The Role a Brassiere Played in a Notorious Robbery

In Miami, Florida in 1941, Marie Ore had big dreams of a middle-class life with a big beautiful house, a beautiful car, and pearls.   Instead, she had to work for a pittance at the Southern Bell Phone Company rolling money that came in from the payphones and was counted by machines and rolled.  But Marie was ambitious. 

One day Marie who didn't make enough to cover the bare necessities didn't have any money to buy lunch.  So she thought about it and realized that Southern Bell didn't know how much was coming in until they placed it in the machines.  What she was thinking of doing was dangerous as there were guards.  But she nicked two coins in her hand and slid them into her brassiere--a place no manager would dream of looking.

When she got away with it that day she did it the next day and the day after that.  Then she talked to her sister-in-law Rita and her friends and they formed a system: One for home; One for the company.  They would place the coins in their brassieres.  Now back then these brassieres were cone-shaped and huge and could carry a lot of coins without being seen.  During their breaks, they would transfer the money to their purses in the ladies room.

Soon these women were making $150 a day and Marie bought herself those pearls.  A year past before trouble happened.  Marie came home to find Rita distraught.  She believed that someone had stolen $150 and had called the police. Marie was furious with her because this would mean the police would find the coins and put two and two together, which they did and arrest them for theft. 

This was a nightmare for Southern Bell who lost nearly $100,000 and the way in which they lost it was scandalous.   The women were ordered to pay back the money and serve a year in prison, but the public outcry caused the governor to step in and make its probation.  He said after all this was a job that would tempt even the most honest of people.  And so this is how a brassieres came to play an important role in one of Florida's most notorious robberies of the century.   

A Curious Incident of Prostitution During the Civil War

Nashville, Tennessee in the 1860s was a bustling place that held a dirty little secret.  Smokey Row. Where the prostitutes lived.  In February of 1862 when Major General Willam Rosencranz drove out the Confederates he brought in an army of 30,000 soldiers--and customers.  The prostitutes went from 200 to 1,500 nearly overnight.

With more prostitutes came more venereal diseases.  Some of them were quite painful. Some of them--like gonorrhea and syphilis were quite deadly. Hundreds of soldiers were coming down with gonorrhea and syphilis and seeking help at the hospital.  But the health crisis wasn't enough to stop others from visiting the brothels.

Rosencrantz realized that he had to do something before he lost too many men to hold down the city and lost it to the Confederates.  So he sought counsel from his aide Lieutenant Colonol George Spaulding who told him to round up the prostitutes and put them on a ship and sends them away. So he did. He put them on the ship Idaho and told the Captain to drop them off in Louisville, Kentucky.

Soon the ship had returned to Nashville with the prostitutes.  Seems that Louisville didn't want them either.  So Rosencranz turned once again to Spaulding who came up with an even more daring plan for the prostitutes.  He would make them pay a $5 licensing fee and require them to renew it weekly with a health inspection showing that they didn't have any venereal diseases in order to keep working.  The money that they collected from the licensing fee went toward building a facility to treat the women when the did get sick with silver nitrate, the prevailing treatment for those diseases at the time, but certainly no cure.  When the war ended, so did the legalization of prostitution. 

Moon People: Real or Myth?

Going back to the 13th century you can find statues, two feet wide and three feet tall made of stone with large eyes called Moon People.  Back 200 years before Columbus set foot on American soil in the Bahamas, the Cherokee migrated from the Great Lakes to Southern Appalachia looking for something better. Better land, good weather, and good soil.  They built permanent wooden buildings around the area.

Soon they encountered strange beings in the area, unlike anything the Cherokee have seen before.  They had white skin and unusually large pale eyes.  They seemed to be from another planet.   They lived in a stone settlement on mounds surrounded by walls. As time went by the relationship between the two people became hostile and the two went into battle against each other with the Cherokee winning and the Moon People moving out.  To warn future generations about these bad people, the Cherokee carved rock creatures to remind them what they looked like.  As the centuries passed they came to be regarded as a myth.  They became something you tell the children to frighten them. Be good or the Moon People will get you.  But on a dark night, some people claimed they could still see them.

In the 1980s, in Indiana, historian Dana Olsen is interested in ancient stories and folklore.  He spends his time trying to understand where the stories come from--what the origins of the stories are.   One day while hiking he comes across a stone fort built on a mound with walls that looks like structures built in the 12th century in Wales. 

There is an old Welsh legend around 1170 of a Prince Madoc who sailed west with ten ships and hoped to find new territory to explore.  He never returned to Wales and it was believed that his ships wrecked in the Atlantic Ocean.  Olsen becomes convinced that the Welsh are the Moon People the Cherokee described so long ago.  The Welsh had round pale eyes and white skin and were very hairy causing them to look like something the Cherokee had never seen before.  You can find these forts across the South from North Carolina to Alabama which is where the Cherokee lived.  So are the Moon People figments of the Cherokee imagination or were they Welsh people who lived there from long ago and discovered America before Columbus.  You decide.   

The Brave Florence Betty Smith

On December 8, 1941, the Japanese navy invaded the U.S. Territory, the Philippines.  Military bases that had been there since the 1880s were overrun and taken over.  In Manila, a woman, Florence Betty Smith, whose husband was killed during the attack decides to avenge her husband.  She joins a group of Filipino and American resistance fighters.  This band of civilians hopes to launch a guerilla-style campaign of attacks on the Japanese installations and drive them from the island.

But first, they must overcome an obstacle.  They need fuel to make the trucks go to drive all over the island and bring in supplies by boat.  The Japanese have blocked access to it.   Without the fuel, the resistance was over before it began.  Smith gets a job as a typist for the Japanese writing gas vouchers.  She secretly writes extra ones and gives them to the resistance who would sabotage supply lines and smuggle goods to prisoners of war.

She is able to do this job for a while, but one day she is caught and the Japanese throw her into a 2 X 4-foot cell and give her gruel once a day to eat.  They tortured her endlessly to get information on the resistance.  The rebels drain the Japanese military resources so that when the Americans come back to retake the island in February of 1945 they have an easier job of it.

Smith is found still in her cell, emaciated but still alive.  She moves to the United States and in 1947 is awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given.  She married again and had children with her new husband and went on to live a peaceful life.  This brave woman really stood up to the Japanese not only by helping the resistance but also by not saying anything under torture.  We owe her a debt of gratitude. 

The Miracle of Flight 9

230 feet long with a wingspan of 195 feet and white with a red stripe, the Boeing 747 was one hell of a plane.  On June 24, 1982, a British Airways Flight 9, the City of Edinburgh, on the route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Perth, Australia had on board 263 souls.  Captain Eric Moody had been flying for years and had loads of experience, which he would need.

For the first ninety minutes of the flight, everything was fine.  They were 2,000 miles from their destination.  But once they began to cross the Indian Ocean things started to go wrong. Smoke started to leak into the cockpit.  The Captain begins to check the instruments to figure out what was going on but soon he is having trouble reading them in the smoke.

A warning light flashes indicating that an engine is down, but the Captain isn't too worried because he has three other engines.  But soon, one by one, each engine goes down.  There's no way they can make it to Perth and the nearest airport is in Jakarta, Indonesia 150 miles away.  The only way to get there is by gliding and coasting nine miles for a drop of 3,000 miles of altitude loss.

But this will only get them 104 miles before they'll have to land.  As they drop below 34,000 feet their only hope is to get one engine going.  As they reached 12,000 feet one of the engines comes alive and begins working.  Minutes later Moody lands in Indonesia.

It turns out that Mount Galunggung had erupted and the ash rose 40,000 feet in the air from the eruption had gotten into the engines.  It was dark out since it was a night flight so the Captain didn't see any of this.  The City of  Edinburgh was renamed the City of Elgin and was cleaned and refitted to fly again.  Captain Moody received an award for his heroics.  And one of the passengers, Betty Tootell married fellow passenger James Ferguson who was in the seat in front of her.  Tootell wrote a book about their experiences called All Four Engines Have Failed.  This flight was a miracle of a Captain who flew the plane through a disaster safely onto the ground.     

Jeanette Rankin: A Hero For Women

Jeanette Rankin was interested in architecture and furniture design.  But those careers weren't open to women then, so when she left the University of Montana with a degree in biology she did work as a teacher, seamstress, and social worker.  Having raised six younger siblings left her with marriage, not on the mind, never mind the many proposals.

At age thirty she fought to get women the right to vote in Montana. Four years later in 1914, they did.  Then she decided to try for a seat for herself--in Congress.   No one thought she had a chance. A woman in Congress?  But her sisters helped with the campaign and her well connected and wealthy brother Wellington was her manager and trusted advisor.  She beat seven men, by 6,000 votes or more to win her seat as a Republican representing Montana.

In Washington, she couldn't let petty problems such as a lack of women's restrooms or a man hitting on her get in her way. So she sat next to the oldest men there to avoid any improper behavior.  She became one of fifty-one unpopular Congressmen who voted against World War I. On her sixth day in office she had found her passion. Pacifism.

She didn't believe she could win her seat back in a Democratically controlled section of the state that had been drawn up and told she now represented so she ran for Senate.  She narrowly came in second place for the Republican Primary but was accused of taking bribes by them.  So she got good and pissed off enough to run for Senate in the national election as a third-party ticket just to prove her honesty.  She came in third but made her point.

She decided to continue her fight for World Peace.  Then at the ripe old age of sixty, she won a seat in Congress again.  When Franklin went to Congress a second time she beat three men to do it and demanded they declare war on Japan they voted 388-1. The one was Rankin who said, "As a woman I can't go to war and I refuse to send someone else."  She was the only person to vote "No" against both World Wars.  It cost her her career in politics.

She spent the rest of her life traveling around lecturing on world peace and visiting India where she fell in love with Gandhi.  She lived cheaply in rural Georgia and made friends of the children of the neighborhood with whom she shared the stories of her life.  In 1968 she led a march on Washington of five thousand women dressed in black against the Vietnam War.  She died peacefully at age ninety-two still thinking of a third term.  She is best known for being the woman who introduced the Nineteenth Amendment in Congress and battled hard for it to be passed and then ratified and put into law on August 18, 1920.

Stonewall: 50 Years Later

In 1969 homosexuality was illegal in all states except Illinois.  That summer the New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in Greenwich Village often. You had to have identification ready but if you were smart it was false.  You also would run from the police.  This was a time of the Civil Rights movement. The Women's Movement.  The Anti-War Movement.  People were standing up to the cops and the homosexuals were running from the cops.  On June 28, 1969, the cops ran from them.

The 1960s were a dark time for homosexuals. The medical authorities said that it was a mental defect or a kind of psychopathy.  They believed that people talked you into becoming homosexuals and "turned you".  They also believed they could turn you back into a heterosexual by aversive conditioning where they showed you pornographic pictures and gave you electric shocks.  They also sterilized you, castrated you, and sometimes even lobotomized you.  Just to make you a heterosexual and "fix|" you. One place, known as the Dachau of institutes drowned you, in essence, waterboarding the patient. You were supposed to marry and have kids.  Not be with your own kind.

While people of color were protected by laws, gays were not.  If the cops caught a homosexual with another homosexual doing anything "wrong" their names and addresses would be published in the newspaper.  If you were a teacher the school board would know and fire you. You would not be able to practice law with a criminal record or be a doctor. Hell, you wouldn't even be able to be a beautician because that required a license and to have that you needed a clean criminal record. 

Greenwich Village was an openly gay place to be and you could go where you wanted to go.  The Stonewall Inn was just one of many bars that catered to homosexuals in the area.  Christopher Street was the street where gays could hang out with each other and just be. It was theirs.  And the Stonewall was on that street.  As their visibility increased so did the people's need to terrorize them. Shop windows were smashed. You could be beaten. Have your head smashed into a toilet.  Wind up in wheelchairs. They were being hunted.

When the World's Fair came to New York City in 1964 the mayor pushed for a campaign to clean up the "weirdness" or the homosexuals away from the city.  In New York, there were many laws that gays could be charged with. One was the 1845 law of masquerading which was dressing in more than three items of clothing from a gender not your own.  The cops would dress in drag and try to get men to hit on them and sometimes they dressed in plain clothes. Entrapment was a reality. The cops would hide behind the walls of the urinals of the subway station to try to catch people having sex.  They arrested 300-500 for crimes against nature and 3,000--5,000 for solicitation or loitering a year in New York City.  Gay people were not powerful politically and there were a series of escalating skirmishes. Eventually, something was going to blow.

In a gay bar when the light came on you knew to stop what you were doing and separate.  The Stonewall didn't have a liquor license and were raided by the cops regularly.  The Mafia owned the jukeboxes. They owned the cigarette machines. They owned the watered-down liquor.  They decided to go ahead and own the gay bars too and make some money.  The Mafia paid off the cops.  The Stonewall was a down at the heels kind of place that street kids, designers, and boxers went to.  The bar was a toilet but it was a refuge from the streets.  First, you go to the door and a small window opens up and the guy at the door decides whether or not you get to come in.  In the front part of the bar was where the "regular" gays were and toward the back where the jukebox was, you could find the drag queens such as Mary Queen of the Scotch, Conga Woman, Captain Faggot, and Miss Twiggy.   You could see a show there and find love.

What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could slow dance there. Because you couldn't show affection out on the street.  Heterosexuals had so many outlets. Such as lover's lanes, hotels, motels, and drive-ins.  Gays were told they had no right to any of that. With the exception of some mob owned bars to meet in they had nothing.  The only other thing they had were these meat trucks that when they weren't' being used to haul meat were being rented out to gays to meet in to have sex in.  And they still got raided.  And when the police arrested you they sometimes used billy clubs on you and beat you.

The Mattachine Society was the first Gay Rights Organization.  They talked with the mayor and finally got them to stop with the entrapment.  However, Mayor John Lindsey wanted to get reelected in 1969 and in June he started his campaign to clean up the streets of the "weirdos".  They raided The Checkerboard, a very popular gay bar a week before they raided Stonewall.  There was also vigilantism.  Straights were using walkie talkies to gather their forces together against the gays.  Gays were being shot, strangled, thrown in the river, being blackmailed and losing employment.

It was a perfect storm that night on June 28, 1969. The Stonewall had been raided that previous Tuesday night.  Raids generally took place on a weeknight early in the evening so it wasn't too crowded and the mafia paid them off and didn't lose too much business.  But that night it was unusual because it was jam-packed and neither the mob nor the sixth precinct had been alerted that there was going to be a raid.  There were only six cops because they felt they had the nearby precinct for backup if need be.  They turned the lights out and started asking for IDs.  Outside people are asking "What's going on?|" People come out of the Stonewall with their arms raised in the V is for Victory sign.  More people start to show up and to congregate.

A rather tough lesbian was fighting the cops and not going quietly and the more she fought the more they beat her.  This caused more people to gather and grow alarmed.  People started shouting "Pigs" and "Cops" and throwing pennies for copper or that is what they were worth.  They were calling the cops names and grabbing their buts and telling them how good looking they were.  The cops barricaded themselves with some of the gays inside the Stonewall along with two members of the Village Voice newspaper.  Things were being thrown against the plywood covered window and incendiary devices were being thrown inside, but the cops took the fire extinguisher from the wall and put them out.

One of the drag queens, Miss New Orleans, grabbed a parking meter from the ground and was helped by others to pound it into the door of the Stonewall.  By this time there were several thousand outside compared to the six cops standing inside.  The cops radio signal kept cutting out so they couldn't get a message to the precinct.  The head cop, as Howard Smith the editor of the Village Voice recalls it he went to every single man and said his name and said if you fire before I say to you will be walking the beat at Statton Island for the rest of your life.  That cop believed that the first shot that was fired meant that all the shots would be fired and people would be killed and it would make things worse.  They did find a secret way out.

The cops did arrive with tactical gear.  They marched down Christopher Street pushing the gays in front of them.  The gays pushed back. And then they circled around the street and came at the police from behind.  They chased the cops around the blocks for hours.  Gays were supposed to be weak and here they were picking things up and throwing them and coming at the cops not afraid anymore.  The drag queens were doing Rockette kicklines and singing.  They went into the Stonewall with baseball bats and destroyed it beating it to death.  They lit trashcans on fire and slashed police cars tires.  They were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it anymore.

The next day the Stonewall opened up for business and it wasn't just the gays who showed up but the Black Panthers and Anti-War Movement people eager to fight the police.  And while some still got a nightstick to the head it wasn't as many and they fought back.  The cops broke open the tear gas in front of the Stonewall.  There were more anger and more fight the second night. They had found their voice.  There was no going back into the closet.  "It really should have been called an Uprising. They were objecting to how they were being treated. That's more of an Uprising than a Riot," Howard Smith said of the time.

They decided they couldn't just let it go like that. That they needed something to mark the occasion and someone suggested a march.  And thus was born the first Gay Pride March.  Of course, there were bomb threats and people had threatened to shoot them so at first, it was more of a run than a march, but after a while, more and more people joined in and over 2,000 people marched in that first parade that was a parade for everyone.  And every year in cities across the globe they have a Gay Pride March to mark the occasion of The Stonewall Inn's Uprising.

After fifty years a lot has changed in America for gays.  They are no longer barred from work. They can adopt a child. They can even marry. They have come so far and it has taken so long and so much blood, sweat and tears to do so.  The people of Stonewall were brave to finally stand up and say "NO MORE!" to laws that prohibited them from being who they were.  To laws that kept them from being with who they wanted to be with.  To laws that said that there was something wrong with them.  I for one am glad they did.  As a bisexual, they were standing up for me.  And I am grateful.     

The Preacher Whose Creative Thinking Saves a Slave From a Fate Worse Than Death

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 meant that slave owners could chase after their slaves into the free Northern states and recapture them and bring them back to the South.  This meant that the Underground Railroad, which began in Ohio and ended in Ontario, Canada did so to get slaves out of the United States and into Canada where they would be safe and free.

In 1853 Reverend William Troy, a free black man in Cincinnati, Ohio has decided to break out of prison the slave Lewis Williams who has escaped from his masters down South but was caught and was going to be sent back South.  Troy had a plan to free him and get him on the Underground Railroad.

When Lewis Williams went before the judge for his trial where he would be sentenced to go back to his masters, Troy had the courthouse filled with members of his church.  He also had the lawyer make a long argument.  When the signal was given Williams would duck down and crawl out of the courthouse and walk to the Reverend William Troy's house and wait for him to appear.

Later when Troy appeared they planned on sneaking him out but the police were doing a house to house search. So, Troy had Williams dress up in one of Troy's daughter's dresses and called a male friend of his to escort his "daughter" out for a walk on the town.  It worked and later Troy was able to get Williams to the Underground Railroad and Williams was able to get to Canada.  With his quick and creative thinking, Revered Troy was able to save the life of Lewis Williams and go on to save others like him.

The First Driverless Car--In 1925

1925--two decades after Ford rolled out the first assembly lined car--there were problems with car crashes and people dying.  Francis Houdina believed that people were the problem, not the car.  He was an engineer who took it upon himself to look for the newest innovation--get rid of drivers.  Cars should be operated by professional drivers via remote control. He didn't believe the average person should be behind the wheel of a car.

Radio waves are new technology and when he gets enough money for a prototype they will feature prominently in his design.  He places an antenna on top of the 1926 Chandler automobile that connects to a receiver.  The receiver is linked to a special device that can move the steering wheel, press the accelerator, and engage the break.  However, the receiver must remain close to the car at all times in order to retain the link.  A professional driver would operate the car while following in a car of his own.  He called it The American Wonder.

On July, 27 he conducted a public demonstration on the streets of New York City.  Houdina stood on the running board of the controlled car while an assistant operated the car that controlled his.  The driverless car started up on its own and pulled into traffic like it was being driven by a ghost.  The crowd was amazed.  The cars were given a police escort down Broadway.  Members of the press followed behind them in another car.  The car effortlessly turned down Columbus Circle and glides along 55th Street.

When the remote car turns onto 5th Avenue and approaches 47th Street it begins to weave wildly back and forth.   Houdina is grabbing hold of the side of the car while running down two trucks and a milk wagon which took to the side of the edge of the road for protection.  The assistant, John Alexander, tries to wrestle control of the car back but fails and the car crashes into a press car filled with cameramen.  People hurry to see what has happened.  The press has a field day with the car's lack of success.

Houdina investigated the steering wheel which is where the problem seemed to lie since it controlled the car's movements.  It turned out the steering wheel contraption had become detached and that is what caused it to go out of control.  It was such a simple thing that seemed to sink his whole operation in one day.  But Houdina did not give up.  He went around the United States and gave many demonstrations but the car was never seen as anything more than a novelty item.  A little less than a hundred years later and we now have driverless cars only the professional driver is a computer and doesn't have to drive another car a little way down the road to control our cars. It controls our cars from within.  But one visionary had an idea of how to make our roadways safer by taking out the bad drivers and saving lives in the process.

The Tree That Almost Caused World War III in North and South Korea

On a slice of wood reads "It is a piece of the Normandy Poplar Tree which was thee Aug 18, 1976 incident in which two UNC officers were murdered by the NKA at Panmunjom, Korea."  The story behind it is terrifying in that World War III could have broken out at any time during this incident.

It's been more than twenty years since the Korean War that left a line marking the communist North from the democratic South called the Demilitarized Zone or the DMZ, which was a two and a half mile wide strip of land.  These two countries could go to war in an instant.  Just recently an American soldier had been kidnapped and rescued.  50 American soldiers and 1000 Korean soldiers had been killed along the DMZ over the past ten years.  In the South, the border is guarded mostly by South Korean soldiers and American soldiers.

But in 1976 there was an object that stood in the way of the South's view of the North. A Normandy Poplar tree.  There is no telling what nefarious machinations the  North Koreans could be hiding behind that tree which is over 80 feet tall.  On August 18 a group of soldiers goes in to prune the branches.  A group of North Korean soldiers go in and order the team to stop that the tree is sacred to Kim Il Sung, which everyone knows to be false. But the team refuses to back down.  A scuffle breaks out and two American officers, Captain Arthur Bonifas and Lieutenant Mark Barrett are killed, while five South Korean troops are wounded.  This came to be known as the "Axe Murder Incident".

The North Koreans believe that the Americans will leave Korea now like they left Vietnam.  They certainly did not believe that they would be doing any tree trimming after Kim Jong-Il spun a story that the Americans started the whole thing and are at fault. Ford and Kissinger believe differently and demand an apology.

When news of this reaches the ears of the head of United Nations command General Richard Stillwell of the U.S. Army he doesn't overreact.  Many find that the General was a paragon of military officials, highly experienced, and very professional.  Some of his men feel a call of realization is necessary with air strikes and a land invasion.  Stillwell believes this could spiral out of control and lead to World War III.

His solution is to chop down the tree.  On August 21 he sends in a tree felling crew commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Victor Verra along with an escort of 23 armored trucks, 27 helicopters, and dozens of fighter jets.  The missions is named Operation Paul Bunyan.  Stillwell initiated the largest, most expensive tree trimming in history.  The North Koreans sent 150 sharpshooters to the edge of the DMZ.  The military in Korea was put on DEFCON 3, the highest state of military readiness. Only one of three times that has happened with September 11, 2001, being the most recent. 

Despite armed sides, the lumberjacks focused on their mission without anyone firing a single shot.  A few days later Kim Il Sung expresses regret over the loss of the American lives, something he had never done before and no member of the Kim Dynasty has done since.  The military promoted Bonifas posthumously to Major and renamed Camp Kitty Hawk Camp Bonifas at the DMZ after him.  Slices of the tree with the text are handed out to commanders in the mission as thanks for cool heads that World War III was averted.  So because of a simple tree, we came so close to a world war of epic proportions.  It's a good thing we had calm heads like General Stillwell to guide us through such a difficult time.  It also reminds us why we have soldiers along the DMZ at a time when people were wondering why it was necessary.  Today we know why as Kim Jong-Il is a dangerous threat all on his own.  But once we had no idea how dangerous the North Koreans were and how easy war could come to us.       

How the B17 Revolutionized Aircraft Safety

The Boening Flying Fortress was nineteen feet high, seventy-five feet long and had two wings that were one hundred and three feet wingspan.  Containing several machine guns and 4,800 pounds of a payload of bombs the B17 was the most important bomber plane in World War II and was born of a fiery catastrophe that revolutionized aviation.

In 1935 aircraft engineers were busy building the next generation of war airplanes. After months of testing the greatest one is set to make its debut on October 30.  The U.S. Army Air Corp rolls out Boening's Flying Fortress, the most technically advanced aircraft ever built. A four-engine plane that can travel farther distances and carry much larger payloads.  This plane will be a gamechanger. 

Army test pilots Major Ployar Hill and Lieutenant Donald Putt and three other crew members aboard the plane for the test flight.  It takes off but something goes wrong and it crashes to the ground killing Hill and crew member Les Howard and leaving Putt badly burned with a head injury.  This was the finest plane ever built and was flown by the best pilots available. So what went wrong?

When Putt was able to talk he explained that Hill forgot to unlock the plane's "gust locks" which locked control surfaces in place and by the time they took off it was too late to fix it which messed up the altitude on the plane causing it to stall and crash.  Normally there are only three or four items to check off before take off, but the B17 was a much more complicated plane and it required thirty-eight items to check off in a particular order which was too much for one man to remember. 

The Army Air Corp solved this by coming up with a pre-flight checklist that the pilot goes over with the co-pilot.  This now standard safety item is all due to the B17 Flying Fortress which incidentally we wouldn't have won World War II without.  Now even aircraft as small as two-seaters use them all the way up to big airliners.  They are an integral part of flying and we can't do without them. 

Marvel Vs DC: Where We Stand Now

It's been a while since I've chronicled my daughter and I and our battles with Marvel and DC.  Since then we have started watching The Flash together and I watch The Arrow by myself. We both enjoy The Flash and I enjoy The Arrow as well.  Sadly, Batman has fallen by the wayside.  She has outgrown him and no longer wants to watch his movies or his TV shows or cartoons.   I kinda miss the guy.  We both like the new Aquaman. She doesn't know the Aquaman of my childhood from the Justice League cartoon where he was one of the lamest characters there. Only the Wonder Twins could outdo him.  Ond of them would turn into a water object like a pail of water and the other would transform into some kind of dumb useless animal.  No, DC made a wise character move and hired the sexiest actor they could find to play the part, Jason Momoa, who also had a real sense of comic timing that helped make up for his lack of experience.  I believe he'll get better the more he acts as he has a natural instinct for it.  I will say I'm looking forward to the Flash movie if they can ever get it together.

 But as much as I have a soft spot in my heart for Batman I refuse to watch the latest incarnation of it. I can only go through the beginning of Batman so many times.  I am dying to see the Birds of Prey movie with Margo Robbie as Harley Quinn and Black Canary and Huntress.  I do wish Lady Gaga would change her mind about playing Huntress, though.  She would be perfect.  I'm also looking forward to the James Gunn written Suicide Squad.  My daughter is looking forward to these movies too, but right now she is most looking forward to Shazam!  I'm not sure what to make of Shazam!  When I was a kid he was one of the many superheroes shows that were on TV and he was also the lamest.  So I'm a little apprehensive about watching the movie based on a lame superhero.  I hope I'm proved wrong and that it's great.

But enough about DC because while I watch Arrow and Gotham and Flash and am looking forward to a couple of their movies, at heart I'm a Marvel girl. I watch Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Gifted, Cloak and Dagger TV shows. And while Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil and I believe Jessica Jones have all been canceled I don't know that this is the end of the shows.  For one thing, Daredevil was the second highest rated show on Netflix when they canceled it.  The writers of the show had already written season four so it came as a huge surprise when they found out the show was canceled.  They plan on shopping the show elsewhere and I know of one place that would probably take it and that place would be the new Disney channel which is airing shows that I can't wait to see such as a Scarlet Witch show and a Loki show.   Cloak and Dagger have just started its second season and I can't wait to watch it on HULU.  The Gifted has just finished its third and perhaps best season about the mutant underground.

We saw Black Panther twice and the Avengers movie twice and we both loved the Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse movie. Her favorite character was Mile while mine was of course Gwen.  We thought the Antman and Wasp movie wasn't too bad.  I also can't wait to see the Phoenix movie which I've been dying to see ever since I heard about it oh, so many years ago.  And now it is upon us.  Also, of course, we can't wait to see Avengers Endgame and Spider-Man Far From Home. Though for me Toby McGuire is the true Spider-Man, Tom Holland is not bad as the webhead. I'm also dying to see the Black Widow movie and the Dr. Strange movie coming out next year.  Those are two of my favorite characters in the MCU.  I'm also intrigued by the movie The Eternals which would have a gay superhero in it a first in superhero movie history.  On the TV show Supergirl there is a transgender superhero named Dreamer and the Canary is bisexual. These barriers seem so much easier to break on TV than on the big screen for some reason.

Anyhow, my daughter has pretty much come back over to the Marvel side. When they started advertising Captain Marvel I was like we're going to see this movie if I have to drag her to it. But she surprised me by asking to take her to see it.  And being really excited about the movie.  Which for her is odd in that she hates movies about women superheroes.  But she seemed to love this one as did I, though Thor is still her favorite Marvel character.  I have my Marvel girl back and that's all a mother can ask for.         

Anne Morgan's War In France

                                           
Anne Morgan was born on July 25, 1873, into the lap of luxury as the youngest of four of rich and savvy banker John Pierpoint Morgan's children in Highland Falls, New York.  In 1902 she became acquainted with Jane Adams of Hull House in Chicago and she was a woman concerned with the issues affecting women. She also combined her humanitarian works with a business discipline that she got from her father who passed away in 1913 leaving her very wealthy.  She left for France to set up house near Versailles with two other women.  When war broke out she tried to raise money to help France out.

In July of 1917, she formed CARD or the American Committee for Devastated France (known by its French acronym).  Dr. Anne Murray Dike was president of the organization and she was Vice President and Treasurer.  Over the course of seven years, they had 350 American women who came over to help with the reconstruction of the Red Zone of France.  They believed in helping France because France helped us out during the Revolutionary War.

In the Red Zone, six out of twenty towns escaped any damage.  110 houses were destroyed, 3,000 factories were totaled, and only 196,000 people were left out of 530,000.  In 1917 the Germans liberated an area of it, Picardy, where they worked.  They were given authority by French General Phillipe Petain and set up headquarters at the Chateau de Blerancourt.  The soldiers built on seven barracks for the women.

Their first duty was to see to the immediate needs of the people with food and medical attention.  While the women were called nurses and they were trained as nurses, a first for the times, some of the women were actual doctors, dentists, and surgeons.  They had offered up their services to the military but the French who don't have many female doctors were against women working in the military hospitals so the women went to work with private organizations with the civilian population.  These women had to pay their own way over so many of them came from a certain social standing in society and they had to be able to drive a vehicle because they would be driving trucks around the countryside and repairing them as well in order to get to the people in need of their services.   People were living in shacks next to their bombed out homes, in trenches, and in caves so their needs were great.

Most of the reconstruction would have to wait until the end of the war to begin and once that happened they began in earnest.  They didn't stop at food or sanitary conditions but they also gave people back their will to live.  They handed out hoes and seed and later agriculture equipment to get people farming again.  With the children, they got them back in school as soon as possible.  Back then for boys that meant learning a trade and for girls that meant the domestic arts. For the girls, they also taught them canning and sterilization.  But most importantly they showed them that there was an education to be had beyond what they were being taught.

Milk stations were set up as soon as possible in Soisson so mothers could bring their children there to get fresh sterilized milk for their babies.   They also handed out free baby carriages to the mothers.  Libraries opened up for people to check out books and bookmobiles began cruise along the back roads to lend out books to people and to those who couldn't read the women went out to read to them.  270,000 loans were made in two years.

On December 24, 1919, Santa Claus came to visit the area and hand out presents and candy to the children though he didn't have his sled--he came in one of the CARD trucks.  475 children were seen by Santa that day.  She also introduced basketball to the children and had the girls participating in sports along with the boys.

While Anne Morgan certainly donated money to the cause, she was not the main donater.  She would fly to the United States and have fundraisers. She had organizations in 25 cities that were devoted to raising money to the cause.  One night a boxing match at Madison Square Garden between Benny Leonard and Ritchie Mitchell raised $80,000 for the cause.

But she had a motto and it was "I will provide emergency aid but then God helps those who help themselves".  CARD was not meant to be permanent.   They trained French nurses to take over for when they left and they left a sizable treasury in place.  Anne Morgan and Dr. Anne Dike both became the first American women to receive the Legion of Honor by the French government. For Anne, the work would not be finished as when World War II came around and she would help out as much as her health would let her.  She would die in 1952.  Her work lives on in A.M.S.A.M. (Association Medico Sociale Anne Morgan) in Soisson, France.
  

Nzingha: The Female King of Angola

Born around 1580 in Portuguese West Africa, or modern-day Angola, Nzingha was one of five children of King Ndongo of the Mbundu and Ndongo people who put up with decades of invasions by Portuguese slavers.  Her father had her trained in war and diplomacy and she was well educated in that she could read and speak Portuguese.  In 1624, her brother took the throne then killed her son. She didn't stand for that so she poisoned him to get him back and killed her nephew and ate his heart.  This left her as ruler of the land at the age of forty-two. She forbade her people to call her queen but to call her king and immediately went to war for her country's independence.

She could be a diplomat or a total barbarian creating chaos to the invading armies.  She was smart in that she found unique ways to add to her army by freeing any slave that made it to Angola and asking that they become a soldier.  She had her soldiers get captured by the Portuguese and then steal arms from them and escape.  She formed alliances with other area tribes and the Dutch. This increased her strength and earned her respect from these other countries who looked down on Africans as less than human. The Dutch proved to be just as treacherous as the Portuguese in that they wanted to use the Mbundu for slavery too. 

She once let peace treaty negotiations go on for eight years because she wanted them to.  Religion was something to be used to help in her cause.  She was baptized as a Christian under the name Anna to please the Portuguese but then tried cannibalism to gain the respect of the fiercest tribe around.  She was brutal in war and was utterly fearless.  She was as agile as someone much younger than her years and would rally her troops by striking two iron bells.  She would dress as a man in the skins of wild animals strapping herself with a sword, ax, and bow and arrows.  She would lead the enemy inland into a trap where she had the favored ground.  She would be cornered and always find a way out.  She was merciful to the prisoners she took and made sure none were hurt by anyone who was under her. 

Enemies hated her for her race, sex, and old age.  One story tells of a peace conference she attended with the Portuguese who believed they had the upper hand.  They also had all the chairs. When she arrived in the room to find no chair to sit in she called over a servant and had him bend over on the ground and provide her a place to sit upon.  They could try to insult her but she proved to them that she was the ruler in the room.  Shocked, the Portuguese signed the peace treaty without a thought. 

She never married but had fifty or sixty young men as bodyguards that she had to wear women's clothes.  If one of them displeased her he was never seen from again.  She placed women in the highest government spots and exalted her sisters Mukumbu and Kifunji to top spots.  When the Portuguese kidnapped one sister she gave 130 slaves for her release.  When another sister was kidnapped and kept, she used her to get information about the Portuguese for years until they drowned her. 

Ruling the politics of the region for forty years, Nzingha fought till her death at the ripe old age of eighty-two. Her body was put on display with royal robes that had jewels in them and a bow and arrow in her hand.

No strong ruler followed her and the Portuguese took over West Africa causing the area to suffer more damage from the slave trade than any other area.  It would be 1975 before Angola would get its independence from Portugal.  Today Nzingha is celebrated as a hero in the People's Republic of Angola.     

Grace O'Malley: Irish Pirate Queen of the Seas

Grace O'Malley amassed more than nine tons of treasure, had deep scars on her face from where an eagle had attacked her and gave birth to one of her children while being attacked by Barbary pirates.  She was a legend in her own time.  Born around 1530 she didn't know the meaning of the word "no".  She began her pirate career as a teenager, likely begging her father "Black Oak" O'Malley to go on a trading trip to Spain.  When he told her that her hair would get caught in the ropes, she cut it off and everyone began calling her "Grace the Bald".  She was soon an expert sailor.

The O'Malley's motto was "Powerful by land and by sea." They ate a lot of fish and had better furniture and beer than their neighbors because they stole it from ships that cruised by.  Their three-story castle on the out of the way island of Clare was cold and damp but provided a site from which to hit ships that were on their way to Galway.  They would hide out in secret inlets and raid ships then let it go.  The family would also gamble with dice, have fun with traveling musicians, and gobble down on meats and vegetables and mead while fighting with their neighbors.

There were at least sixty independent Irish tribes ruled by chieftains like Black Oak who were constantly fighting with each other and England who tried to impose its rule. Black Oak was one of the few who never gave into English rule and he taught his spirited daughter the same.

At sixteen she got married to "Donal of the Battles". While he was out battling the neighbors she raised their three children.  While she was supposed to be taking care of the home and kids instead she was out raiding ships.  Donal died when she was in her thirties, his enemies attacking Cock's Castle. Grace sent the enemy running so fast that the castle soon became known as "Hen's Castle".  When the English came to take the castle she would run out of ammunition and she would melt down the roof and pour it on top of the Englishmen's heads. 

When Black Oak died, Grace took control of her father's fleet of ships.  Three and twenty ships at a time raided all the way from Scotland to Spain and she had around two hundred loyal men under her command bringing in salt, wine, silk, and steel.  It's pretty amazing that all those men would follow a woman but perhaps its because she was so successful or because she was the daughter of Big Oak and the wife of Donal.

Grace would marry again for property to a man who wore a coat of mail and was called Iron Richard.  He had a castle called Rockfleet Castle that offered her even more wealth and a haven for her work.  This marriage was what is known as handfasting.  After the year and a day she called it off but kept his castle calling out from it "I dismiss you!"  She may have dismissed him that day, but she wouldn't from her life as the two would keep in touch and have a child, Toby of the Ships together.

Grace considered herself doing the job of "maintenance by land and sea" rather than that of a pirate.  She was caught once and arrested as "director of thieves and murders at sea."  Those arreseted with her were killed but she spent a horrid year and a half in prison before being set free.  Her biggest enemy was provincial governor Rochard Bingham who hated her and felt that she was a "woman who overstepped the part of womanhood."  He killed her son Owen, took lots of her cattle and horses, put her son Toby in prison for a year, and just generally made her life hell, even creating a gallows for her.

After one of her sons sided with Bingham and she killed four of his men she was now sixty-four and had had enough.  She set out for London to meet with the most powerful woman in the world, Queen Elizabeth I.  Queen Elizabeth I sent her a list of eighteen questions about her family and Ireland proved to be interesting enough for the Queen to agree to meet with her.  So the Queen of England and the Queen of the Pirates met and whatever was said must have been interesting enough for the Queen because she decreed that Bingham was to "have pity on the poor aged woman" and allow her "maintenance" to continue.  She also said that Grace "hath at times lived out of order."  Grace returned to a life at sea and outlived many of her enemies.  She died at age seventy-three.

*Those at Howth Castle, north of Dublin still set out an extra chair and place setting at meals, because one day Grace was traveling by needing respite.  The lord of Howth turned her away.  She, in turn, kidnapped his grandson and held him until the Lord promised to always hold a place at his table for travelers.

**Thanks to Kathleen Krull who wrote Lives of the Pirates: Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware!)

The Chinese Warrior Nun

In 17th Century China for 250 years the unrivaled Ming Dynasty had ruled over 200 million people. They had built the Forbidden City in the Palace which was the home of the Emperor and the seat of government and built the Great Wall of China.  From one of the powerful families and a general was born a baby girl, Ng Mui.  She learned the things girls of her station learned such as the tea ceremony, horse riding, sword fighting, archery, and self-defense fighting.

In 1644 when she was eighteen it will save her life.  There was a Little Ice Age where the crops froze and there was a famine within China.  As the people were starving, the Manchu people of the north of China, their enemy, takes advantage and comes to attack.  They exploit a commander into letting them through the wall and begin sacking and slaughtering villages killing soldiers and villagers alike.  Ng Mai escapes but her whole family dies.  The Emperor dies and the Manchu takes over.  The Manchu were viewed by China to be barbarians and they would put a yoke over the superior Chinese.

She heads south where the rebellion is.  She realizes that she must learn to fight someone bigger, stronger, and faster than herself.  She has an ah-ha moment when she watches nature.  She studies the lethal fight between a crane and a snake, a tiger and a deer, and watches a praying mantis pounce. She mimics these movements.  She travels covertly beating up bullies along the way.

She seeks sanctuary at a monastery stronghold for Shoulin warrior monks. They allow her to secretly train with them. She is taught that the best line of defense is an immediate and forceful counterattack.  Sustained rapid counter-attacks rather than big powerful movements can beat any opponent.  "It's not about fighting. It's about winning," says Si Fu Julian Hith a modern-day practitioner of the martial art.  By beating her mentor Lee Pasun she advanced to become one of the Masters.

Now the Manchu had come to take out the monks who had been training the Manchu army.  The monks are ready to fight to the death to protect the monastery.  That night the monastery is set on fire and while they are dealing with the fire, the Manchu enter the building and begin their attack.  The survival of the five Masters is all that matters now.  So the monks form a line and allow the Masters and a few monks to escape with them.  Ng Mui notices that her former mentor Lee Pasun was one of the traitors receiving money for his treachery.  Ma Ning Yee, however, was the main man behind everything.  She vows to get revenge on Lee Pasun.

Ng Mui goes to the Masters and hones her skills at her new marshall arts form and hones her ability to precision attacks to highly valuable targets. Eyes, nose, ears, throat, temple, and spine are the main targets.  That is when Wing Chun is born.  She trains one young woman Yim Wing Chun who it is named after to do this and leaves to fight a duel with Lee Pasun.  They fight on top of poles and sharpened sticks.  Ng Mui beats Lee Pasun and kills him.  Then she goes back to Yim Wing Chun and continues her training.  Yim will teach her husband who will teach someone in the family who will teach someone in the family, etc...  It will remain a secret until the 1940s when it is brought to Hong Kong.  The Manchu will remain in power for centuries but eventually will be driven out of China.  Famous people who practice Wing Chun are Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.  Actor Stephen Amell on The Arrow uses Wing Chun in his fighting style and when he works out on his Muk Yan Jong (workout dummy).  All of this brought about by a young woman wanting to fight against the enemy that had taken over her country in the only way she knew how.  Ng Mui, the warrior nun who fought the Manchu.         

The Man Behind the March On Washington

Bayard Rustin is not a name made famous when talking about Black History Month.  Could it be because he was an openly gay man who once had ties to the communist party?  Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1912 to a sixteen-year-old girl whom he thought was his sister he was raised by his grandparents who were Quakers and "believed were based on the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of that family were equal." As a teenager, he staged a sit-in at a restaurant that would serve his white football teammates, but not him.  And when he told his grandmother that he was a homosexual her response was "I suppose that's what you need to do."

In 1937 he moved to New York City where he enrolled in City College and began singing with the Josh White Quartet and in the musical John Henry with Paul Robeson.  This is when he joined the communist party believing at the time in what they were preaching. But he left shortly thereafter when they told him he had to stop demonstrating against desegregating the armed forces.  This opened up a file for him in J. Edgar Hoover's file cabinet.

In 1941 he joined pacifist Revered A. J. Muste's Fellowship of Reconciliation that toured the country speaking out against racial injustice.  In 1944 he was arrested for failing to appear before his draft board and refusing alternative service as a conscientious objector. He was given three years but ended up serving twenty-six months. He so pissed off the authorities with his desegregation protests and his open homosexuality that they sent him to a higher security prison.

After leaving prison he joined CORE's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation which was an early version of the Freedom Rides that were testing the Supreme Court's ruling in Morgan v Virginia (1946) that any state forcing segregation on buses crossing state lines would be in violation of the Commerce Clause.  It would be an extraordinary effort but he would once again find himself in prison--this time on a chain gang in North Carolina.

Continuing his beliefs in nonviolent protest, Rustin traveled to India in 1948 to attend a world pacifist conference. Gandhi had been assassinated earlier that year and his teachings touched Rustin deeply. He wrote "we need in every community a group of troublemakers. The only weapon we have is our bodies and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn."

In January 1953 Pasadena, California he was arrested for "lewd conduct" and "vagrancy" stemming from an encounter with two white men in a car.  With that incident and his ever-growing FBI file, the Fellowship of Reconciliation asked for his resignation. He came to believe that "I know now that for me sex must be sublimated if I am to live with myself and in this world longer."

In 1956, after talking to labor leader and activist A. Philip Randolph Rustin went to Alabama to help Dr. King with the Mongomery Bus Boycott. He mainly stayed out of the spotlight but introduced King to Gandhi's teaching while writing publicity materials and organizing carpools.  He also helped King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1956-57.  His low point came when in 1960 black leader Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York became enraged that King and Rustin were planning a march outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles warned King that if he did not leave Rustin he would tell people that the two of them were lovers.  King canceled the march and put some distance between himself and Rustin, who resigned from the Southern Leadership Conference.  King "lost much moral credit...in the eyes of the young," the writer James Baldwin wrote in Harper's magazine over this. 

The idea for the 1963 March on Washington came from A. Philip Randolph who wondered if younger activists were given the short end of the stick to economic issues as they pushed for desegregation in the South.  In 1962 he got Rustin on board and the two began making plans to commemorate the anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

"Birmingham changed everything," John D'Emilio writes in his 2003 biography, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. In 1963 as the nation watched in horror as Bull Connor in Birmingham turned fire hoses and attack dogs on children.  This caused Kennedy to get to work on a civil rights bill, and suddenly, D'Emilio explains, "the outlook for a march on Washington" shifted.  "King who had not shown much interest in earlier overtures form Rustin and Rudolph began to talk excitedly about a national mobilization, as if the idea were brand new."

Rustin left for Alamba to see King and expanded the march's focus to "Jobs and Freedom". At the march's headquarters, he looked forward to leading the planning coalition of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations: SNCC, CORE, SCLC, the National Urban League, the NAACP, and Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Sadly, his past reared its ugly head and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP refused to allow Rustin to be in charge, so Randolph was put in charge with Rustin as his deputy.

They had many problems facing them. Uniting feuding civil rights leaders, fending off opposition from Southern segregationists who opposed civil rights, fend off opposition from Northern liberals who wanted a more cautious approach and figure out the practicalities of the demonstration itself. On that last point, Rustin later said, "We planned out precisely the number of toilets that would be needed for a quarter of a million people... how many doctors, how many first aid stations, what people should bring with them to eat in their lunches," according to D'Emilio.

But the marchers had to know how to get there. The bus captains helped out there. Rustin wrote manuals that they distributed from New York that covered all the bases from "Who is sponsoring the March; Why we March; Our Demands' How Our Demands Will be Presented in Congress; Who will March; What Are Our Immediate Tasks; How Do I get to Washington; The Schedule in Washington; How Do We Leave Washington; Signs and Banners; Food, Health and Sanitation Facilities; Children and Overnight Accommodation; Captains; Marshals; Transportation Report Form."

The march was a huge success and included a tremendous number of people (They announced at the March 200,000 but Life magazine would put it at 300,000)  Beautiful moments would come when Marian and Mahalia sang and Mrs. Medgar Evers spoke to "Negro Women Freedom Fighters", when John Lewis and Dr. King spoke and when Baynard Rustin read the march's demands.  And there were only four arrests and these were all white people.

While launching the A. Philip Randolph Institute in 1964, Rustin got himself into hot water when he cautioned delegates at the Democratic Convention to back down when Johnson made a deal to seat the state's conservative wing.  He made an attempt to argue his opinion in a 1965 essay in Harper's magazine called "From Protest to Politics" but the damage was done.  "You're a traitor, Baynard!" Mandy Samstein of the SNCC shouted at the convention, according to Taylor Branch in The King Years.

As time passed from the march, things in the movement began to become more militant and Rustin's closeness with the Democratic Party movers and shakers pissed off those for black power.  He also got on the bad side of the antiwar movement by not coming out against the war and the withdrawal of the troops from Vietnam.  He even warned King against coming out against the war.  He was now at odds with a movement that he had helped to start. 

Even though there were tensions with other black activists, that didn't stop Rustin from fighting for justice.  He participated in the demand for economic justice for sanitation workers.  His focus also went international as he sought to support Israel, promote free elections in Central America and Africa, and aiding refugees as vice chairman of the International Rescue Committee.

During the 1980s he opened up about his homosexuality that he had been "sublimating" since the 1950s. This was in large part to falling in love with Walter Naegle who serves as executor and archivist of his estate.  He worked to bring the AIDS crisis to the attention of the NAACP, since predicting, "Twenty-five, thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian."

Baynard Rustin died on August 24, 1987, of appendicitis.   In 2013 President Barak Obama awarded him the Medal of Freedom.  Sadly so much of his good work is not known by people because he had to work from the shadows due to his homosexuality and communists ties.  But for while he was on this earth he worked for justice and freedom across the globe for every man, woman, and child.