Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Monday, December 22, 2014
Christmas 2014 letter
Friends and family,
Yes ... the letter at Christmas carries on. A day later than last year, but not too late, we hope. I was thinking of not doing it, but tradition is what keeps us going.
The Guilfoyles of Fort Mill have had some ups and some downs this year, but I think the ups outnumber the downs.
On the downside, I am still missing my Dad. Particularly around the holidays, or any week with a “day” in it. He was the bright center of our family, always one with a joke.
It’s just that now I am at the point with Stephen Christopher where it would be really nice to bounce questions off Bud. How did he manage four kids? How did he balance it all? Is it really tougher these days? Or are we, as a society, just not as capable? Or am I not?
I try to imagine what he would say, but if I could, I wouldn’t need to ask.
Also still missing my best furry friend. Harry, my first dog, died a couple of months after Dad. Annie, our other dog, has become the most surprising gentle girl. She was hyper-competitive with Harry, it turns out, but now she just wants to be around us.
She was attacked by another dog and suffered about eight nasty bites. It was scary, but she has recovered. Except for one day when she steered clear of that house where it happened (we have to go by it every day for our walk), she shows no long-term issues with it.
Patricia and I also lost a dear friend this year: Rick Bacon, our former boss. We basically met because of him. Always generous, big-hearted and full of laughter, Rick died after a short battle with cancer. We miss him terribly, particularly when we need a laugh.
I remain a copy editor and page designer working in Hickory, N.C., designing newspaper pages (sports right now) since October of 2010. I work primarily for Florence, S.C., as well as for papers in North Carolina and Alabama.
The people I work with are terrific, but it’s a LONG commute with terrible hours. My car hit 250,000 miles last week.
Patricia remains ensconced in the Diocese of Charlotte, N.C.. where she is editor of the Catholic News Herald.
She and her paper hosted the national Catholic media conference in June. It was a BIG DEAL. Hundreds of reporters and newspaper professionals from all over the U.S., Canada and even from Rome came to Charlotte for the event.
I got to attend an Adobe workshop held at the event. Stephen came up with me and we swam in the hotel pool, and he played pool for the first time.
They had a bunch of priests, a bishop and an archbishop or two, and Pope Francis’ social media manager. Jim Caviezel was there promoting his football film. Prima donna.
Patricia isn’t like me and can’t instantly remember how many awards her paper won. “A lot” — 16, including best coverage of religious liberty issues, for her paper, and individually, Patricia placed in best multi-media package. Her staff has been doing a lot of web stuff. She also got an honorable mention for coverage of that terrible abortion clinic I mentioned in last year’s letter.
It has been a good year for our son, Stephen Christopher. He is now 8 and a second-grader.
He has been on a few adventures with Mommy, and he has embarked on new chapters. We have all started “geo-caching,” but it’s mostly Patricia and Stephen right now.
We have changed Cub Scout packs. We used to be at Pack 219 at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Fort Mill. We met for den meetings three Mondays a week and a pack meeting on the other Monday each month.
Stephen earned his Tiger rank in February at 219. I was his den leader. We went to summer day camp with 219. On top of his rank work, he also earned 18 “belt loops,” awards in specific skills. That’s a bunch.
With help from Uncle Johnny, he built a Pinewood Derby race car that was the fastest among the Tigers. He got to go the district level race, but it was a different kind of track and the wedge-shaped cars all won. Still, he got a trophy from the pack.
In the fall, we moved to Pack 9 at St. Patrick Cathedral Parish in Charlotte. That’s where we go to church. This pack has den meetings once a month, followed by the pack meeting, on a Sunday afternoon.
I am Pack 9’s assistant cubmaster, God help the children.
Like last year, Stephen went on an overnight camping trip with Patricia and the other Scouts. I had to work and missed it, but we went on a family camping trip in November to Kings Mountain. I am still shivering.
Stephen is now working on a new Pinewood Derby car AND his Wolf rank. He convinced at least one friend to join and thus earned a “recruiter” badge. The pack went caroling at a nursing home last week.
We know we haven’t been around as much as we could. We are doing well, but our life is just non-stop hectic most days, so that when we get some free time together, we just generally want to do something quick and easy and together. But never doubt our affection.
Have a merry Christmas. (Email is still the best way to reach me. I check it every day.)
“We love you anyway.”
Stephen, Patricia, Stephen Christopher, and Annie
sguilfoyle@comporium.net
Dec. 22, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
BLAST FROM THE PAST: A Freedom of Information editorial
This is kind of raw. Found it on my computer looking for something else.
It is either an editorial I wrote to help out my wife when she was publisher of the Fort Mill Times. Or an editorial I adapted from one I wrote, to help her out.
It's way too long to have run anywhere. But it sums up all I know about Freedom of Information. I will be back later to correct any typoes. It will have some just for being a digital copy 12 years or older sitting around as a text document.
Anyway. ...
Anyone who tells you there’s no “right to know" is right, but in only the most technical sense.
The right to know isn't a constitutional right, but in South Carolina, it is a right written into law. That law is the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.
It is based on a simple premise -- to know and participate in their government, the people must have access to the meetings and the records of their government.
The people have a right, enacted into laws, to know what their government is doing -- from the smallest governmental level, such as Tega Cay City Council, to the highest levels of government.
Elsewhere on our opinion pages, you will see a guest column from S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, who says it has been a policy of his administration. He promised such a policy while campaigning, but one of his first steps as Governor was to propose closing his Cabinet meetings.
He was eligible under the law to close his meetings when they met the conditions already in the law, but he just wanted to close them as a blanket policy.
It was a vigorous press, represented by the S.C. Press Association, that convinced the governor to hold the open cabinet meetings he has held since taking office. We can see no signs that our government has been hindered in its capacity to serve us since then.
Sanford says having open government is something he wants to do, and we applaud him for his openness.
But not all our government agencies and officials are quite so forthcoming. In another accompanying column, S.C. Chief Justice Jean Toal reminds not only our readers but all government officials and agencies in this state that openness isn't a policy one can choose to follow or not follow. It is the law.
The primary purpose of the S.C. Freedom of Information Act is to protect its citizens from government secrecy, Toal writes. She is quoting numerous decisions by the court.
When our governments want to go behind closed doors or to withhold public records from the people -- who own the records and pay for them -- they must have a damn good reason.
In another state Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that the FOIA creates "an affirmative duty" on the part of government to open meetings and provide records.
When a government agency says it has to charge you hundreds of dollars to make copies of records in response to a request, they say it is because of all the "extra" work they are doing.
The aforementioned decision, in plain English, means responding to the public IS the job of government. Providing records IS government's job. Holding open meetings IS government's job.
In the state of South Carolina, the right to know is not a constitutional right, but it is a right put into our law.
The Constitution of the United States doesn't have a specifically stated "right to know," but you can look at historical precedent to conclude our Founding Fathers believed there was a right to know.
Specifically, our first President, George Washington, set that precedent.
The President is required by the Constitution to give information to Congress from time to time. As such, "Congress from the beginning has claimed, conversely, the right to ask the President for information," reports a Web site dedicated to the Constitution.. "Washington was called upon by the House of Representatives for papers regarding the defeat of General St. Clair's forces in 1791 by the Miami Indians. After a three-day consideration of the question by Washington and his cabinet, which was regarded as of the greatest importance as a precedent, it was decided that the House had a right to copies of the papers.:
Washington and his Cabinet decided that it was the people's government, so it delivered the papers to the U.S. House. The representatives of the people.
You. It's your government. They are your meetings. The documents are your documents.
It is Open Government Week in South Carolina. If you believe, as many in government do, that it can have the secrets it wishes, hold meetings away from your scrutiny and withhold documents on a whim, then you believe that Americans are subjects to a government that rules them.
Believe in open government, and you believe that Americans are free citizens who participate in the process. We govern ourselves.
President Teddy Roosevelt said it best -- "The government is us...You and me!"
Open Government makes that a reality.
It is either an editorial I wrote to help out my wife when she was publisher of the Fort Mill Times. Or an editorial I adapted from one I wrote, to help her out.
It's way too long to have run anywhere. But it sums up all I know about Freedom of Information. I will be back later to correct any typoes. It will have some just for being a digital copy 12 years or older sitting around as a text document.
Anyway. ...
Anyone who tells you there’s no “right to know" is right, but in only the most technical sense.
The right to know isn't a constitutional right, but in South Carolina, it is a right written into law. That law is the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.
It is based on a simple premise -- to know and participate in their government, the people must have access to the meetings and the records of their government.
The people have a right, enacted into laws, to know what their government is doing -- from the smallest governmental level, such as Tega Cay City Council, to the highest levels of government.
Elsewhere on our opinion pages, you will see a guest column from S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, who says it has been a policy of his administration. He promised such a policy while campaigning, but one of his first steps as Governor was to propose closing his Cabinet meetings.
He was eligible under the law to close his meetings when they met the conditions already in the law, but he just wanted to close them as a blanket policy.
It was a vigorous press, represented by the S.C. Press Association, that convinced the governor to hold the open cabinet meetings he has held since taking office. We can see no signs that our government has been hindered in its capacity to serve us since then.
Sanford says having open government is something he wants to do, and we applaud him for his openness.
But not all our government agencies and officials are quite so forthcoming. In another accompanying column, S.C. Chief Justice Jean Toal reminds not only our readers but all government officials and agencies in this state that openness isn't a policy one can choose to follow or not follow. It is the law.
The primary purpose of the S.C. Freedom of Information Act is to protect its citizens from government secrecy, Toal writes. She is quoting numerous decisions by the court.
When our governments want to go behind closed doors or to withhold public records from the people -- who own the records and pay for them -- they must have a damn good reason.
In another state Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that the FOIA creates "an affirmative duty" on the part of government to open meetings and provide records.
When a government agency says it has to charge you hundreds of dollars to make copies of records in response to a request, they say it is because of all the "extra" work they are doing.
The aforementioned decision, in plain English, means responding to the public IS the job of government. Providing records IS government's job. Holding open meetings IS government's job.
In the state of South Carolina, the right to know is not a constitutional right, but it is a right put into our law.
The Constitution of the United States doesn't have a specifically stated "right to know," but you can look at historical precedent to conclude our Founding Fathers believed there was a right to know.
Specifically, our first President, George Washington, set that precedent.
The President is required by the Constitution to give information to Congress from time to time. As such, "Congress from the beginning has claimed, conversely, the right to ask the President for information," reports a Web site dedicated to the Constitution.. "Washington was called upon by the House of Representatives for papers regarding the defeat of General St. Clair's forces in 1791 by the Miami Indians. After a three-day consideration of the question by Washington and his cabinet, which was regarded as of the greatest importance as a precedent, it was decided that the House had a right to copies of the papers.:
Washington and his Cabinet decided that it was the people's government, so it delivered the papers to the U.S. House. The representatives of the people.
You. It's your government. They are your meetings. The documents are your documents.
It is Open Government Week in South Carolina. If you believe, as many in government do, that it can have the secrets it wishes, hold meetings away from your scrutiny and withhold documents on a whim, then you believe that Americans are subjects to a government that rules them.
Believe in open government, and you believe that Americans are free citizens who participate in the process. We govern ourselves.
President Teddy Roosevelt said it best -- "The government is us...You and me!"
Open Government makes that a reality.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
"A Big Heart, Open to People"
By Patricia Larson Guilfoyle
 |
| Rick Bacon was there before Patricia Larson got dressed to marry me, and he was there for me and her long before we ever met. |
CNI's Senior Editor Phil Hudgins just smiled when he had told me Rick wanted to
interview me down in Barnwell. Phil knew me from when I worked in St. Mary's,
Ga., for then-Publisher Dalton Sirmans. Dalton hired this naive 16-year-old who
walked in one day off the street asking for a job. ("Can you write?"
he said. "Sure," I said, and brought him my latest term paper about
graviton particles and the space-time continuum. He hired me the next day, and
one of my first assignments was covering a pipe-bomb explosion at the new
Subway in town. I was hooked!)
Well, Phil knew Dalton, and Phil knew Rick, and Rick knew
Dalton. So before I knew it, I was driving east, trying to figure out where the
heck in South Carolina Barnwell was.
I checked into the one motel in town and went to my room.
Before I had even swung the door open all the way, the phone on the table
started ringing. The sudden noise made me jump -- who in the world knew where I
was? I mean, I wasn't even inside the room yet.
Of course, it was Rick.
"Hi! It's Rick Bacon. Do you want to get something to
eat?"
That was the first thing I realized about Rick: Nothing –
and no one – got past Rick. He was crazy like a fox.
We headed over to Anthony's, one of his regular spots. Of
course, he knew the waitress and pretended to give her a hard time. He ordered
a beer and asked if I wanted one, too. I thought, "I'd never been on a job
interview like this before." But Phil had told me that he was good buddies
with Dalton, so he couldn't be all that weird.
Boy, was I wrong. Rick was a lot weirder than Dalton. Dalton
liked to drive gold-colored cars and made fun of his alma mater, Abraham
Baldwin Agricultural College ("I'm just a poor ol' country boy from
ABAAAAAC," he'd say in his best south Georgia drawl). But Rick had a
thousand crazy voices, which he'd pull out at just the right – or wrong –
moment, and his collection of pig paraphernalia bordered on the fanatical.
Don't even get me started on his cars.
I don't even remember what all we talked about, sitting
there in Anthony's eating open-faced steak sandwiches and drinking beer. I just
remember thinking, "I gotta come work for this guy."
Turns out, Rick had already decided to hire me after talking
with Phil and Dalton, so the entire "interview" was just to test me.
That was the next thing I realized about Rick: Rick was
awesomely cool. He could be exasperating, but only in the nicest possible way,
and for all the right reasons. And he knew what was important as a leader and
manager, whether people liked him or not.
The next three years were a blur, but a couple of moments
will always stand out.
Less than a week into my job, Rick tells me I have to fire a
sports correspondent. The guy had been writing for The People-Sentinel only about
50 years or so, he said. But people at the rec league baseball games he'd been
covering smelled alcohol on his breath a lot. He had to go.
"I've never
fired anyone in my life," I told Rick. "Can't you do it?"
"Nope," he said. "You're the editor. Oh, I've already called
him, and he'll be here in a few minutes. Take him into the conference
room."
Well, the guy came in, still smelling of alcohol. He cried
like a baby when I gave him the news. At 23, I'd never seen a grown man cry in
real life before. After he left and I went back to my desk, which I had
strategically positioned right next to Rick's, I was shaking. I felt awful.
Rick looked over, with that fake-innocent look of his, and
mouthed the words, "You bitch."
That was Rick. Rick could make you laugh no matter what.
Another moment that stands out was back at my desk, sitting
right next to Rick. That week's edition had two big stories in it: One about
students having sex in the bathrooms at Allendale High School, the other about
workers accidentally wringing the necks of two ostriches that were the sideshow
attraction at the local flea market, which happened to be owned by the mayor.
I'm on the phone getting blessed out by the principal at Allendale High, when
the mayor's wife walks in and sits down in the chair beside my desk. She
doesn't care that I'm on the phone, she's just read the paper and is crying/mad
because I've just ruined her husband's reputation.
"They didn't mean to hurt those ostriches – it was an
accident."
Then on the phone: "You think writing about our
problems is what you should be doing? You should be building up our schools,
not tearing them down."
"The birds just got excited and pulled back on the
ropes while they were being unloaded. They wrung their own necks, see?"
"Don't you know these kids are going to read that on
the front page and think they can go have sex in any bathroom now? You're
making our jobs harder."
I hung up on the principal and tried to explain things to
the mayor's wife, but I could not get a word in edgewise.
Then Rick moseys over, puts on his best genteel Southern
persona and takes the woman's hands in his, pulling her gently up from the
chair as he pats her hands. He puts one arm around her shoulder to comfort her,
as he steers her smoothly to the door. He's thanking her, he's soothing her,
he's smiling at her in the kindest way possible. By the time she reaches the
front door, she's smiling up at him and thanking us for the good job we're
doing at the paper.
After the door swung shut, he turned around, bowing with an
exaggerated flourish as everyone in the room applauded. He was the master!
That was the next lesson I learned from Rick: No matter what
problems you're dealing with, other people have problems, too. Sometimes all
people need is a sympathetic ear and a smile to cheer them up. And the Big Guy
could cheer anyone up. Even people who got mad at him still liked and respected
him.
At some point along the way I started calling him Big Guy,
from "WKRP." And since he had a nickname for nearly everyone, he started
calling me PL or PT. Through the few months I worked in Barnwell to when I
moved to Winnsboro, he was always there with support and encouragement, and
when I screwed up or was unprepared, he was there to admonish as well.
I certainly wasn't looking to leave CNI, but when I got an
unexpected job offer to go work up in Fort Mill for literally twice the money,
I dreaded making the call to Rick.
I stumbled my way through the call, explaining that I didn't
want to leave but didn't think I could pass this chance by.
He asked how much
they were offering, and when I told him, he said, "Hell, PT, don't let the
door hit your ass on the way out. You'd be crazy not to take it." He
always gave you his honest opinion.
Over the years I've often found myself asking in different
situations, "What would Rick do?" His advice, his jokes, his voice,
his facial expressions, they're all ingrained in my mind.
When he stood up for Steve at our wedding, and when he met
our son, I saw a different side of Rick. The kinder, gentler, grandfatherly
Rick. No longer the boss, but still the Big Guy.
I called him for advice when I was eyeing whether to jump
from McClatchy, where I'd worked for over a decade, to go edit the newspaper
for the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. I explained that it was less money but I
was working such long hours that I never saw my baby son. McClatchy seemed to be going
downhill fast, and the future didn't feel secure.
"What should I do?" I
asked.
He listened, then he reminded me of his test for any job:
"PT, does the money outweigh the crap?" Then he said, "The
Catholic Church has been around for 2,000 years. I don't think they're going
anywhere."
I took the job.
The most important lesson I learned from Rick happened in
Barnwell, one night in 1998 about 3 a.m.
I was tired of sleeping in the motel room in Winnsboro,
where he'd put me as publisher a few weeks earlier. I wanted to sleep back home
in Barnwell, in my own bed. So when I wrapped up work that night, I headed back
on the all-too-familiar drive down I-77 and Highway 3.
I fell asleep at the wheel just past the Barnwell County
line, waking up just in time to sideswipe the concrete wall of the bridge and
flip my car a couple times. It landed upside down in the middle of the road. As
I crawled out of the hole where the window used to be, I cut my elbow on some
broken glass, but other than that I was OK. When the ambulance dropped me at
the Barnwell ER, they asked me who they should call. The only family I had, I
said.
"Call Rick Bacon."
When he arrived and saw that I was all right, he gave me a
hug and cracked a few jokes to make me laugh. Then he took out a set of keys.
"What're those for?" I asked.
"Well, you'll need a car for a while, don't you?"
"You're going to give me the keys to your car, after I
was stupid enough to wreck my own car?"
"It's a piece of crap Buick. Have fun, Crash."
That was Rick. He never hesitated to help people in need, no
matter what. No questions, no demands, no exceptions.
In his last message to me, his voice was unnaturally soft.
But it was the same old Rick.
"Mrs. Guilfoyle, this is Rick Bacon. And I just wanted to
tell you that's a heck of a pope you've got now. He gives me faith that maybe
all religion isn't all totally crap. Just wanted you to know that. Have a good
day."
I hesitated calling him back, and got his voicemail when I
did call. I left a dumb, rambling message – not knowing what to say or what to
do, knowing it must have gotten pretty bad for him if he was talking about God
and religion without cracking a joke.
What I wanted to tell him is that he was a lot like Pope
Francis, and not just about their weight. I imagined him interrupting the
serious stuff I was trying to say, to joke about priests fondling young boys –
"Huh, huh," he'd grunt in his worst pervert voice – or about wearing
a cassock – "Do they wear any underwear under that dress?"
I wanted to tell Rick that soon after he was elected, Pope
Francis wrote an exhortation that spurred a lengthy interview with an Italian
Jesuit editor and it went global. The Pope, starting with that newspaper
interview, has recast the enduring Gospel message in a whole new light,
encouraging people think about letting God back into their lives, I'd say. Pope
Francis wants all of us to refocus on what's most important in life, because
it's not all about us, it's about how much God loves us, no matter what.
"The headline called the pope 'A Big Heart Open to God,'" I'd tell
him.
"You're just the same, Big Guy – except your headline
would be 'A Big Heart Open to People.'"
I wish I had had the chance to tell
him that, and to say, "I love you, Big Guy."
Monday, August 11, 2014
Blast from the past: The column we did NOT run about Rick Bacon leaving
When #RickBacon left us in Barnwell to go to one of CNI's new daily newspapers in Florida, I was both sad and mad. I wrote this column, but we did not run it because Dan Johnson, our editor, and maybe Rick, thought it might come across as me berating the community for not being thankful enough.
I do not understand that objection, since I WAS trying to berate the community.
But anyway, this is about Rick's cred as a journalist, and worth it now, I think.
I do not understand that objection, since I WAS trying to berate the community.
But anyway, this is about Rick's cred as a journalist, and worth it now, I think.
They've been
talking about calling it a roast. What's better for him, one might think? Pork
roast. Let's turn the temperature up — baked ham.
Fried Bacon.
We're going to
have a little get together to bid farewell to Rick Bacon, regional publisher of
the five papers and the press plant that comprise the Barnwell Region of
Community Newspapers, Inc. Rick's moving on to bigger things, taking over one
of CNI's two new daily newspapers in Florida.
A roast would
be perfect for Rick. It's in keeping with his personality. He loves to joke.
The old Dean Martin roasts often had risqu_ humor, and Rick has been known to
make the ladies in the office blush. Thanks to the nuns at St. Raymond's
Elementary School, I'm a repressed Bronx Irish Catholic boy, so on occasion, he's turned even my
pale face red.
But a roast is
a completely light affair.
I'm not in the
mood for just jokes. Rick's going, and I don't think the community fully
understands what Rick has done here with The People-Sentinel.
I think we
need to have an Irish wake, instead. A roast is food and jokes at a
celebration. A wake is better food, better jokes, songs, some wailing and
screaming. The best ones will have a knock-down drag-out of a fight. An Irish
wake is as fun and funny as a roast, but it has an ironic twist. Ironic because
the reason for the "party" is gone.
Rick would
tell folks he's just a marketing guy who came here with a focus on the
advertising. Or he'd say, "I'm just an ignorant hillbilly," right
before he was set to kill the college boys with their stupidity or lack of
insight.
Rick made the
newspapers in this region some of the best NEWSpapers in the state. If you ask
him how, he'll say he hired good writers and a good editor to herd them.
There's some truth to that. In the last four years, The People-Sentinel has
been named the best large, and The Allendale County Citizen Leader was named
the best small weekly newspapers in South Carolina. Rick's editors and
reporters have pulled in crates of awards. The People-Sentinel was touted in a
college journalism textbook. A textbook example of a good paper, literally.
Hiring people
he says are journalists isn't the only thing he did, however. He indulged his
journalists, and by by doing so, indulged the community, though the community
doesn't know how much.
Here are some
examples.
1) During the
consideration of the regional hospital, we got the request for proposals and
the proposal by the company that was going to come here. I suggested we run
them intact, even though it would take up a lot of space.
Now, a full
page newspaper ad costs about $600. Rick gave me multiple pages to run the
proposals.
2) Our local
high schools are afforded the opportunity to run a full page
"newspaper" in The People-Sentinel each week, if the students choose
to take it. Barnwell High has taken the most advantage of it. If any other
newspaper in the country provides similar space, I'd imagine that it's done at
charge. Barnwell High had more than 30 such pages last year, and is on pace to
meet or beat that number this year. Williston-Elko and Blackville-Hilda High
Schools did pages after the yearbook is completed. Jefferson Davis Academy
wants in now. Allendale-Fairfax High School wants in.
We scan
photos, provide some paper and a little technical advice, but we don't produce
these pages. The students do. But this was Rick's idea, and what he's doing is
giving away a piece of the newspaper that would make him money if ads were on
it. It's an amazing bit of community service for which Rick has never gotten
thanks or credit.
3) During the
Bicentennial Year, we went all out. We usually have two color pics on our A
fronts, maybe three on our community fronts. Color photos require extra time
and effort, and cost an arm and a leg. The Bicentennial parade was featured on
our Community Section front page with more than 30 color pictures. That many pictures
on a weekly's page is rare. That many pics is unheard of. As good as that was,
we beat it. We had a color Community front on the downtown the Fourth of July
stuff, and a color Community page on the fireworks. I thought our Bicentennial
coverage was extraordinary for any newspaper of any size, yet our coverage was
barely mentioned, then quickly dismissed, at the Bicentennial Closing Ceremony.
4) Rick's most
impressive thing, to me, was just letting me tell one story. I covered a murder
trial that ended earlier than expected. The story would have lost its impact if
we pieced it out over weeks. I stayed up 36 hours straight, and in the end, handed
Rick three full pages of stories, complete with photos, detailing a murder, its
effects on a family and on why the trial ended the way it did. It was a good
story, worth telling, but I still thought Rick would say it was too much. But
Rick gave me the space to tell it. He even let me go home and get a couple of
hours rest before I had to come back and do the rest of the news section.
The thing was,
he listened when we told him what we needed, but he never deferred to our
judgment. It was always his decision.
Rick Bacon has
given out color pages and full pages, even though it hit him in his wallet. It
cost him a little, but it was always in the best interests of our readers. He's
not just a marketer, and he's certainly not an ignorant hillbilly.
Rick Bacon is
a journalist. It's the highest praise I know to give.
Barnwell is
losing a talented journalist.
Do you
understand why I want this to be an Irish wake?
BLAST FROM THE PAST: Rick goes bald (in 1999)
This is adapted from what I sent to the CNI Newsflash back in 1999. I can't remember if they accommdated, but I asked them to put this box on the front, and the article in back. Aboubt #RickBacon.
Who’s hair is this?
Why is it on the floor?
See inside for the gory details.
Below is a webbed up version of the fun we had.
BEFORE
During
After?
Or going, going, ????
It was kind of a dare.
Barnwell Regional Publisher Rick Bacon promised out loud that he would shave his head if certain members of a local civic club donated some money to the United Way.
Unfortunately for him, those members were actually listening, and donated the money.
On Jan. 6, 1999, he went up to the PaceSetter Barber Shop in Barnwell and barber Renee Patton did the deed, as the happy crowd of United Way donors looked on and poked fun at Bacon.
“You ever had this done before, Rick?” one asked.
“”AF12807807,” Bacon replied, giving his military serial number from when he was inducted into the Air Force at Amarillo Air Force Base.
“Name, rank and serial number, that’s all I’m supposed to give, he later asked.
Another donor, David Cannon, who has helped the paper with information on a local drive to raise relief supplies for the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, asked Bacon if he had a magic marker on hand.
“That way you can mark where your hair used to be, so you’ll know where to stop washing your face.”
“That’s a good one,” Rick replied. “You getting this?”
After it was all said and done, the ladies in attendance said they actually liked the way Bacon’s shorn head looked.
“I’m disappointed,” Cannon said. “I was hoping he’d look much worse than that. Feel like I wasted my money.”
Several members of the newspaper’s staff gave visible gasps when Rick returned to the office. They were surprised to see what he had done, even though it was announced in the newspaper that day.
“I resolve to lose a headful of hair for 1999,” Bacon wrote in his column, Bacon’s Bits. “The good news is, thanks to Just for Men hair color, I feel safe in predicting that my hair will grow back a beautiful shade of medium brown.”
But his hair is coming back in mixed shades of gray and something else. So maybe he needs “Just for” something else.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
UPDATE 2: Everything is better with Bacon
UPDATE 2: Rick's obit. HYSTERICAL. Read it here, or below.
NORTON!
The best boss I ever had, has died.
One of the best friends I ever had, has died.
A man who took to mentoring me and sometimes treated me like a stupid son, has died.
And one of the funniest human beings on the planet has died.
Rick Bacon.
A lot of time, people look around and say, "I owe him everything."
It's often just that. Something people say.
He plucked me out of one rural corner of South Carolina where I was just a reporter, asked me to come to his papers in Barnwell and Allendale and to do what I do best. Kick ass, in a journalistic sense.
He gave me generally free rein, and he always backed me up. Except for a couple of times, including the time he brought me into his office, told me to close the doors and then asked "Who the f--- I thought I was."
He was the last person to pay me a fair wage straight up, though not the last person to try to do so. So I have a toy or two, thanks to him.
But he had previously hired as an editor a woman named Patricia Larson. Transferred her to be a publisher in Winnsboro before I moved to Barnwell. But she came to Barnwell once a week for production work.
The guy who, inadvertantly, arranged for me to meet my wife, has died.
Without Rick, I guess I don't have Patricia. Without Rick, I guess I don't have our son as well.
He was always there for me, with a joke to cheer me up, with advice about a job that maybe wasn't going so well, to offer a reference for a new job, whatever kind I'd like. The truth, if that would help. A hedge, if it would not.
His lessons were very quick and deadly.
I don't remember when I talked to him after 9/11, but I was going on about the attack, about the Twin Towers, about how my cousins were nowhere near and of course safe.
Then he said, "Candy's sister and brother-in-law are OK."
Brought it quickly home. Candy's sister and brother-in-law lived in or around Washington DC. He was in the military and had, I think, a job at the Pentagon.
9/11 wasn't just about the attacks on New York, but being a native New Yorker, I see the attacks that way.
He would ask a question, you'd start talking and when he could get a word in edgewise, he'd say, "Let me ask that question in a different way." Then he'd ask that question the exact same way. to drive home the point. Listen.
I was remembering some of his stories. Many true. There was the radio host on the religious station in Burnsville, NC, where he worked, who, when reading the Bible and came across a word he did not know, would simply say, "Big word."
His BBQ hog call he used to do.
Sometimes he just got great moments out of pure luck. His last day on the job, when he left Barnwell to go to Lake City, Fla., he was just about to leave when a song came on the radio.
This song --
He came back for the first verse, than twirled and danced his way out the door. Even some of my co-workers who were cursing his name a month before were crying.
And laughing, at his timing and his little spin move.
Rick told me once that he sometimes stopped calling people who said they were friends, just to see how long it took for them to call with something other than a request for him to be a reference. It was a test.
I think that was part of the reason behind his abandonment of Facebook a while back. We have "friends" on Facebook. Friends we don't talk to in the real world anymore. It's too easy to count your friends and not be a friend you can count on.
I did my best to stay in touch. Usually we would have email exchanges, and that would prompt him to send me a message, in which he asked, always, for my wife's phone number.
I think he wanted to hear her voice.
In February, he asked me about my other favorite boss of all time, Mardy Jackson. Asked me if she had died of cancer. I am wondering now if that was a roundabout way of preparing me for what came in April.
April 14.
I have some work to do.
I received word a couple of weeks ago that I have lung cancer.
Met with the radiation oncologist Friday to decide on a regiment.
Meeting with chemo oncologist this Wednesday.
Meeting with chemo oncologist this Wednesday.
I’ve had several tests, but we are going to do another c/t scan, a pet scan, a brain scan and another biopsy to see if there has been any ‘spread.’
If not we have a curative plan. If so, it’s just a treatment plan.
I have a good attitude and am going to do everything they ask me to do to whoop it’s ass.
Fighting with cancer jokes of the week.
This weeks:
Why did the cancer patient cross the road?
So he could be hit by a truck.
Keep smiling.
You may call me:
Chemo-Sabe
I responded, rambling as a jerk, but trying to make him smile. I said we'd pray, of course, but I would do anything to help, particularly anything that would get me named his heir.
Little chance of that, though.
Ten more days passed, and he started a little column, for friends, that he would NOT post on the Internet as a blog, but just send to those he wanted to send it to. The title was based on a movie we both loved. From Miracle Max in the Princess Bride, he called it, "Have Fun Storming the Cancer."
There were to be multiple installments in which he detailed his attempts to kill cancer with humor.
There was just one more.
My sister was doing Relay for Life, because Dad died from his breast cancer returning last year. And we got a luminary for Rick. I emailed him a picture of it, and we talked back and forth via email a bit.
He sent me back a picture of that luminary posted above his desk at work. I also saw a picture of a county highway sign, that said, Yancey County, Shallow Gene Pool, No Diving.
He said someone made it up based on one of his jokes.
I sent him an email about a friend who got a job in the same building where he worked. As I expected he would, he told me to tell her to drop by.
But I also told him about these episodes of The People's Pharmacy on NPR devoted to cancer that he should probably check out.
He told me he had some unexpected pain.
"I think you are too worried about me," he wrote. That was July 21.
Not enough, apparently.
There was one more email, but it was totally nondescript.
Since he knew her first, it's only fitting that his last words to us went to Patricia, albeit to her voicemail.
"Mrs. Guilfoyle, this is Rick Bacon," he says, his voice sounding a little weak, a little shaky. "And I just wanted to tell you that's a heck of a Pope you've got now. He gives me faith that ... maybe all religion isn't all totally crap. Just wanted you to know that. Have a good day."
That was July 30. I get a kick out him calling her Mrs. Guilfoyle, for one thing. The pause after "He gives me faith that ..." makes me wonder. Was he, as normal, just going for the joke that followed? Or was he thinking about something else, but reverted to type because he wasn't quite ready to admit it to others.
Patricia told me she played phone tag trying to get back with him a bit.
That was, we learned, the day he learned that the treatment plan wasn't working. On Friday, Patricia got a few messages, one on Facebeook and one from Rick's son Jon, calling on Rick's cell phone, missing her, of course, but letting her know what happened the night of Aug. 7.
She called me, around 1:30, 2 on Aug. 8 to see if I had heard on my own. As I was just waking up to go to my night-time job, I had not.
Everything is better with Bacon. The afterlife, therefore, is better.
That was, we learned, the day he learned that the treatment plan wasn't working. On Friday, Patricia got a few messages, one on Facebeook and one from Rick's son Jon, calling on Rick's cell phone, missing her, of course, but letting her know what happened the night of Aug. 7.
She called me, around 1:30, 2 on Aug. 8 to see if I had heard on my own. As I was just waking up to go to my night-time job, I had not.
Everything is better with Bacon. The afterlife, therefore, is better.
I was, and remain, stunned.
From the second linked story below. "A “Celebration to Remember” that Bacon planned before his death is scheduled from 1-3 p.m. Aug. 23 at Pier 41 Seafood in Lumberton. Bacon asked people not to waste money by sending flowers. Instead, he suggests those who want to remember him do a random act of kindness or donate to their favorite charity."
Story on Rick's death in the Richmond County Daily Journal.
County mourns the loss of Rick Bacon, from the Richmond County Daily Journal.
His obituary, in case the link doesn't work.
From the second linked story below. "A “Celebration to Remember” that Bacon planned before his death is scheduled from 1-3 p.m. Aug. 23 at Pier 41 Seafood in Lumberton. Bacon asked people not to waste money by sending flowers. Instead, he suggests those who want to remember him do a random act of kindness or donate to their favorite charity."
Story on Rick's death in the Richmond County Daily Journal.
County mourns the loss of Rick Bacon, from the Richmond County Daily Journal.
His obituary, in case the link doesn't work.
Richard Norton (Rick) Bacon
| Visit Guest Book
LUMBERTON — Richard Norton Bacon (Rick) of Lumberton has left the building. His friends will tell you he's in a better place. The rest will say they can smell the Bacon burning. He is stress-free and at peace.
The curtain came down on Thursday night at Southeastern Regional Medical Center.
He is survived by his loving wife of 29 years, Candace Smith Bacon. He is also survived by his son Jonathan Bacon and wife Beth of High Point; daughter Melody Kearse of Rock Hill, S.C., and son Bryan Kearse and wife Liz of Raleigh. Five grandchildren made his life better with their visits.
Rick loved dogs. Trixie, Richie, James Brown Beans and Mr. Woo were the last in a long line of hairy hogs that shared his bed and his affection.
He was born in Auburn, N.Y., July 16, 1947, the son of the late Elizabeth Dunster Bacon and Frederick Neil Bacon. He was also predeceased by a brother, Ted.
He drifted south from upstate New York in 1962 to the mountains of North Carolina, where he graduated without honors in the class of '65 at East Yancey High School. After one undistinguished year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Rick enlisted in the United States Air Force. He became a Morse intercept operator and spent two and a half years overseas in Turkey and Italy.
After another failed college attempt at Mars Hill College, Rick got his start in media at WKYK radio in Burnsville, N.C. From radio it was on to newspaper, where Rick spent 26 years publishing newspapers, moving from state-to-state looking for a town that would keep him. From Spruce Pine, N.C. to Barnwell, S.C. to Lake City, Fla., he survived buying a Buick LeSabre (the official car of geezers) and a heart attack that convinced him it was time to leave Florida unless he wanted to die young. He headed back to North Carolina to live and work in Rockingham and Lumberton, where he had a good life.
Rick was a Rotarian for over 25 years. He served as president of the Rockingham Rotary Club in 2012-13 and was proud of the work that Rotary did in the community and around the world. He was a two-time Paul Harris Fellow.
In March of 2014, Rick was diagnosed with lung cancer. He celebrated with yet another trip to a Cincinnati Reds game. If you knew Rick, you knew that he was a loyal Reds fan since the late '50s without ever living a day in Ohio. He often said, "There's no explaining taste."
Cremation will take place at the family's convenience and his ashes will be kept in an urn, passed from family member to family member until no one can remember what's in the jar.
Everyone who remembers Rick is asked to celebrate his life in their own way; telling a 'He wasn't so bad' or 'What an ass' story of their choosing. Boiled shrimp and a beverage of your choice should be part of any celebration.
Instead of flowers, Rick would hope that you will do an unexpected act of kindness for some less fortunate soul. Rick liked to buy food for the car behind him in the drive-thru lane, or a meal for a military couple (if he could do it without them knowing who paid). That's a lot cheaper than flowers.
A memorial luncheon in Rick's honor will be held at Pier 41 in Lumberton on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Pier 41 Seafood. Adult beverages will follow at widow Candy's house on Camellia Lane. To the crooks reading this: We left an armed guard and the four killer dogs home from the luncheon. If you come to steal, they will hurt you.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Blast from the Past: Back to the Beach
Back to the Beach: Ernandez returning to Normandy one final time
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Buddy Ernandez, then and now, shown above a cemetery for Americans killed at Omaha Beach during the Normandy Invasion, June 6, 1944.
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Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 12:00 am
Buddy Ernandez doesn’t get seasick. This son of Lando takes pride
in it, telling a yarn about a deep-sea fishing trip he took once with a
jet fighter pilot.
The pilot, who could do fantastic maneuvers and barrel rolls, spent the voyage literally spilling his guts. Buddy just smiled and fished.
Rough or easy, the sea doesn’t bother Buddy. After all, he’s been in rougher, tougher places at sea.
The English Channel, to be precise.
June 6, 1944, actually.
That day, he was with 3rd Platoon, C Company of the 18th Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division — “the Big Red One.”
The first wave went in at 6 a.m. The 16th Regiment was in that wave.
If not for a mix-up, Buddy would have been in that outfit, and he is certain he wouldn’t be here, alive today, to tell his story.
The 16th and the rest of the first wave got torn to pieces by German machine guns and cannons raining bullets and shells down all morning. More than 1,500 men were killed in that first wave, Buddy says.
So the call went out. The second wave started going in around 7, hours early. The second wave included the 18th Regiment, which included Buddy.
Buddy boarded his Higgins boat, a landing craft, and headed out over rough waves to his part of the “Longest Day,”
when the Allies captured Normandy, France, starting the offensive that would end World War II in Europe.
Buddy saw things that day he still can’t get out of his mind, blood and guts, real blood and guts, arms and legs, pieces of real men hanging off metal “hedgehogs,” blood in the water, blood on the sand.
Yet for all the horror, next week he’s going back, back to that beach.
Omaha Beach.
Ernandez is one of the greatest generation. He and millions of other young American men fought the Nazis, liberated death camps, fought real evil. Then they came home and built things, cars, planes, homes, creating a booming economic engine. They landed a man on the moon.
But the men who fought World War II are now senior citizens, and they are dying out — some reports put it at 1,000 a day.
Buddy just turned 84. When he first hit the beach, he was younger, much younger – 2009 marks the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.
He was not yet 17, a student at Edgemoor High School, on the day everything changed for his generation. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entered a war on two fronts, fighting Japan and the Nazis in Germany.
Before that, this Lando boy, this son of the mill village, had few worries. He had a couple of good coon dogs and he loved to hunt, shooting squirrels and other small animals in the hills around Fishing Creek.
But life changed. It was a frightening time, he says. He remembers reading in the old Charlotte newspapers about six men killed when German U-boats sunk fishing ships off the coast of North Carolina.
He registered for the draft when he turned 18, and he was called up a year later, in 1943.
“‘You know who keeps it this clean?’ the sergeant asked us. ‘You do,’” Buddy says, acting the role and pointing his finger.
Buddy tells stories with elaboration. He takes time for details. He gestures, raises his arms for emphasis. He often closes his eyes, as if trying to picture the scene. After a few minutes, he really settles in. He relaxes into his natural Lando accent and the tale comes at its own speed of his time on “O-mee-ha Beach.”
Basic finished after about four months, and everyone was ordered onto a train and sent to Union Station in Washington, D.C.
“A man will meet you at the station and tell you where to go,” they were told.
At the station, he was put on a truck and taken to Fort Meade, Md. He carried his duffel bag to a parade ground. He and thousands of other young men were told to wait until they heard their names.
It took forever. Soldiers played poker and gin rummy, Buddy says, while they waited. There was a lunch break in the middle of the day. At the end of the day, Buddy was the only man left standing on the parade ground.
The lieutenant, a guy “so young, he looked like he had just graduated from Clemson,” was not happy to see Buddy. He questioned Buddy, who said his name was never called.
The lieutenant took Buddy to see a colonel, and the colonel heard both out. The colonel asked Buddy to find his name in the list, and it was there. Then the colonel asked the lieutenant to read the name aloud. He stuttered, yet insisted he had called it out on the field.
“The colonel says, ‘If you can’t say it now, you obviously couldn’t say it then,’” Buddy says. But the train he was to take had left hours before.
Buddy had some spending money in his pocket. He’d sold Butler and Leeds, his coon dogs, to a Rock Hill man who admired the dogs yet promised to sell the dogs back, no questions asked, if Buddy made it back.
The colonel found Buddy a bunk. A week later, another mass of men filled the parade ground. Buddy was put on a train again, sent to Camp Shanks, N.Y, briefly, then put on a boat in a six- to eight-boat convoy to England, to train for the invasion.
The Big Red One was an experienced, busy division. Its men had landed in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. The ones who survived were experienced and tough. Guys like Buddy beefed up platoons that had suffered heavy casualties, but it gave the fresh replacements a chance to work with battle-tested soldiers.
Buddy’s convoy landed at Liverpool, England, and he made his way to a camp near Portsmouth, where they trained for more than a year.
They knew their job and they knew the plan. They were to take the beach, off-load tanks and supplies and fuel. They were to head inland to assist airborne troops who went in June 5 to places like Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Cherbourg.
But when they hit Omaha Beach, everything went bad.
The 16th hit the beach first, Buddy says.
“About all of them died,” he said. So the klaxon on their boats called, “All hands on deck, all hands on deck.”
The second wave had to go in early.
He got in his Higgins boat with 30 other soldiers, rode the waves and hit Omaha Beach for the first time in his life.
The men were loaded down with every piece of equipment that could be conceived, but once they landed, Buddy says, soldiers started stripping down to the essentials – ammo and weapons, ammo and weapons.
The beach was almost impossible to pass through — barricaded with concrete, concertina wire, mines.
Buddy remembers how his squads got through. A destroyer, the USS Frank-ford, turned parallel to the beach and shelled the German positions, stopping the deadly fire that was pinning down the men on that part of the beach.
Buddy fought 12 to 14 hours, dodging bullets, firing his Browning Automatic Rifle, stripping ammo off the wounded and the dead, trying to stay alive.
It was night, around 9 p.m., when his fighting stopped, briefly. With a little time to regroup, they headed inland.
“I got one thing that nobody can ever take away,” Buddy says. He was there, on “Bloody Omaha,” the biggest battle ever fought, and he survived.
He was 19 years old.
The war in Europe
Buddy walked every mile, he said, from the beach, with fire fights every day and many nights, 50 miles to battles in Belgium. His last combat action was in Aachen, the first German city conquered in the war.
He helped liberate a work camp. It wasn’t one of the death camps that epitomize the evil of Nazi Germany. But it was also not a pleasant sight. He had to delouse the workers, mostly women and young children.
He then helped drive the displaced Czechs and Slavs back to their homelands in the Balkans.
He became part of the occupation until he got orders to head west. He boarded a boat, the Mexican Victory, which carried him past the white cliffs of Dover and back to the United States.
If he saw it on his way over to Europe, he doesn’t say. But he does mention it as part of his return. When the Mexican Victory pulled into New York harbor, Buddy saw the Statue of Liberty. It meant something to him.
The troops took a short hop to a nearby station and Buddy and the soldiers were put on a train, again. This time he got a sleeper cabin in a fancy Pullman car.
He and his fellows were unloaded at Fort Bragg, N.C., and told to stick around if they wanted to serve in the peacetime army, or hit the road. He wanted to get the hell out, so he hit the road, hitching a ride to Charlotte with a guy whose brother showed up in a car.
A bus from Charlotte took him back to Chester County, to the old company store in Lando. His siblings were all babies, so there was no one to meet him. He walked the last bit to his home.
His mother “grabbed him by the neck,” he says. She cried.
“I’m glad to see you home,” she told him. She knew he would be getting out sooner or later, but she didn’t expect him “so soon.”
It was Jan. 17, 1946. He had been away for almost three years.
He opened the Columbia Street Grill, a restaurant where the Cyclone now stands. He was leasing the space, but later opened his own restaurant, Buddy’s Drive-In, on the J.A. Cochran Bypass, in the ’60s.
He met Beverly at a Sugar Bowl a few years before and the two got married, had a daughter. They worked hard to build a nice life for themselves. They ran the restaurant for almost 30 years.
They’ve leased half of the drive-in to various Chinese restaurants over the years. But they keep the other half for themselves, keeping it ready and clean. Every Fourth of July, they cook barbecue for sale. Buddy smokes his barbecue and won’t give up his recipe.
So he managed to put a lot of it behind him, as he was advised.
But he can’t keep it all inside.
When World War II ended, the whole world was at peace.
“Didn’t last long, did it?” he says.
Soldiers like him hailed the creation of the United Nations. What a wonderful thing, he says — an organization that would prevent war.
Yet every few years, there’s another war.
“Where the hell is the U.N.?”
His voice carries obvious disgust over the war in Iraq. It shouldn’t have happened, he says.
Heroes
His experience has taught him much. Though the survivors of World War II are lauded as the greatest generation, though the soldiers who fought are hailed as heroes, Buddy says there are no heroes who can talk about Omaha Beach today.
The only heroes are already over there, buried beneath crosses and Stars of David in the fields of France.
He and his wife will visit those fields again next week, with a British survivor of the battle they met and befriended a few years ago. They are riding over on a ferry from England to France, almost the same sea route Buddy took in 1944.
Media reports say President Barack Obama will speak at a ceremony over there. A soldier attached to the State Department in Paris has obtained tickets for the Ernandezes and their friends to the official program on June 6, 2009.
He puts the whole experience into one word, using its real meaning.
His eyes close, his arms shake a little as he says it, as if, there in his den, he’s actually already back there, back in ’44, back “crawling over nothing but dead people.”
As if he’s back on the beach.
“It was the most … awesome … thing ever.”
From The News & Reporter of Chester, S.C.
The pilot, who could do fantastic maneuvers and barrel rolls, spent the voyage literally spilling his guts. Buddy just smiled and fished.
Rough or easy, the sea doesn’t bother Buddy. After all, he’s been in rougher, tougher places at sea.
The English Channel, to be precise.
June 6, 1944, actually.
That day, he was with 3rd Platoon, C Company of the 18th Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division — “the Big Red One.”
The first wave went in at 6 a.m. The 16th Regiment was in that wave.
If not for a mix-up, Buddy would have been in that outfit, and he is certain he wouldn’t be here, alive today, to tell his story.
The 16th and the rest of the first wave got torn to pieces by German machine guns and cannons raining bullets and shells down all morning. More than 1,500 men were killed in that first wave, Buddy says.
So the call went out. The second wave started going in around 7, hours early. The second wave included the 18th Regiment, which included Buddy.
Buddy boarded his Higgins boat, a landing craft, and headed out over rough waves to his part of the “Longest Day,”
when the Allies captured Normandy, France, starting the offensive that would end World War II in Europe.
Buddy saw things that day he still can’t get out of his mind, blood and guts, real blood and guts, arms and legs, pieces of real men hanging off metal “hedgehogs,” blood in the water, blood on the sand.
Yet for all the horror, next week he’s going back, back to that beach.
Omaha Beach.
“Greatest Generation”
This will be Buddy Ernandez’ third trip back, he says, but “it’s probably the last one.”Ernandez is one of the greatest generation. He and millions of other young American men fought the Nazis, liberated death camps, fought real evil. Then they came home and built things, cars, planes, homes, creating a booming economic engine. They landed a man on the moon.
But the men who fought World War II are now senior citizens, and they are dying out — some reports put it at 1,000 a day.
Buddy just turned 84. When he first hit the beach, he was younger, much younger – 2009 marks the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.
He was not yet 17, a student at Edgemoor High School, on the day everything changed for his generation. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entered a war on two fronts, fighting Japan and the Nazis in Germany.
Before that, this Lando boy, this son of the mill village, had few worries. He had a couple of good coon dogs and he loved to hunt, shooting squirrels and other small animals in the hills around Fishing Creek.
But life changed. It was a frightening time, he says. He remembers reading in the old Charlotte newspapers about six men killed when German U-boats sunk fishing ships off the coast of North Carolina.
He registered for the draft when he turned 18, and he was called up a year later, in 1943.
Training, deploying
Buddy went to Camp Webster in Macon, Ga., for basic training. His drill instructor was tough as nails. When his company reported, the lavatory in the two-story barracks was spotless the first night.“‘You know who keeps it this clean?’ the sergeant asked us. ‘You do,’” Buddy says, acting the role and pointing his finger.
Buddy tells stories with elaboration. He takes time for details. He gestures, raises his arms for emphasis. He often closes his eyes, as if trying to picture the scene. After a few minutes, he really settles in. He relaxes into his natural Lando accent and the tale comes at its own speed of his time on “O-mee-ha Beach.”
Basic finished after about four months, and everyone was ordered onto a train and sent to Union Station in Washington, D.C.
“A man will meet you at the station and tell you where to go,” they were told.
At the station, he was put on a truck and taken to Fort Meade, Md. He carried his duffel bag to a parade ground. He and thousands of other young men were told to wait until they heard their names.
It took forever. Soldiers played poker and gin rummy, Buddy says, while they waited. There was a lunch break in the middle of the day. At the end of the day, Buddy was the only man left standing on the parade ground.
The lieutenant, a guy “so young, he looked like he had just graduated from Clemson,” was not happy to see Buddy. He questioned Buddy, who said his name was never called.
The lieutenant took Buddy to see a colonel, and the colonel heard both out. The colonel asked Buddy to find his name in the list, and it was there. Then the colonel asked the lieutenant to read the name aloud. He stuttered, yet insisted he had called it out on the field.
“The colonel says, ‘If you can’t say it now, you obviously couldn’t say it then,’” Buddy says. But the train he was to take had left hours before.
Buddy had some spending money in his pocket. He’d sold Butler and Leeds, his coon dogs, to a Rock Hill man who admired the dogs yet promised to sell the dogs back, no questions asked, if Buddy made it back.
The colonel found Buddy a bunk. A week later, another mass of men filled the parade ground. Buddy was put on a train again, sent to Camp Shanks, N.Y, briefly, then put on a boat in a six- to eight-boat convoy to England, to train for the invasion.
The Big Red One
That was how he ended up in the 18th Regiment. He also learned the 16th was the unit he should have been assigned to. Both were in the 1st Infantry, the Big Red One, but the 16th was a week ahead of the 18th while they trained for the invasion. Until D-Day, that is.The Big Red One was an experienced, busy division. Its men had landed in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. The ones who survived were experienced and tough. Guys like Buddy beefed up platoons that had suffered heavy casualties, but it gave the fresh replacements a chance to work with battle-tested soldiers.
Buddy’s convoy landed at Liverpool, England, and he made his way to a camp near Portsmouth, where they trained for more than a year.
They knew their job and they knew the plan. They were to take the beach, off-load tanks and supplies and fuel. They were to head inland to assist airborne troops who went in June 5 to places like Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Cherbourg.
But when they hit Omaha Beach, everything went bad.
The Longest Day
Only one unit landed at its intended location that day. Nothing else went right, but the few officers who survived were innovative.The 16th hit the beach first, Buddy says.
“About all of them died,” he said. So the klaxon on their boats called, “All hands on deck, all hands on deck.”
The second wave had to go in early.
He got in his Higgins boat with 30 other soldiers, rode the waves and hit Omaha Beach for the first time in his life.
The men were loaded down with every piece of equipment that could be conceived, but once they landed, Buddy says, soldiers started stripping down to the essentials – ammo and weapons, ammo and weapons.
The beach was almost impossible to pass through — barricaded with concrete, concertina wire, mines.
Buddy remembers how his squads got through. A destroyer, the USS Frank-ford, turned parallel to the beach and shelled the German positions, stopping the deadly fire that was pinning down the men on that part of the beach.
Buddy fought 12 to 14 hours, dodging bullets, firing his Browning Automatic Rifle, stripping ammo off the wounded and the dead, trying to stay alive.
It was night, around 9 p.m., when his fighting stopped, briefly. With a little time to regroup, they headed inland.
“I got one thing that nobody can ever take away,” Buddy says. He was there, on “Bloody Omaha,” the biggest battle ever fought, and he survived.
He was 19 years old.
The war in Europe
Buddy walked every mile, he said, from the beach, with fire fights every day and many nights, 50 miles to battles in Belgium. His last combat action was in Aachen, the first German city conquered in the war.
He helped liberate a work camp. It wasn’t one of the death camps that epitomize the evil of Nazi Germany. But it was also not a pleasant sight. He had to delouse the workers, mostly women and young children.
He then helped drive the displaced Czechs and Slavs back to their homelands in the Balkans.
He became part of the occupation until he got orders to head west. He boarded a boat, the Mexican Victory, which carried him past the white cliffs of Dover and back to the United States.
The Statue of Liberty
On the 15-day sea voyage back, counselors told the men to put the war behind them, to forget the bad and look forward to the good that would come when they got home.If he saw it on his way over to Europe, he doesn’t say. But he does mention it as part of his return. When the Mexican Victory pulled into New York harbor, Buddy saw the Statue of Liberty. It meant something to him.
The troops took a short hop to a nearby station and Buddy and the soldiers were put on a train, again. This time he got a sleeper cabin in a fancy Pullman car.
He and his fellows were unloaded at Fort Bragg, N.C., and told to stick around if they wanted to serve in the peacetime army, or hit the road. He wanted to get the hell out, so he hit the road, hitching a ride to Charlotte with a guy whose brother showed up in a car.
A bus from Charlotte took him back to Chester County, to the old company store in Lando. His siblings were all babies, so there was no one to meet him. He walked the last bit to his home.
His mother “grabbed him by the neck,” he says. She cried.
“I’m glad to see you home,” she told him. She knew he would be getting out sooner or later, but she didn’t expect him “so soon.”
It was Jan. 17, 1946. He had been away for almost three years.
An American life
He got a job at a printing company, took some classes under the G.I. Bill, but after showing fellow members of the American Legion that he could cook, he talked himself into opening a restaurant. His mother had taught him to cook as a young man and he liked it.He opened the Columbia Street Grill, a restaurant where the Cyclone now stands. He was leasing the space, but later opened his own restaurant, Buddy’s Drive-In, on the J.A. Cochran Bypass, in the ’60s.
He met Beverly at a Sugar Bowl a few years before and the two got married, had a daughter. They worked hard to build a nice life for themselves. They ran the restaurant for almost 30 years.
They’ve leased half of the drive-in to various Chinese restaurants over the years. But they keep the other half for themselves, keeping it ready and clean. Every Fourth of July, they cook barbecue for sale. Buddy smokes his barbecue and won’t give up his recipe.
So he managed to put a lot of it behind him, as he was advised.
But he can’t keep it all inside.
Peace
Buddy says that any man who has fought in a war knows it has just one lesson. War is terrible. The man who’s been to war doesn’t believe in war. He wants peace.When World War II ended, the whole world was at peace.
“Didn’t last long, did it?” he says.
Soldiers like him hailed the creation of the United Nations. What a wonderful thing, he says — an organization that would prevent war.
Yet every few years, there’s another war.
“Where the hell is the U.N.?”
His voice carries obvious disgust over the war in Iraq. It shouldn’t have happened, he says.
Heroes
His experience has taught him much. Though the survivors of World War II are lauded as the greatest generation, though the soldiers who fought are hailed as heroes, Buddy says there are no heroes who can talk about Omaha Beach today.
The only heroes are already over there, buried beneath crosses and Stars of David in the fields of France.
He and his wife will visit those fields again next week, with a British survivor of the battle they met and befriended a few years ago. They are riding over on a ferry from England to France, almost the same sea route Buddy took in 1944.
Media reports say President Barack Obama will speak at a ceremony over there. A soldier attached to the State Department in Paris has obtained tickets for the Ernandezes and their friends to the official program on June 6, 2009.
In a word
The counselors years ago told him to forget it, don’t talk about it, but he can’t forget.He puts the whole experience into one word, using its real meaning.
His eyes close, his arms shake a little as he says it, as if, there in his den, he’s actually already back there, back in ’44, back “crawling over nothing but dead people.”
As if he’s back on the beach.
“It was the most … awesome … thing ever.”
From The News & Reporter of Chester, S.C.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
STORY: Festus the Labrador guides wounded Marine back to a normal life
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| Charlie Petrizzo and some of his Labrador retrievers pictured in May at his Waxhaw home/training kennel. |
I got to do a freelance story for the Catholic News Herald, my wife's paper. Was nice to be able to squeeze in a freelance assignment.
Here is a picture and the story below, as well. Please go ahead and hit the story on her site. It's the nice thing to do. And she's got more pictures than I do.
STORY: Festus the Labrador guides wounded Marine back to a normal life
WAXHAW, N.C. — A red fox Labrador retriever named Festus has given Marine Staff Sgt. Nick Bennett something he hasn't had since he heard a whistling noise in Anbar Province in Iraq in 2004.
Bennett has his life back.
Things most people take for granted – picking something up off the bottom shelf at the grocery store, putting on a pair of socks, enjoying a baseball game – had been out of his reach for much of the past 10 years since he heard that whistling sound and was severely injured – physically and mentally.
A long-time Marine reservist who lives in Franklin, Ind., Bennett asked his superiors if he could deploy during Operation Iraqi Freedom when several members of his unit were called up. His family has a long tradition of military service, and he also wanted to serve his country, he says.
He and five others ended up in Anbar Province, in an area dubbed the "Triangle of Death."
Bennett was technically a communications officer, but given his family's emphasis on military service, he says, he didn't go to Iraq just to work in a communications hut making sure fellow Marines could email and phone home. So he also pulled security duty at his forward operating base in Mamadiyah, Iraq.
It was one of the deadliest months of the war, and Bennett and his fellow Marines endured daily mortar attacks and IED blasts while out on patrol. Then rockets started falling on their base.
"The mortars, they thump," he recalls. "The rockets whistle."
The piercing whistle he heard on Nov. 11, 2004, was a rocket attack. When the blast from the 107mm shell struck him, badly wounding his legs and arms, Bennett was getting into a Humvee to assist other Marines who had come under attack. He had been in Iraq for less than three months.
An expression of 'caritas'
Outside a home set amid the rolling green hills south of Charlotte, N.C., one mild May morning, a man claps and whistles, and a collection of Labrador retrievers comes bounding up to him. Their tails wag as he pets and hugs each one.
Charlie Petrizzo has turned his three-acre property into a kennel and training operation for these Labs to become service dogs for people like Bennett.
Petrizzo formerly worked in financial services, where he focused on making money. Now retired, this cradle Catholic feels compelled to put his faith into action.
Project2Heal is that calling.
The "puppies," as Petrizzo affectionately calls them, get all the attention, but the idea is to help people. The dogs he breeds, raises and sometimes fully trains at Project2Heal are his way of expressing Catholic charity, he says.
"Charity comes from the word 'caritas.' It means Christ-like love."
Petrizzo knows something about what the people his dogs help have endured. He suffered two near-death experiences in his life, including getting electrical burns while standing on an aluminum ladder.
"I call that the gift that keeps on giving," he says with a wry laugh, explaining that he has had to deal with subsequent medical problems that trace back to that accident.
A family Labrador retriever helped him heal, and dogs have remained a source of comfort for him. So after years as a Fortune 500 executive, he searched for a way involving dogs that would enable him to help others who needed similar healing.
That way became Project2Heal, which breeds Labs and donates them to other organizations to train as service or companion dogs. They serve the disabled or injured vets such as Bennett, but they are also trained to help children who suffer from seizures, autism spectrum disorder and more.
Petrizzo works with up to 50 volunteers at Project2Heal who handle the daily operations. They start when each litter of carefully bred pups are just two days old, Petrizzo says, "imprinting" them with the sights and smells they'll need to understand later as trained service dogs. When the most promising puppies are just weeks old, they are given to service dog training groups for specialized training.
In the case of Bennett's service dog Festus, Project2Heal sent the pup to Indiana Canine Assistant Network (ICAN), which then matched him with Bennett one year ago. It was ICAN's 100th service dog, and its first with a combat wounded veteran.
Festus went to the Indiana Women's Prison to be trained by the inmates there. Many service dogs are trained by inmate handlers in prisons across the country.
Bennett spent two weeks at the prison with Festus to see if they would hit it off, and they did – right from the start.
Festus looked at Bennett, and the dog's eyes said, "Everything is going to be OK," the wounded Marine recalls.
'There to pick me up'
Now, three-year-old Festus is now helping the former Marine in ways he never imagined.
There's the "brace" command. Bennett says it, and Festus lets Bennett lean on his back for support. This enables him to put on his socks and reach for items on the bottom shelf at stores.
Before Festus came along, Bennett says, he simply didn't go to the store by himself. Now, he can go out anytime he wants.
Festus helps Bennett walk straight, too – keeping him from sidling too much in one direction because of his leg injuries.
And the "nudge" command makes possible experiences like going to a Chicago White Sox game, despite the worry of loud noises and crowds triggering his post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Like a lot of teams, they have fireworks when the White Sox hit a home run," Bennett says, but the whistling and exploding noises of fireworks can set off a PTSD episode, in which he can be frozen, zoned out for 20 minutes or more.
Without Festus, "I'd be hoping the White Sox do not hit a home run," Bennett says. But the dog nudges him, pushing his cold doggy nose into the side of Bennett's leg until he snaps out of the trance. Now his PTSD episodes last only five minutes or so, he says.
But the simple things Festus does are what truly amaze him, Bennett says.
"I can go do a flight of stairs like I did 10 years ago," he says, choking up.
Despite having had 26 surgeries to repair his hands and legs, he still feels pain from his injuries, but the pain has lessened considerably. And, he adds, "If I fall, he's going to be there to pick me up."
Festus has not just helped Bennett, though. Bennett's wife, his sole caregiver, is not afraid to leave him now to run errands or take time for herself.
"The anxiety that he has lowered in her, you can't ask for anything more in this world," he says.
Because Petrizzo bred the dog that has given him his life back, Bennett calls him a "major angel." He first met Petrizzo when he and Festus completed their training, when ICAN held a graduation ceremony, but Bennett wants to visit North Carolina and see where Festus and all the other service dogs got their start with Project2Heal.
Maybe when he does, Project2Heal will be in a new location.
Petrizzo has long dreamed of moving Project2Heal into a newer, larger home. He has more than one breeding dog, and each can have up to two litters a year. His pups are highly sought after by many organizations that train service dogs, because the breeding stock he uses is so highly regarded, as is the training and imprinting the Project2Heal staff do just days after the dogs are born.
Petrizzo can't keep up with the demand in his current home-based facility. He is getting assistance from parishioners at nearby St. Matthew Catholic Church, but he is also reaching out for more support because he sees a growing need – both among veterans like Bennett returning from combat, as well as with children suffering from autism spectrum disorder and other conditions.
And because he sees the good the dogs are doing.
He recalls one particular call from the mother of an autistic child who had a service dog from Project2Heal.
One day, the mother told him, she watched as the Labrador retriever brought a ball over to her son, and the child tossed it away, as if it were an annoyance. The dog brought the ball back and the child tossed it away again. Boy and dog continued to repeat the game of fetch for about 10 minutes, and soon the autistic boy began laughing.
The mother cried as she talked with Petrizzo. She hadn't heard her child laugh in years.
The amazing things dogs like Festus give back seem simple to "normal" people, Petrizzo says. But it's really all about charity – "caritas," the love of Jesus – because "a dog's love is the closest thing on earth to God's love."
Holding him up on all sides
The close bond between Festus and Bennett is no coincidence, Petrizzo and Bennett both agree.
Before he deployed to Iraq, Bennett told friends about his favorite Scripture passage, Exodus 17:10-12, which he considers his own intercessory prayer. It describes the Hebrews' battle against the Amalekites.
When the Hebrews were told to fight, Moses held up his arms. As long as he kept his arms raised the Hebrews prevailed, but when Moses grew tired and lowered his arms, the Amalekites started winning the battle. So Aaron and Hur held up Moses' arms.
"That's what I thought I would be needing" in Iraq," Bennett says: help on all sides. And he thinks he got it. From the moment he was injured by the rocket attack to his trip to medical facilities in Iraq, Germany and back in the United States, he believes he has been supported by the prayers of many.
And now Festus is holding him up, giving him back his life, he says.
Petrizzo notes that right after he was born, Festus had a different name. He was part of a litter named using a red theme.
It's also a nickname some of Bennett's friends had for him. It comes from the Bible and means "drawn from the water." The original name holder freed his people from slavery, leading them through the desert toward a new life, to a Promised Land.
They call him Festus now, but he started out as Moses.
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