Rao bulletin 15 April 2016 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles
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- Vietnam Vets [14] ► Jim Northrup
- 22Kill Vet Advocacy Group ► Criticized for Accepting Trump Donation
- WWII Vets 105 ► ColeRichard
- Then-Lt. Richard Cole, second from right, was co-pilot of Doolittle Tokyo Raid aircraft no. 1, which was piloted by raid planner Jimmy Doolittle, second from left, during the raid on Toyko.
- Obit: Joe Medicine Crow ► 3 APR 2016
General Richard E. Cavazos “They would put them in a tent with their radios and make them fight a battle, like they would have to command a battle in the field,” Galloway said. “And it was Cavazos who would go in and lean over their shoulder at the computer and say, ‘You know, son, I think if you do that you’re going to kill that brigade. Is that what you really want to do?’” Cavazos’ real impact was in the hearts of those he led. “I had the honor of being evaluated by him,” said Valenzuela, who commanded U.S. Army South when it relocated to Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. “When the results were read I told (him) what he meant to us poor Hispanic kids, growing up in the barrios. … We both cried, not so much on the results, but because of the legacy we both were leaving behind.” [Source: San Antonio Express-News | Sig Christenson | April 2, 2016 ++] ********************************* Vietnam Vets [14] ► Jim Northrup To prepare his family for his death, Jim Northrup has made a list of potential tombstone epitaphs. They include: “Here’s one deadline I didn’t miss” and “Hey, I can see up your dress from here.” Those who know the award-winning author of short stories, poetry, plays and newspaper columns wouldn’t be surprised that he’s facing death with his signature dry humor. “There is nothing so serious you can’t make a joke about it,” said Northrup, a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “And making a joke about it makes it easier for survivors.” 
Northrup, 72, has kidney cancer. It’s moved to his lungs, lymph nodes and brain. A veteran of the Vietnam War, he assumes he is succumbing to the effects of exposure to Agent Orange, an herbicide the U.S. military used during the war to remove trees and other foliage that provided enemy cover “At first I couldn’t laugh about it,” said Pat Northrup, Jim’s wife of nearly 30 years. “Then I couldn’t keep crying.” One day she sat outside thinking about her grandmother. “She once told me, ‘accept death like you accept life,’ ” she said. “It made sense.” These days, Jim is about minobimaadiziwin: living the good life. And he says he’s already seen what’s waiting for him when he dies, when he completes his four-day journey to a western land where many Anishinaabe believe they go when they die. Twice in the hospital, “when I was probably circling the drain,” he said, he found himself in a canoe, paddling. He heard voices, laughter and song coming from the shore. He began paddling toward them, he said, hoping to share a story or two of his own. Somebody saw him, and in Ojibwe, told him to leave, that it wasn’t his turn. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said, in response to a question about Anishinaabe beliefs regarding death. “I am going to have a great time over there.” Northrup served in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966. His experiences as a grunt in the war and dealing with the aftermath at home became a major focus of his writing. His darkly humorous poem “Shrinking Away” deals with coming home and trying unsuccessfully to get professional counseling. “Grandma’s Hair” is about an episode of combat in which he discovered an enemy soldier he was exchanging gunfire with was, in fact, a woman. It’s a discovery he made after moving closer and shooting the soldier one last time to make sure the person was dead. The shot made her hair tumble out from her hat; hair that looked like his grandmother’s. He was asked to recite some of his work at LZ Lambeau, a 2010 gathering of Wisconsin Vietnam veterans and their family members totaling 70,000 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. When he was done, he was given a standing ovation. Northrup said he was honored to be asked. “I knew my poetry was being used in vets’ groups to help people open up (and) maybe even write their own poetry as part of their healing,” he said. “It worked for me, so I hoped it helped (others).” As a child, Northrup was made to go to a boarding school — one of the federal assimilation schools where Native Americans were forbidden to speak their native language and practice their traditional beliefs. At the Pipestone (Minn.) Indian School, he recalled, he was beaten by both adults and other children and experienced severe homesickness — once attempting to walk home, making it nine miles before he was found. His work describes that experience, along with the changes on the reservation that resulted from the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, after which enormous poverty transitioned to financial stability for the band. Northrup writes about racism and politics. He has weighed in on local mining and tribal issues and treaty rights with sharp and honest commentary. “He has really been an articulate witness for incredible and continual change,” said Margaret Noodin, Northrup’s longtime editor, an assistant professor in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. Northrup is a modern Native American storyteller, she said. “It wasn’t always from the standpoint of recovery or a victim of colonization,” Noodin said, describing his work. “He’s really good at saying ‘and these are the ways we live our lives right now.’ Of Anishinaabe literature, you’ve got some major voices, and he’s definitely one.” Despite what happened to him in boarding school, he didn’t fear or avoid the educational system unlike so many others, who had very good reason to, Noodin said. “What I always saw in Jim’s house was constant encouragement to educate oneself and to engage with education,” she said. He graduated from Carlton High School in 1961 and has been told he was the first Native American to graduate from the school. An honorary doctorate of letters degree from Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College hangs in his home. “Jim’s gift of humor has always connected him to the people of the Fond du Lac Band,” said Larry Anderson, president of the Fond du Lac college and a member of the band. “Jim was born to be an ogichida (warrior) and has faced tremendous evils in Vietnam, and many hardships in his life. … He is extremely intelligent, a man of wisdom, and has always been able to translate his Ojibwe knowledge, his Ojibwe heart and soul, to us who need his good words.” Northrup, whose Ojibwe name is Chibenesi, or large bird, is an ardent keeper of Anishinaabe tradition. He and his wife started a summer Ojibwe language camp on the reservation. They make birch bark winnowing baskets, partake in the yearly sugarbush to make maple syrup and harvest wild rice on the reservation’s lakes. Northrup has been a student of the Ojibwe language for nearly two decades. “It seemed to me I always had a void in my life because I wasn’t fluent,” he said. “There was a hole in my heart because I couldn’t understand; I couldn’t say what I wanted to say in Ojibwe. … When we came back from boarding school we tried to use the language. The older people said ‘eh, you sound like a white man.’ ” He’s teaching his 7-month-old great-granddaughter Ojibwe words. “I want her to be familiar with the sounds of it,” he said. “There are sounds not heard in English. She knows ‘gawain.’ Don’t do that.” Northrup is a mentor to many who admire his use of Ojibwe in his writing, said Heid Erdrich, a well-known author and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. And his work illustrates how Native Americans are part of the larger picture of America, she said. “You always feel like the characters and point of view in Jim’s poems are not trying to make Ojibwe people anything special, but at the same time worthy of existing on this earth, having a right to exist on this earth and wanting to hold our way of life and the beauty of that,” Erdrich said. “He gives a sense of what it means to be in a place and love it and live in it, good and bad.” He also acts as an ambassador, inviting people into his home and his experiences, making lifelong friendships with everyone from neighbors to professors to visitors from other countries, she said, and “there are not many people like that.” Northrup doesn’t worry about the Anishinaabe traditions he practices dying with him. Two of his sons, who live near him on Northrup Road in Sawyer, come over with their families to gather around the fire when rice is being parched or sap is being boiled. “They sit and listen to the stories that everybody tells,” he said. “We have time for everybody to tell their own story. I’m not worried. Whatever I am doing, it’ll go on.” At 72, Northrup says he feels like he’s lived a long life, considering that the past life expectancy of Native Americans was decades lower. But his grandfather lived to be 105, he said. He’s working on a new collection of short stories, focusing on his longtime character Luke Warmwater. He and his family are in the midst of this year’s sugarbush, which Northrup has juggled with his doctor appointments. The way he’s handled his illness, Noodin said, has shown many people “how to look death in the eye.”     
In a community with “extraordinarily high” suicide rates, that’s important, she said. It’s important “for young people to see getting old isn’t pretty and isn’t easy. But there you sit, holding your grandkids. There you sit, telling your stories. And that kind of strength isn’t to be underestimated.” Every morning, Northrup goes outside to his yard, overlooking forested land. In Ojibwe, he recites a prayer: “Thank you for the morning, thank you for the day. Give me a good life today. As the sun comes peeking through the trees, help me help my Anishinaabe people. Help me live a good life. Take care of my wife, my children, my grandchildren and all soldiers. Help me with my health.” He motions to the spirits in the east, south, west and north, and makes an offering of tobacco. “No matter what happens during the day, I am prepared,” he said of the prayer. “If I die today, I am ready. If I die a year from now, I am ready.”[Source: Duluth News Tribune | Jana Hollingsworth | April 3, 2016 ++] ********************************* 22Kill Vet Advocacy Group ► Criticized for Accepting Trump Donation A veterans advocacy group that received $200,000 from presidential candidate Donald Trump’s January fundraiser said the move was a huge boost for their organization, even if the money brought with it a rash of confusion and criticism. Cliff Sosamon, an official with the Texas-based group 22Kill, wrote in a commentary published Thursday by The Hill that its members’ appearance with the Republican front-runner at his controversial January veterans fundraiser crashed the group’s website and has resulted in a 500 percent increase in donations so far this year. But the publicity has not all been positive, Sosamon says. “Almost immediately, we began to receive emails and social media replies both supporting the mission and also asking why we would support Trump, or why we would consider accepting funds from his rally,” he wrote. “We lost some of our backers because certain individuals do not support Trump.” 
Sosamon says the decision to take the donation was not based on Trump’s presidential campaign but on the reality that “running a nonprofit organization and providing services for our nation's veterans takes money.” The group insists it is not endorsing Trump. “From an organizational standpoint, we are happy to accept funds from any individual or group willing to support our mission and benefit veterans,” he wrote. “We do not care if the funds come from the left or the right, from Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals. All their money is the same, and we are able to put those funds to use …” At the time of the rally, several prominent veterans groups said they would refuse any contribution from Trump because of the perception that the money would be tied to support for the candidate. Trump’s campaign still has not fully accounted for the $6 million officials claim was raised at the Iowa event, organized as a protest to Fox News’ choice of moderators for a debate scheduled the same evening. Only a few of the 22 organizations originally listed as beneficiaries of the event have publicly reported receiving donations, and several others have expressed concerns that money being offered has been tied to campaign appearances and events. Trump campaign officials have offered no response to repeated inquiries by Military Times about future distribution of the money. 22KILL (https://www.22kill.com) is a global movement bridging the gap between veterans and civilians to build a community of support. It works to raise awareness to the suicide epidemic that is plaguing our country, and educate the public on mental health issues such as PTSD. The organization took its name from a 2012 VA released Suicide Data Report noting that that an average of 22 veterans are “KILLED By Suicide” (KBS) everyday. The name “22KILL” is meant to grab people’s attention and raise awareness to the issue the organization is intended to address. Suicide prevention is a very difficult task to undertake, especially when the general public is unaware of the issue in the first place. In order to prevent or “fix” a problem, one must first learn and understand the problem itself and its causes. Through education of the issue we’ll be able to identify the triggers that can lead someone to thoughts of suicide, and confront those issues as they come, rather than letting them accumulate into something much worse. [Source: Military Times | Leo Shane | April 7, 2016 ++] ******************************** WWII Vets 105 ► Cole~Richard Dick Cole is fond of saying he’s a big believer in luck and never tried to manufacture it. Not that he had to. Luck, like serendipitous moments and sweet victories in love and war, just came his way. Take the time his B-25B pilot, Capt. Vernon Stintzi, fell ill with an ulcer as training neared for a secret mission. Cole, fearing the entire crew would be scratched, asked the mission commander to keep them on. It was a bold request for a second lieutenant out of flight training at Randolph Field, but Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle did him one better, taking Stintzi’s seat on their plane. “That might have been the luck. Not for (Stintzi), but for me,” Cole said softly, laughing. “For me and the rest of the crew.” On his 100th birthday 7 SEP the life of Richard Eugene Cole is perhaps best described in an old saying, “The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works.” Cole wasn’t thinking about the author of that quote, the novelist Cervantes, when he looked back on it all at the end of a long interview but said something similar, for the war and one spectacular mission is just a moment in time for him. Cole is best known as Doolittle’s co-pilot on the famous Tokyo Raid. It was a singularly bold mission, a one-way trip with no promise of a return home, a strike that stunned Japan, buoyed American morale and altered the course of the Pacific war by prompting changes in enemy plans. All of this is why the story holds up so well 73 years later, but he’s the first to say there have been many other breaks over his century, as well as tragedy and loss, and his life isn’t about any single one of them. “I feel like the Tokyo Raid is pretty beat up. I think there are more fertile stories to tell,” Cole says before walking the 100 yards from his single-story brick home in the Texas Hill Country to his mailbox. There are, starting with his constitution. The first thing to know about Dick Cole the centenarian is that he keeps going. In a world where most folks his age are in wheelchairs, he steps out of bed after dawn and takes short, measured steps while tackling the day’s chores. In that way, it’s no different from the days when he milked cows and plowed fields as a young man during the Depression earning $75 a month on an aunt’s farm in Ohio, saving the money for college. These days Cole works in his barn, tending to fruit-bearing trees on his four-acre spread, cutting the grass with a 1949 Ford tractor and fixing things when they break. The old tractor’s burned-out ignition switch is his latest project, as is a Weed Eater that rests on a pair of wooden sawhorses, the assembly directions waiting to be read.  
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Dick Cole (left) holds an image of a B-25 bomber that he copiloted taking off from the deck of the carrier USS Hornet on April 18, 1942. Cole was copilot to Jimmy Doolittle on that day in World War II when 16 B-25 bombers flew off the deck of the carrier to bomb Japan. Then-Lt. Richard Cole, second from right, was co-pilot of Doolittle Tokyo Raid aircraft no. 1, which was piloted by raid planner Jimmy Doolittle, second from left, during the raid on Toyko. There used to be bison on the land but they were too big and strong, and he was too frail, and so they’re gone. Still, when things break — and they do in a house built 20 years ago — Cole is Mr. Fix It. When a 14-year-old hot water heater went out five months ago, he drove his Ford F-150 pickup seven miles into Comfort, got a new one and installed it himself — and it wasn’t the first time, either. This might seem amazing for a man showing classic signs of old age. He wears hearing aids in each ear and sometimes stops a thought in mid-sentence, losing it the way a mist vanishes suddenly on a damp, cloudy morning. He rises slowly when the phone rings and walks with a pronounced stoop, but gets to where he’s going. A sense of determination radiates from him. Cole wears a pedometer and is quite conscious of the need to remain mobile. He once joked, “The secret is you’ve got to keep moving like the sheriff is after you,” and so he does, walking a mile every day. Oh, and he clings to the keys of his pickup and a beloved sedan, and plans to take at least one more spin now that he’s 100. Cole is in a class of his own in a nation where only a fraction of the original 16 million World War II veterans are still alive. The 80 Doolittle Raiders aboard 16 bombers that flew off the USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo, Nagoya and Yokosuka on April 18, 1942 are down to Cole and David Thatcher, 94, of Missoula, Montana. They came to the mission as volunteers who had no idea where they were headed while training for short takeoffs under the tutelage of a naval officer in the Florida Panhandle, and had reason to worry after Hornet put to sea. Cole, though, was amazed to be on a mission with his boyhood hero, and everyone concentrated on their jobs as the Mitchell bombers spun up on the aircraft carrier. “We didn’t have much time to think about what was going to happen,” said Thatcher, a gunner aboard the Ruptured Duck, a plane made famous in the movie. “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.” Still, it was risky business. Doolittle’s crew would be the first to ever fly a bomber off an aircraft carrier. They were supposed to launch on the evening of April 19 and fly 400 miles to Japan, but took off early that morning after the Hornet spotted an enemy trawler. The bombers flew 645 miles, meaning many of them might not make it to airfields clandestinely set up for them in China. Doolittle and his crew bailed out over a mountainous part of China during a thunderstorm. Thatcher fell unconscious and four other crewmen were seriously injured after the Ruptured Duck crashed on a Japanese-held island. In all, three raiders were executed, one died in prison, another was killed bailing out. Two other died of injuries sustained in plane crashes. Eight were captured. All were given the Distinguished Flying Cross. Doolittle received the Medal of Honor and was promoted to one-star general. Most of the others got home, with 19 Doolittle Raiders later dying in North Africa and the China-India-Burma theater of war. Cole stayed in Asia flying cargo planes for 14 months before briefly landing a sweet stateside job in Tulsa, Oklahoma, testing B-24s that were fresh out of the factory. One day in the summer of 1943 a woman told him she was learning to fly and asked if she could get some flight time while he tested the plane. Cole fell in love with her on the spot, but said no. Later, somewhere around 12,000 feet, she appeared in his cockpit. “The co-pilot, an older guy, took a match cover out of his pocket and gave it to her and said, ‘Put your number on here,’ and she did, but she gave the thing to me,” Cole recalled. Two weeks later, they got married. “That’s back in the luck category,” he smiled. Cole went back to war that winter, building airfields behind Japanese lines in China. He made a career in the Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel, but there were bad breaks along the way. His wife, Lucia Martha Harrell, who went by Marty, died in 2003. A son, Andrew, lost his life two years ago in a car accident, and a daughter, Christina, suffered a fatal aneurysm in 2010. These days Cole insists on remaining as independent as possible. His daughter, Cindy Chal, is nearby and sees him every day, but tries not to hover over him. Talk with him for long and it becomes obvious that he’s happy and would love to live well beyond 100, if only to see if the world gets better in the future. The other thing that is clear is which part of his life he loves the most. “All of it,” Cole said, “Because no matter how you look at it, all the parts made the whole.” [Source: San Antonio-Express News | Sig Christenson | September 6, 2015 ++] ******************************** Obit: Joe Medicine Crow ► 3 APR 2016 According to Crow tradition, a man must fulfill certain requirements to become chief of the tribe: command a war party successfully, enter an enemy camp at night and steal a horse, wrestle a weapon away from his enemy and touch the first enemy fallen, without killing him. Joe Medicine Crow was the last person to meet that code, though far from the windswept plains where his ancestors conceived it. During World War II, when he was a scout for the 103rd Infantry in Europe, he strode into battle wearing war paint beneath his uniform and a yellow eagle feather inside his helmet. So armed, he led a mission through German lines to procure ammunition. He helped capture a German village and disarmed — but didn’t kill — an enemy soldier. And, in the minutes before a planned attack, he set off a stampede of 50 horses from a Nazi stable, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode away. “I never got a scratch,” he recalled to the Billings Gazette decades later. Medicine Crow died Sunday at 102, according to the Gazette. He was the Crow’s last war chief, the sole surviving link to a long military tradition. But he was also an activist, an author, a Medal of Freedom recipient and a vital chronicler of the history of his tribe. “I always told people, when you meet Joe Medicine Crow, you’re shaking hands with the 19th century,” Herman Viola, curator emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, told the magazine at Medicine Crow’s alma mater, Linfield College. Medicine Crow was born in a log home near Lodge Grass, Mont., in 1913. He was given the name Winter Man by a visiting Sioux warrior, he wrote in his memoir, in the hope that he would grow up strong, healthy and able to endure adversity. His upbringing matched his name. Medicine Crow’s maternal grandfather, Yellowtail, raised the boy in the Crow warrior tradition, putting him through a grueling physical education regime that involved running through snow barefoot to toughen his feet and bathing in frozen rivers to strengthen his spirit. From other relatives, Medicine Crow heard stories of the Battle of Little Bighorn from people who were there, including his great uncle, White Man Runs Him, who served as a scout for George Armstrong Custer. “At that time, my grandparents were our teachers,” he told the Billings Gazette in 2006.  
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