Jason Fudge

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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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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Bob Long

Update: A Memorial to be held at Arlington National Cemetery, Wednesday, November 30, 2016 at 11 am.

A journalist, filmmaker, broadcasting executive and Combat Correspondent in the Marine Corps, Bob had a fascinating career developing motion picture scripts and serving in news rooms on the east and west coasts. He served as KNBC Vice President and News Director from 2003 to 2009 when he retired and accepted the teaching post in Istanbul. He had previously served at NBC as Vice President for News and Operations at the network’s owned station in Washington, DC (1999 to 2003). His prior television news experience included news gathering, production and management jobs at the CBS owned station in Los Angeles (1968-1975), UPN Television in Los Angeles (1991-1994), Disney Television in Los Angeles (1994-1997) and a first tour at the NBC Los Angeles flagship as managing editor before going to Washington as Vice President for News.

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Chuck Beveridge at Iwo Jima. (Courtesy of Hoover Public Library)

Update:  Charles W. “Chuck” Beveridge(1925 – 2016)
Charles W. “Chuck” Beveridge, retired creative director and artist and recipient of the Purple Heart after being wounded on Iwo Jima in World War II, died Wednesday. He was 90.

Beveridge joined the Marines at 17 with permission from his parents and fought in some of the Pacific Theater’s most significant battles from January 1944 through October of 1945. He fought with the Fourth Marine Division on Roi Namur, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima, where he watched the flag raised on Mount Suribachi from a hospital ship after being wounded.

He recovered from the wound he received during the amphibious landing and rejoined the battle for Iwo Jima. Beveridge, who never graduated high school, began his highly successful career as an artist at Leatherneck magazine, where he worked two stints, 1946-1948 and then 1952-1955.

A talented artist with a brilliant creative mind, he worked for many advertising agencies around the country and founded his own studios in New Orleans and Florida. He retired from Birmingham Magazine and continued to work freelance well into his 80s.

He was a member of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Hoover. He is survived by his loving wife Mary, three daughters, Harriett (Coby) Bethke, of Silver Springs, MD; Judi (Paul) Sherman, Lewis, DE; Linda (Daniel) Bailey, Birmingham, AL, nine grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.

Family requests that donations be made to the Howlin’ Mad Smith Detachment of the Marine Corps League, 1515 Bent River Circle, Birmingham., AL 35216. Donations also can be made at the funeral home.

The funeral will be 11 a.m. Wednesday at Ridout’s Valley Chapel in Homewood with visitation at 10 a.m. The family invites friends, after the service, for a reception at Valley Chapel’s Edgewood Parlor.

Funeral Home
Ridout’s Valley Chapel
1800 Oxmoor Road Homewood, AL 35209
(205) 879-3401
Published in The Birmingham News on Nov. 6, 2016

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Dickey Chapelle to receive Honorary Marine status.

CCHQ was notified October 4 that the Commandant of the Marine Corps has approved Dickey Chapelle for Honorary Marine status. As most know, Dickey was killed November 4, 1965 while with “her Marines” on Operation Black Ferret near Chu Lai in Vietnam. At our request, retired BGen. Tom Draude, a former Director of Information, initiated the formal request to HQMC. In his letter, written in June 2015, he pointed out the following:

For the record, Ms. Chapelle was killed November 4, 1965 by fragments of a booby-trapped mortar shell while covering Marine action during Operation Black Ferret with the 7th Marine Regiment near ChuLai, Republic of Vietnam. Following her death, Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt and other officials from the III MAF honored her by placing a plaque near the spot where she was killed. As a matter of information, this plaque no longer exists in that area. She was returned to the United States accompanied by an honor guard of six Marines, proof of the regard in which she was held by all.
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