We Can Do It!

Geraldine Doyle passed away this week. She was 86. You may not know the name Geraldine Doyle but you know the face. Geraldine Doyle was a 17 year old stamping press operator in Montana when a news photographer snapped her picture in 1942. Commercial artist J. Howard Miller turned her image into one of the most iconic posters of World War II--that of young, brassy American female, her jaw set and her hair wrapped in a bandanna while she brazenly flexes her bare bicep for all the world--especially the Axis powers-- to see.

Ms Doyle's iconic image became emblematic of the fighting spirit of female American workers who turned out munitions, airplanes, tanks and trucks to support their men fighting overseas. This theme is supported by the poster's caption: We Can Do It!


The poster's image is often mistaken for that of "Rosie the Riveter," a similar illustration later penned by Norman Rockwell in 1943 for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post magazine.

What you may not know is that Miller's poster was designed as part of a motivational series to be displayed in the Midwest factories of the Westinghouse Electric Company.  The poster, intended for internal consumption, was to become emblematic of American can-do spirit--motivating American working women and fighting men, and dispiriting America's enemies.

Ms. Doyle apparently didn't know that she had become the original poster child for girl power until she came across the illustration in 1984 in a copy of Modern Maturity magazine.

Photography and art live forever. After inspiring not only  a cadre of Westinghouse workers, but the American war effort, We Can Do It! had a second life in the 1970s and 1980s inspiring a new generation of American feminists.

Another thing you may not know about Geraldine Doyle. Although she became an icon for American working women, Ms. Doyle lasted only about a week on the shop floor of that stamping plant. Soon after the photo was snapped, she quit to take a job as a timekeeper.

Just thought you might like to know.

Oral History

For a relatively young country, American has rich tradition of passing history down from generation to generation. The advantage of a young, dynamic country like ours is that  history can span a relatively short period of time but include many epochal events.

My wife's aunt was born in the 1880s and lived over 100 years. In that period of time she saw New York City grow into a world-class metropolis (She actually remembered seeing sheep graze in what is now Central Park's Sheep Meadow). She saw gas lamps replace candles and electric lamps replace the gas. She lived to see the birth of the automobile and the death of the buggy. The rise and fall of railroading and the popularity of jet air travel. And finally, one hot July night, men on the moon.

My own grandmother told the story of arriving in America as an 11-year old immigrant. She remembered being at the train station in Buffalo, New York the day President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. "A great man had been shot," she said, although she didn't know who he was at the time. Her perspective was that of a frightened 11-year old in a strange land as soldiers brandished their rifles, trying to lock down the train station as she was arriving from New York.

On a business trip I once visited an elderly aunt who soon would be overtaken by dementia, but at that point still remembered being a little girl who accompanied my grandmother in 1919 to bring dinner to an old soldiers home. The soldiers were World War I veterans and many were victims of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. Her life would eventually encompass sending a husband off to fight in World War II, losing a brother in that same war, protesting the Vietnam War, even as two nephews fought in it, and watching the bombs drop on Baghdad in the First Gulf War.

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of Major League Baseball, reminisced recently in a Wall Street Journal piece about sitting in a meeting in the 1970s and speaking with an attorney who had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Mr. Vincent, a student of history, asked whether Justice Holmes had ever spoken about his Civil War experiences. Justice Holmes had been wounded three times in that war.

The attorney, according to Vincent, told how Justice Holmes once took his clerks to Arlington National Cemetery. This was the late 1920s when the barbarism of the First World War was still fresh in the minds of Americans. Justice Holmes spoke about the current generation of Americans and the recent war's brutality. "They should have been with me at Antietam," he quietly told his clerks.

So here you have Justice Holmes, born in 1840 when he certainly would have seen veterans of the Revolutionary War, speaking about his experiences in the American Civil War to clerks who had just come through the First World War--all of which was recounted by a man who had lived to see both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam to a man who has witnessed countless global conflicts since then.

As Mr. Vincent writes, oral tradition is at the heart of our history. At this holiday season don't lose a chance to ask an older relative or family friend to share a story or two. Once our elders die a rich oral heritage dies with them unless we save it to hand down to the next generation.

Just thought you might like to know.

A New Christmas Carol

Lost in the news of Christmas week was a short Associated Press dispatch that Fred Hargesheimer died.

Doubtful many people knew who Fred Hargesheimer was. But like the character George Bailey in the Christmas chestnut It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Hargesheimer touched the lives of many, in the way that his life had been touched so many years before.

On June 5, 1943 Fred Hargesheimer was a P-38 pilot on a mission over Japanese-held New Britain island. Shot out of the sky by the enemy he parachuted into the jungle where for a month he survived until, near death, he was found by some local hunters.

The natives took him to their village on the island's coast and for 7 months hid him from the Japanese. They fed him and nursed him back to health. In February 1944 two Australian commandos engineered his pick-up by a U.S. submarine.

If that were the end of the story it would have been remarkable enough. But Fred Hargesheimer was more than remarkable. Sixteen years after his repatriation in the South Pacific he returned to the village of Ea Ea and the Nakanai people who had saved him. Moved by what he saw he realized the debt he owned them. It took him three years, but he raised $15,000 and returned to the village to build the first school for the impoverished residents.

Fred Hargesheimer was a salesman by trade, and apparently a pretty good one. Using his fundraising skills he would raise money and return to Ea Ea over several decades, building a clinic, a second school and libraries. In 1970 he and his wife moved to New Britain to teach the village children themselves.  A school experiment harvesting oil palm turned into a commercial venture creating for the first time a local economy for people who had only known only poverty.

Fred Hargesheimer died December 23, 2010 in Lincoln, Nebraska at the age of 94.

If, as Pres. Kennedy said in his Inaugural, here on earth God's work must truly be our own, then Fred Hargesheimer nailed it.

And as Dickens concluded in his Christmas Carol, may that truly be said of all of us.

Just thought you might like to know.

Merry Christmas

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”


So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Merry Christmas!

An Old Fashion Christmas

One of the pleasures of living where we do is that we have access to modern services like healthcare and good education systems, while at the same time having the feeling of tradition that comes from living in a tight knit community, rather than a bedroom subdivision. The town in which we live dates to 1640, making it one of the oldest communities in the U.S.

This respect for history and tradition protects our sense of community, despite the nearby Interstate highways, shopping malls, and cineplexes.
Every year in our little town we have what is billed as an "Old Fashioned Christmas Parade." Not an Old Fashioned Holiday Parade. Not an Old Fashioned Winter Solstice Parade. An Old Fashioned Christmas Parade.

New this year was "The Running of the Elves" to start things off on the big night. The Elf Run was followed by Christmas carols on the courthouse green, right near the Christmas tree and Nativity creche--set up on public property. Following the lighting of the Christmas tree, the parade stepped off like it has every year for the last 31 years.

This year it was particularly good. A bakers' dozen (that's 13 for you younger readers) high school marching bands. Antique tractors and fire engines. A parade of classic cars from '39 Fords to '57 Chevys. Clowns and South American indigenous dancers. And finally, the big man himself-Santa Claus atop a the biggest fire engine of them all.

Perhaps the biggest thrill of the night was the sight of the Lone Ranger suddenly galloping around the corner. Parade watchers were stunned as Silver reared on his hind legs while the Lone Ranger, with a hearty "Hi-ho Silver!" squeeze off a few rounds into the cold night air.

We're basically a conservative community concerned about our neighbors and concerned about celebrating our values. So we'll let other people argue about separation of church and state at Christmas time. I just know that in an increasingly complex era, the parade packs 'em in. Thousands of people lining the streets of a little town. And not just old timers. Young parents with infants swaddled in fleece. Grandparents. Even teenagers jaded by what the world has to offer them, crane their necks for a look as the bands march around the block.

And in a world seemingly gone mad the Old Fashioned Christmas Parade appeals to the sense of community and tradition in all of us.

You see, when you boil it all down, the world is still a pretty simple place. We're the ones who have gotten complicated.

                                    Just thought you might like to know.

The 351st Bomb Group-A War Story

This post is dedicated to my late uncle, Sgt. Edward H. Bucceri, a member of the 351st Bomb Group killed in action off the coast of England in World War II. Today is the anniversary of his death during a combat mission over the North Sea 67 years ago today. It was originally posted December 22, 2009. It is reprinted here in its entirety.

Uncle Ed died long before I was born. We know little about the incident that took his life other than it was his eighth combat mission. What information we have is preserved in The Chronicle of the 351st Bomb Group, by Peter Harris and Ken Harbour, and is the basis of this post.

Sgt. Bucceri's plane, serial number 42-39778 , and known as "Lucky Ball," was part of the 511th Squadron on a 34-plane bombing run that took off on December 22, 1943 from its base in Polebrook, England on a night-time mission to bomb a steel mill in Osnabruck, Germany. In command of Lucky Ball was the pilot, Lt. Lewis Maginn of Rochester, New York. It was to be the plane's fifth and final mission.

According to Lt. Maginn's recollection of the event, Lucky Ball was anything but lucky that night. It had just been overhauled prior to the mission, with two engines ripped out and replaced by rebuilt ones. Lt. Maginn recalls being uneasy with the fact that the plane was pressed into service without the rebuilt engines having logged some more running time following the overhaul.

In addition to having to make the run with untested engines, two of the regular crew could not go on the mission and were replaced in the ball turret and tail gun positions.

Early into the mission, the pilot realized something was wrong. Bomb Groups assigned to the position behind them were rapidly gaining on Lucky Ball. Lt. Maginn put the hammer down to "near full power" and still found himself falling behind his formation.

And then the oil pressure in the number four engine began to drop.

The pilot killed the four engine and, being close to the target, tried to make the run with three motors. Then the oil pressure on number three began dropping.

With two engines out on one side, and an impossible task to keep up, Lt. Maginn made the decision to break formation and turn back to base. The crew jettisoned its bomb load, ammo and equipment in hopes of lightening the load on the two remaining engines.

The crew then mistook an American plane for an enemy fighter and dived into a cloud bank. But the maneuver cost the crew "precious altitude," according to Lt. Maginn. Then the oil pressure in number two began to drop. The crew began to take flak from German fighters, worsening their altitude situation. The pilot was forced to shut down number two, leaving Lucky Ball one engine.

The crew dumped all remaining equipment, guns and ammunition and began a desperate run to the English coast. Sgt. Palmer, the radio man, sent out the SOS. But there was no luck for Lucky Ball that night as it struggled westward into a gale headwind.

With the English coastline in plain view, the crew came to the realization they would never reach it. They prepared to ditch their craft into the chop of the North Sea. Cruising low above the waves, the pilot cut the last engine to try and glide to a straight landing. The bomber hit the water at 85 miles per hour, breaking in half.

Lt. Maginn describes the intense cold of the North Sea in late December as "instantly numbing." The crash landing had jammed the cables on the life rafts, forcing the crew to "take to the water, their flotation devices their own hope for survival. Huddled together in the freezing water they watched Lucky Ball sink below the waves. The first big wave to break over them scattered them about the sea, each man to his own.

Sgt. Palmer assured Maginn that the rescue squadrons had a fix on their position, but it would be 45 more agonizing minutes before the first boat appeared. During that 45 minutes as the men drifted apart, Lt. Maginn later said, "the wind and bitter cold water took its toll rapidly." Five of the ten-man crew were rescued. Perishing that night were the navigator, Lt. James McMorrow of Akron, Ohio, Sgts. Albert Meyer of Roswell, New Mexico, Docile Nadeau of Fort Keat Mills, Maine, and Clarence Rowlinson of Des Moines, Iowa. Sgt. Meyer was the only one whose body was recovered.

Sgts. Nadeau and Rowlinson were the replacement ball turret and tail gunners fatefully assigned to the flight that night.

The fifth crew member killed was my uncle, Edward H. Bucceri of Jersey City, New Jersey.

No memorial marks the spot where these men went to their final rest. There was no military funeral at a national cemetery, no 21-gun salute, no honor guard. No one made a movie about the Lucky Ball's last run, and no Grammy-winning folk singer penned a mournful song . The crew that perished that night were just five of the more than 400,000 Americans killed in action in that war. Today I remember one of them.

Rest in Peace, Uncle Ed. Merry Christmas. And thank you.



Just thought you might like to know.

                                             Polebrook England today. Site of former
                                             RAF base for the 351st Bomb Group (H)