Visit The Boston Globe Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Comment on this Scroll to top of page Kevin Cullen Globe Columnist November 29, 2018 Eric Emond was sitting at a table in a small room at Florian Hall in Dorchester that night eight years ago when Dan Magoon pulled out a napkin.A bunch of Boston cops and firefighters who had served in the military, and some like Emond who were still serving, had gathered at the Boston firefighters hall on Hallet Street to kick around some ideas.They had made it back from war, but a lot of their friends had not. There were some parents of the fallen in the group, and it got emotional and voices cracked. But there was a steely resolve in that room, too, and they made progress, with Magoon jotting down on the napkin ideas about building a memorial to those from Massachusetts lost to war since 9/11. He scribbled a prospective logo. They talked about how to raise money, selling T-shirts, holding a dinner. Advertisement … [Read more...] about Eric Emond served his country and Gold Star families. Now his is a Gold Star family.
Green and gold army
David Ramsey: 50 years ago, Trinidad’s Spencer Haywood carried America to Olympic basketball gold
LAS VEGAS – After Spencer Haywood conquered immense odds to earn a spot on America’s 1968 Olympic basketball team, word out got out he was from Trinidad.How, he was asked, did he emigrate from the tiny island nation in the Caribbean?“Um, no,” Haywood said. “I’m from Trinidad, Colorado,”His response inspired a new question.“Where the hell is Trinidad, Colorado?”On Oct. 25, 1968 – 50 years ago Thursday – Haywood placed Trinidad on the basketball map when he led an American team depleted by protest and bizarre coaching decisions to world supremacy, lengthening a 32-year American gold medal run dating back to the 1936 games.Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem-Abdul Jabbar), Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld declined to play for the U.S., and Pete Maravich, Calvin Murphy and Dan Issel were cut from the team. All six are members of the Basketball Hall of Fame.As Haywood stood with his teammates at the medal ceremony, he wept. His … [Read more...] about David Ramsey: 50 years ago, Trinidad’s Spencer Haywood carried America to Olympic basketball gold
For nearly 50 years a Torrance class ring lay buried on a Florida beach – until a stranger found it and made sure it came ‘home’
By Donna Littlejohn | [email protected] | Daily BreezePUBLISHED: April 17, 2018 at 11:39 am | UPDATED: April 18, 2018 at 10:04 am When Hurricane Irma tore through Florida last year, it left behind miles of devastation. But it also churned up some long-buried treasures, tangible pieces of decades past unexpectedly unearthed by the fury of the Category 5 storm that hit the Atlantic in September 2017. Among them: a 1969 class ring from South High School in Torrance. The 10K gold ring, its green stone with the school’s Spartan mascot profile, was snagged from just beneath the sands on a churned-up, post-Irma south Florida beach by Joe Ankus’ high-tech Minelab CTX 3030 metal detector. A boy’s size, it bore the initials “G.T.” And the discovery would lead the Weston, Florida, attorney and hobbyist beachcomber on a months-long cross-country search to find its California owner. “It was beautiful,” Ankus said. “I thought, ‘Let’s … [Read more...] about For nearly 50 years a Torrance class ring lay buried on a Florida beach – until a stranger found it and made sure it came ‘home’
OSS earned gold medal
Share Tweet Share Email Comments Print Congress appropriately took time out recently to honor 13,000 men and women who served their country in World War II in secret service — among them Arthur Jibilian of Fremont. Members of Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to all who served in the Office of Strategic Services. U.S. Rep. Bob Latta (R., Bowling Green), who sponsored the legislation to honor the OSS veterans, highlighted the late Mr. Jibilian. Click here to view more Blade editorials | Check out the Behind The Editorial series Arthur Jibilian, 85, was in the Office of Strategic Services, an intelligence agency that was the predecessor of the CIA. Enlarge Mr. Jibilian, who died in 2010, played a crucial part in Operation Halyard, in which some 500 downed Allied airmen — mostly Americans — were evacuated in Serbia while Nazis combed the hills and villages searching for them. Operation Halyard is depicted on … [Read more...] about OSS earned gold medal
A transgender Navy sailor’s 7-year odyssey, and the military career that could end
As televisions in the Women’s Health Clinic showed President Donald J. Trump taking the oath of office, a military doctor poked and probed the space where Taryn McLean’s ovaries used to be.It had been seven years since Taryn, a second class petty officer, adrift after a short stint in college and working odd jobs, enlisted in the Navy in April 2010. Now, in a closet-sized exam room on Naval Medical Center Portsmouth’s fourth floor, the sacrifices of living the service’s core values – duty, honor, commitment – were beginning to show a return.Down the hall, someone switched one of the waiting room televisions to a “Law & Order” rerun. Protests raged across Washington on Inauguration Day amid a promise to make America great again. Taryn, now 29, could finally focus on something well beyond the turmoil of the election and the new commander in chief. The sailor examined a photo of a uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries.His uterus, fallopian … [Read more...] about A transgender Navy sailor’s 7-year odyssey, and the military career that could end