God speed John Glenn

Col. John Glenn

America has lost one of its true heroes from a bygone era when space exploration was still considered a modern miracle. John Glenn passed December 8 at age 95. He was a highly decorated Marine Corps fighter pilot from World War Two and the Korean War and the first American to orbit the earth at a time when the Russians had already put Sputnik into orbit and we needed to save face.

I met John Glenn when he was running for president in the Democrat Party primary of 1984 on Tybee Island, Georgia near Savannah. He posed with a beauty queen because it was expected and Glenn, always duty bound, did what was necessary to show the world he was both dedicated, sincere and predictable. Someone who could and should be counted on to do the task at hand.

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A Tribute to Chuck Beveridge…

Chuck Beveridge

Chuck Beveridge

Chuck Beveridge, ‘laissez les bons temps rouler!’

One of my personal heros, Chuck Beveridge, passed away just a day before the 241st birthday of his beloved Marine Corps last November  at age 90.
At the time I met Chuck, Mike LaBonne, Sally Pritchett, Bill Rowe, Charley Rowe, Angie Peraza, Angel Arroyo, Daryl Bennett, Mike Waters, Mike Rosas and a host of other Jarheads were running the nationwide Toys For Tots campaign from the 4th Marine Division/Wing Headquarters office in the 9th Ward of the Crescent City. We were located right next to one of those levies that gave way during Katrina.

The city was dirty, violent, wildly adventurous, filled with tourist traps and local joints known only to Gods and Cajuns. Chuck fit right in.

He was a living legend to us youngsters back then since most of us never knew an Iwo Jima “graduate” and, while he was all that, Chuck was also self-effacing, gregarious, creative as hell, a businessman with a great sense of humor and his own man living by his own rules.
What did we know about the Old Corps? As it turned out, nothing. Chuck broke the mold of the by-the-book Marines running our lives back then. He wasn’t a ‘Nam vet and he wasn’t some pompous ass flaunting heroics of a bygone era, though he certainly could have been had he chosen that route. After all, we were impressionable kids without knowledge of the hell he went through on Iwo and other island hoping campaigns in the Pacific Theater.

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