There's a great op-ed piece by Seth Lipsky in today's
NY Post. Here are excerpts, edited by yours truly: "Sybil Stockdale is going to be buried Friday at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, where she’ll rest beside her husband, Vice Admiral James Stockdale. He was one of the greatest heroes in American history — and so was she. They are a pair to think about in our cynical age. He led a battered band of brothers to defy a barbaric foe holding them prisoner in the dungeons of Hanoi. For this America would award him the Medal of Honor. On the other side of the world, Sybil Stockdale led an uprising of wives to spur our government to fight for those prisoners. She represented their cause to the Pentagon, the president, the Congress and envoys of the enemy. Sybil understood that it would be impossible to support our prisoners (and our GIs) in Vietnam without supporting the war they were fighting. She let no light show between her and America’s government. Her husband invented the secret code that enabled the prisoners in the 'Hanoi Hilton' to tap out the messages to one another that kept their spirits up. She hid within her love letters secret messages only he could decipher. After the war, the Stockdales wrote a book called
In Love and War, a classic American memoir. Stockdale fell into enemy hands in September 1965 after ejecting from his A-4 Skyhawk, which had been disabled by enemy fire over North Vietnam. What he did in the Communist prisons was incredible. Most Medals of Honor are bestowed for acts displayed in a few moments of astounding courage — charging an enemy machine gun, say, or throwing oneself on an enemy grenade to protect others. Stockdale’s medal recognized continuous valor over a period of more than seven years. He once slashed his brow and beat his own face bloody with a wooden footstool so that he could not be filmed for propaganda. One day his jailers handed him letters from Sybil. She’d enclosed a photo of his 'mother' bathing in the Pacific. Sybil wrote that his mother had flown to California for an unannounced visit and the chance to go swimming. All she needed, Sybil wrote, was a good soak. Stockdale was mystified. His mother feared flying, hated unannounced visits and was afraid of the ocean. What would she need with a good soak? Then it dawned on him. He filled his bucket with urine and used it to soak the photograph. The picture peeled in two, disclosing a hidden message between the sheets that made up the photo. It said that letters dated on odd-numbered days would be on paper containing invisible carbon. He could use that to send back secret messages. Stockdale felt his heart fill with 'a secret glow.' The carbon enabled him to begin the transmission of intelligence back to the states — names of prisoners, news of torture and the urgency of targeting the Communist radio station. At home, Sybil challenged the claim of an anti-war presidential candidate, George McGovern, that he would win the release of the prisoners within 90 days. She called it 'incredibly irresponsible.' She grasped that it could only incentivize the Communists to hang tough. It was during Richard Nixon’s second term that the prisoners were finally released. In 1992, Stockdale himself stood for vice president on Ross Perot’s ticket. He was mocked by the press for introducing himself with the questions 'Who am I? Why am I here?' Yet long after his detractors are lost in the dustbin of history, America will know exactly who James Stockdale was and why he was here — and that he got back here by dint of the love of the woman he married."
DecadesTV had a real treat last night at ten, airing an episode,
The Laugh Maker (1953), from the
Studio One anthology series, which ran under variant titles from 1948-1958, 467 episodes. It starred Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, pre-
The Honeymooners, and Broadway great Marian Seldes. It was a perfect part for The Great One -- a ruthless comic fighting his way to the top. Seldes played a woman he uses, Carney a magazine writer commissioned to do an article. Gleason made four total appearances on the show, Carney five. The teleplays were shot live and featured a Who's Who of acting and directing legends.
The Laugh Maker was written by A.J. Russell, who has 45 credits listed, almost exclusively in TV, at IMDb. He would go on to write nine episodes of
The Honeymooners. To fill the 90 minute time slot -- the show was originally an hour -- Decades ran some of the commercials from Westinghouse, the sponsor.
As pundits and talk show hosts have pointed out, expect Quentin Tarantino to be making victory speeches at the Oscars.
My thanks to the gentleman who purchased Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
Love in the Time of Cholera, and the other who bought Isaac Bashevis Singer's
Shadows on the Hudson, and
Listening In by Ted Widmer and Caroline Kennedy, which chronicles JFK's secret White House phone calls.
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
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