In addition to Kudzu, Marlette was a Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist as well.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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From the Warships 1 Discussion Boards.

Rear Admiral Eugene Bennett Fluckey has passed away. He was one of the most decorated US submariners of WW2 and won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his courage in attacking a Japanese munitions convoy with a submarine in water only 30 feet deep.

Rank and organization: Commander, U.S. Navy, Commanding U.S.S. Barb. Place and date: Along coast of China, 19 December 1944 to 15 February 1945. Entered service at: Illinois. Born: 5 October 1913, Washington, D.C. Other Navy award: Navy Cross with 3 Gold Stars. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Barb during her 11th war patrol along the east coast of China from 19 December 1944 to 15 February 1945. After sinking a large enemy ammunition ship and damaging additional tonnage during a running 2-hour night battle on 8 January, Comdr. Fluckey, in an exceptional feat of brilliant deduction and bold tracking on 25 January, located a concentration of more than 30 enemy ships in the lower reaches of Nankuan Chiang (Mamkwan Harbor). Fully aware that a safe retirement would necessitate an hour's run at full speed through the uncharted, mined, and rock-obstructed waters, he bravely ordered, "Battle station--torpedoes!" In a daring penetration of the heavy enemy screen, and riding in 5 fathoms of water, he launched the Barb's last forward torpedoes at 3,000-yard range. Quickly bringing the ship's stern tubes to bear, he turned loose 4 more torpedoes into the enemy, obtaining 8 direct hits on 6 of the main targets to explode a large ammunition ship and cause inestimable damage by the resultant flying shells and other pyrotechnics. Clearing the treacherous area at high speed, he brought the Barb through to safety and 4 days later sank a large Japanese freighter to complete a record of heroic combat achievement, reflecting the highest credit upon Comdr. Fluckey, his gallant officers and men, and the U.S. Naval Service.

As commander U.S.S. Barb he took a ship with a mediocre war record and made it one of the most decorated of all US Submarines. In just under 2 years under his command, the ship sank more tonnage than any other submarine, over 80 enemy ships including a cruiser, a destroyer and a carrier! On his own initiative he put a a landing party on Karafuto (now Sakhalin Island), which  destroyed a railroad bridge and a train. (This was the ONLY US amphibious assault on the home islands and it was accomplished without loss!) The Barb was (unsurprisingly) the only US submarine to have a train on her battle flag.
See there...at the bottom center...
Fluckey also earned 4 Navy Crosses, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and numerous other awards, which made him one of the most decorated American servicemen of all time. He retired in 1972 a Rear Admiral, having served in several highly important positions after the war, including head of Naval Intelligence.

Update: Much more at Eaglespeak

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Mr Wizard has died.

HT: Jerry Pournelle

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