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10/10/25 04:22 PM #16318    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Home, Sweet Home!

Was discharged about 1PM today and made it back home wearing my tight fitting "corset" (lumbar support) and using my walker. Probably will need those assist devices for a few weeks to insure good healing of the fusion and spinal manipulations.

I want to thank all who have offered prayers (please continue them) and good wishes as they definitely kept up my spirits during this operative journey.

Hopefully, I will heal as quick as can be expected for our age group without any complications or infections. 

Thanks also for this Forum which helped pass the time and kept me in contact with so many of you.

Jim

 


10/10/25 05:24 PM #16319    

Joseph Gentilini

Hi Jim H - I have been praying for you and will continue. I know what the recovery is like. I got through it and you will also.  Joe G

 

I am also thankful for the Forum!!!!


10/10/25 06:41 PM #16320    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Joe G.,

Thanks, Joe G.,

I know I will get through it but, as you and many others know, it's a slow and frustrating process. With God's and Janet's help we will make it! 

Jim


10/10/25 09:40 PM #16321    

Theresa Zeyen (Kucsma)

Jim, please  know that a lot of us lurkers are also out here praying for you and all the others on the Forum needing support. I know I don't post much, but I read the Forum every day and I enjoy the different perspectives and experiences you regulars share.  Keep it up, ladies and gents! You are providing connections and entertainment to a good many more than you realize. 


10/10/25 09:42 PM #16322    

Theresa Zeyen (Kucsma)

Jim- I am totally envious of your view but glad you only had it for a few days. 


10/10/25 10:26 PM #16323    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Theresa and all Lurkers,

Your prayers and support are good as gold for me and I can't tell you how they encourage me and truly - yes truly - help me.

Thanks,

Jim 


10/11/25 11:02 AM #16324    

 

Michael McLeod

Ok how about starting your day off with a poem?

This is one of my all time faves.

I read it as a young man and there is a couplet in it that helped to inspire me to take on a career as a writer. See if you can pick it out.

I know the poem is flowery and complicated in places but it has a very basic, down to earth, words-to-live-by message at its heart. Find your love! Find your mission in life and embrace it!

I am pulling together a packet of a few stories I wrote over dang near half a century of writing, most of it for the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Orlando Sentinel. I'm doing so for the benefit of my two children, Michelle and Taylor, so they'll have something to remember me by.

And I'm leading it off with this poem. If you read the poem you'll understand my gratitude for this wonderful, gentle, inspiring man.

 

(And good on ya Jim, take it easy and continue to recoop and enjoy life!)

 

Two Tramps in Mud Time

by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily “Hit them hard!”
I knew pretty well why he dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good
That day, giving a loose to my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And fronts the wind to unruffle a plume
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheel rut’s now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don’t forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.

 

 

 


10/11/25 05:31 PM #16325    

 

Sheila McCarthy (Gardner)

Dr. Jim: Very happy to see you are on the mend. My grandfather was a very old-timey GP, who liked to advance the theory that "doctors make the worst patients." I am glad to see you proving him wrong. Continued blessings on your recovery .... 


10/11/25 06:28 PM #16326    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Sheila, 

Thanks for the message and yes, docs can sometimes be the worst of patients.

I have been trying hard to recognize that I am the patient in this scenario which actually isn't too hard since this type of modern ortho-neuro surgery is out of my realm of medical expertise 🤔.

Anyway, I was discharged yesterday and am trying to become accustomed to new ways of moving and doing activities of daily living as I heal. Not easy at our age by any means!

Jim

P.S.

And a big thanks to Dan, Mark and any others I may have missed who posted or otherwise gave me their support and prayers on this Forum.

Phase One is past but recovery is just starting and is just as important so, keep those prayers and good thoughts going!

Jim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


10/11/25 07:45 PM #16327    

Joseph Gentilini

Sheila, I had two doctors in my uncles.  The one was morbidly obese with lots of problems. He once said to me, "Joe, I am a good doctor, but a lousy patient."  I got it!

 

Jim H - follow the doctor's directions - ha!


10/11/25 10:32 PM #16328    

 

Michael McLeod

Joe: as a journalist I loved getting a good quote for a story. And that one from your uncle is a good one indeed.


10/12/25 02:35 PM #16329    

 

David Mitchell

Timing coincidence.

I have always been a fan of great movies. I have seen many of the great films and always enjoy reading those "Top 10" or "Top 100" lists. 

One of the films often rated No.1 all-time is "The Godfather". Until a few nights ago I had never  seen "The Godfather". Now that I am stuck with "streaming" TV, I have differend choices to make. I had a lot of time on my hands and decided to fill three+ hours watching "The Godfather".

I thought it was good, but maybe not great. It's looooong, and pondering ,, and oh so violent. I think I might have liked it better when I was young. And I thought I was aware of who all the famous cast members were.

The very next day I see the headline that Diane Keaton had died. As I read the obit, I saw her listed in the cast of  "The Godfather". I was sort of stunned. I had no idea which part she played as I read the list of cast members.

As I sorted through a web page about the cast I relaized she played a part that looked anything but her recognizable straight dark hair and glasses. She was "Kay", that blonde with a perm (and no glasses) that was Al Pacino's American (second) wife. She looked nothing like any other roll I had ever seen her play. 

 

P.s. (I'm not "Citizen Kane" guy - I'm a "Lawrence of Arabia" guy)


10/12/25 05:16 PM #16330    

 

Janie Albright (Blank)

Jim, so glad the surgery went well. Now for the part you must do yourself! I'm sure you will be very religious in doing your therapy and will mend quickly. Good luck and lots of prayers. 


10/12/25 05:17 PM #16331    

 

Michael McLeod

You take care of thyself, Jim!

Keep yourself occupied - reward yourself for all that hard work you've done tending to others.See if you can explore things you've set aside, books or movies you'd like to revisit, or new things to explore, or friends you'd like to see.


10/12/25 06:52 PM #16332    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Janie,

Thanks, and I do think it did go well as far as I can tell.

I shall do my best to play the role of the patient and follow instructions that my surgical staff advises. Of course, my Janet will see to it that I do!

And Janie, a big thanks again for setting up this website and the Forum as it has brought me, and many, a lot of comfort and encouragement as well as it has provided many reconnections with so many old and new friends over the last 14 years or so!

Mike,

Yes, occupying myself will be more of a challenge due to the things I enjoy the most are outdoors activities. I certainly won't be able to do much yardwork and forget shoveling snow! Photography will definitely suffer. I'm more of a newspaper and magazine guy than books and, fortunately, those come daily or frequently. Plus the fact that I'm already behind in those two areas😯!

So, keep your old writings and articles from your journalism years coming especially about people, as I, and others, enjoy them.

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts and concerns. I'll strive to live up to them. 

Jim 


10/13/25 09:01 AM #16333    

 

Michael McLeod

here you go, Jim, if you are in need of reading material.

This might interest you and others.

It's about Louis Comfort Tiffany, the millionaire stained glass impresario, and a museum devoted to his work.

I live about a mile away from A museum filled with vintage Tiffany creations. This is a story I wrote when that  Tiffany museum here in central florida loaned some of his masterworks to the Met in NYC for an exhibit -- and my editors at the Orlando Sentinel sent me to NYC to cover it. Talk about a choice assignment!

Tiffany was a new yorker with a fondness for Orlando. For the story below I had to travel to NYC, as it involved Tiffany's Long Island Mansion and some of the lavish stained glass creations that Tiffany brought down to his florida home from NYC.

I don't want to sound like the chamber of commerce but if you're ever down this way you might enjoy a visit to this museum devoted to his lavish stained glass creations, not just windows but architectural wonders.

The small but fabulous Tiffany museum I mention in the story is in Winter Park - that's a pretty little upscale town where I live near Orlando - and it's well worth a visit to you and anyone else who might be coming down here to the sunshine state for a visit. 

Here's my story, along with a link for info to the museum. Again I don't want to sound like the chamber of commerce; it's just such a fabulous place for a sentimental,old school guy like me and I loved getting a close up view of this stained glass genius and his wonderful creations. I was even inspired to crank out a few humble stained glass creations of my own years ago.

fyi winter park, where I live, is a suburb of orlando, in central florida.

 

https://morsemuseum.org/

 

 

 

 

TIFFANY’S WORLD COMES HOME


 

By Michael Mcleod 

 

NEW YORK — It would grieve Louis Comfort Tiffany to discover that his cherished Long Island mansion disappeared long ago.

But he would be elated to see its luminous reincarnation, as arranged by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Today the Met, in partnership with the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, opens a six-month exhibition devoted to Laurelton Hall, the enchanted, 600-acre enclave that was both a home and a life’s work. Tiffany designed it, then filled it with creations of his own and collections from afar, representing his lifelong quest for beauty.

The exhibit’s 250-plus objects and architectural remnants include 27 of the lush, innovative leaded-glass windows that brought Tiffany international acclaim. It represents the first full-blown effort since an abandoned Laurelton Hall burned nearly to the ground in 1957 to recapture its bygone elegance.

 

“What you can see here for the first time is how Tiffany worked with scale,” said Morse director Larry Ruggiero. “He was equally comfortable working with large spaces and with the most delicate things.”

Ruggiero and the small party of Morse staffers felt a bit like visitors to a home that had been decorated with their own furniture. About half of the Met exhibit consists of loans from the Morse Museum.

By combining the Met’s extensive Tiffany collection with that of the Morse, and by bringing in other priceless Tiffany artifacts from museums and private collections, curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen has created a startling tribute — startling because Tiffany is revered but pigeonholed. He is associated almost exclusively with glass when in fact his range of materials was much broader.

This is Tiffany in three dimensions — an exhibit that shows how he worked as an artist and designer with interiors to make visitors feel as if they had just walked into one of his stained-glass creations.

 

“The sheer beauty of Tiffany is overwhelming,” said Frelinghuysen. “There were many times, as we were working on the exhibit, that I would look up and see someone on the staff just staring.”

The dining-room display illustrates how Tiffany carefully coordinated color. Six stained-glass transoms depict wisteria in bloom. A massive, blue leaded-glass ceiling echoes the pattern in the rug beneath the dining-room table and the upholstery of the dining-room chairs. An oil painting of ducks reflects the same color combination.

The majority of the windows and architectural fragments in the exhibit are from the treasure trove salvaged from the ruins of Laurelton Hall by Hugh and Jeannette Genius McKean, the Winter Park couple who founded the Morse Museum. Hugh, who died in 1995, had visited Laurelton Hall to study under Tiffany as a promising young painter in 1930.

An audio guide that accompanies the exhibit features Hugh McKean’s tape-recorded voice, extolling the grandeur of the mansion’s Fountain Court, which featured a multicolored fountain and a pipe organ, and where Tiffany often entertained his guests:

“With the pipe organ going full blast and the fountains changing color and the bear rugs on the floor and the fountain water stream running through the house, it was to see Louis Tiffany under the most favorable circumstances,” McKean rhapsodizes. “He was living out beauty and he was handing it on to other young people. That was his great dream.”

The Fountain Court is one of several areas of Laurelton Hall that are evoked in the exhibit, which begins with an enlarged photo of Laurelton Hall flanked by two Qing Dynasty lions from Tiffany’s substantial collection of Asian art.

The lions lead the way to a series of galleries suggesting early Tiffany residences and possessions, including an ornately inlaid piano, on loan to the Met from one of Tiffany’s descendents.

A gallery is devoted to Tiffany’s collections, which included oriental thrones and armor. Another depicts the “forest room” or living hall, which Tiffany designed to have a sense of a refuge in deep woods, with heavy, green-glass lighting fixtures hung from an iron yoke, and stained-glass windows depicting scenes from nature. The most conspicuous of these windows are the Four Seasons, a luminous and ingeniously wrought depiction of spring, summer, winter and fall that brought him international attention when it was displayed at a Paris exhibition in 1900.

The largest part of the exhibit is the Daffodil Terrace, which was just outside the dining room in Laurelton Hall. The terrace consists of eight 11-foot-tall Italian-marble columns, topped with wreaths of opalescent glass daffodils, and a coffered ceiling of iridescent glass panels and stenciled tiles.

“I think people will walk into this exhibit and say, ‘Wow. He did all this?’ ” said Jennifer Thalheimer, collections manager for the Morse.

Her fascination with Laurelton Hall dates to her childhood, when she grew up near the still-elegant ruins of the mansion.

Years later, Thalheimer is one of the full-time caretakers of what remains of Tiffany’s treasures. She spent hour after hour engaged in the painstaking, meticulous process of packing the Morse’s priceless collection to send off to the Met. Then she flew to New York to spend two weeks unpacking it. She will be involved in a reversal of that process when it all heads back to Winter Park in six months.

“It’s a lot of work,” she said. “But it’s home.”


10/13/25 10:17 AM #16334    

 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL.,

Thanks, Mike, that was a great story to awaken to this morning. I could almost see the colors of the stained glass!

You certainly were able to interview and see the work of many famous and interesting people during your career. And that left you with a lifetime of memories which you were able to share with others through you writings.

Jim

 

 


10/13/25 11:37 AM #16335    

 

Michael McLeod

Jim: The Tiffany windows are priceless. Some Ohio church - in Canton, I think - sold off its huge Tiffany stained glass window for twelve million dollars not too long ago.here, i found  a clip of a recent story about the sale,

when I was researching the stories I wrote aboiut tiffany and I got to be close to some of those windows I found myself holding my breath and walking on tiptoes.

 

A Tiffany stained-glass window, originally from a church in Canton, Ohio, was sold at a Sotheby's auction in November 2024 for a record-breaking $12.48 millionThe window, known as the Danner Memorial Window, was created in memory of the church's founders and was sold to an anonymous buyer.  
  • The window: 
    The Danner Memorial Window was created by Louis Comfort Tiffany and depicts a landscape with trees, a river, and poppies. It was originally commissioned for the First Baptist Church in Canton, Ohio. 
  • The sale
    The window was sold at a Sotheby's auction in November 2024 for $12.48 million (including the buyer's premium). Bidding started at $4.5 million, and the final price was more than double its estimated value. 

10/13/25 11:59 AM #16336    

 

Michael McLeod

Thanks Jim.

I swear - I interviewed a lot of celebrities in my day but none of them gave me the thrill that I experienced being around that gorgeous stained glass!

Sometimes I'd be in corners of a museum where the windows were being assembled or moved around for new displays and I was scared to death I'd trip and bust something!

I interviewed a lot of celebrities but none of them made me as nervous as being close to those priceless stained glass windows!

Here's a part of one of those stories for which I had to interview bigshots from the Met in NYC to do, and I got more or less a backstage pass as the windows were being set up for display.:

And if you wan to see images of the windows here is a link to the museum down here in Orlando that I wrote about :

https://morsemuseum.org/

 

The exhibit will incorporate objects from the Met’s own Tiffany collection and include paintings, lighting fixtures, furniture, vases, statues and architectural drawings on loan from other museums and private collectors. Visitors will be able to wander through galleries that evoke four rooms in Laurelton Hall, including the living room, filled with the masterpieces of Tiffany’s career: Virtuoso stained-glass windows depicting sinuous vines, flowers in bloom, pine trees heavy with snow, and other natural scenes, all rendered in the vividly colored, lavalike “Favrile” glass that Tiffany popularized.

The dining room, dominated by a disc-shaped, blue-gold, 41/2-foot-wide stained-glass lampshade, was also where Tiffany placed a series of stained-glass transoms decorated with draped wisteria blossoms — one of the most famous of all the natural images he tried to capture in glass. The dining-room furniture, which echoes the pattern of the lampshade, has been restored to its original pattern by fabrics experts at the Met.

Laurelton Hall’s Fountain Court will be evoked in an adjacent gallery. According to a newspaper account from Tiffany’s day, the focus of the room was a tiled pool that “gets its water from a glass jar of wonderful color shaped like the slenderest of Greek amphorae . . . The water bubbling over the slender jar gains a tint from glass and sunlight combined which cannot be described by words.”

The Met also will publish a 350-page, lavishly illustrated book about Laurelton Hall to accompany the exhibit. Among its authors: Richard Guy Wilson, professor of art history and an authority on American mansions.

Wilson says the exhibit will give hundreds of thousands of museum visitors a firsthand experience of the breadth of Tiffany as an artist.

“He was often quoted saying that art is a reflection of the divine,” Wilson said. “I think he wanted people who stepped into his house to feel like they had walked into the middle of one of his windows.”

‘Gold Coast’ memories

The mansion was built from 1902 to 1905 on a hilly shoreline above Cold Spring Harbor at a time when that stretch of coast on Long Island Sound was beginning to earn its nickname, the “Gold Coast,” as the millionaires’ row of its day.

There were hundreds of sumptuous Gold Coast manor houses. Their owners had fabled names such as Vanderbilt, Hearst and Guggenheim. They lived among marble bathtubs and gold-plated fixtures. Their servants polished their silver, ironed their newspapers and were called upon by one Long Island matriarch to drive the ducks on the pond of her palatial estate south for the winter, to spare them the tedium of flying all that way on their own.

It was a gilded world, captured by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, whose narrator rhapsodizes about “blue gardens where men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

Tiffany’s effort to immortalize that world was less successful. He wanted Laurelton Hall to remain standing long after his death as a museum, a retreat for promising artists and a tribute to his own quest for beauty.

But the finances of the foundation he left behind fell apart a few years after his death. Much of his art collection was auctioned off in the mid-1940s, and by the time the mansion burned a decade later, the 600-acre property had been subdivided and sold.

It was not until the 1960s that collectors and art critics rediscovered Tiffany, whose stained-glass windows and lamps, once consigned to attics and junk piles, have become such priceless artifacts that at museums such as the Morse, only a few chosen employees are allowed to touch them.

One of those people is Jennifer Thalheimer.

Thalheimer is the Morse’s collection manager. She also is writing a chapter about Tiffany for the book to accompany the Met’s exhibition. Thalheimer lends the lofty enterprise a bit of a hometown presence: She grew up in Laurel Hollow, a Long Island village near Laurelton Hall, and prowled through what was left of its ruins as a child growing up in the ’70s and ’80s.

Enough residual allure remained, even among the crumbled walkways, collapsing stables and overgrown garden paths to intrigue her and inspire her to a career in the art world.

“I always felt,” she says, “that Laurelton Hall was my own little piece of the Gold Coast.”

Sometimes it still feels that way. A few days ago, in a warehouse workshop just a few yards away from the packing cases filled with stained-glass windows, Thalheimer stood in front of the Butterfly Window, whose interwoven images can shift with the play of light. Then she did something that few Morse staffers are allowed to do: She lightly ran her forefinger across the priceless, 121-year-old surface of a thick, rippling stained-glass treasure.

She was just doing her job. As part of the painstaking process of preparing the stained glass windows to be shipped to the Met, she needs to record their status for insurance purposes. That includes documenting every tiny crack in the thick, taffylike, luminously colored panes, which are often so densely textured that sometimes Thalheimer needs to feel her way across them to make sure what she sees is a crack and not a ripple.

She stood back from the window, made a note, took a photograph and then moved on to another panel of luminous glass. By the end of the day, the Butterfly Window was ready for its northward migration.


10/13/25 12:23 PM #16337    

 

Michael McLeod

I know I've been blabbling a lot lately, just got excited talking about one of the favorite stories I got to follow.If you're not as crazy about antiques and stained glass as I am you're better off skipping over my last few posts.

In the meantime I'll subdue myself for a bit.

 


10/13/25 02:18 PM #16338    

 

Janie Albright (Blank)

Mike, I read your Tiffany story with great interest and enjoyment. In August I went with some old friends here in Columbus to visit another good friend who lives in Cleveland. She gave us a whirlwind tour. One thing we did was visit Lakeview Cemetery. It's an enormous property with winding hilly drives and some very famous landmarks. 

One is the Wade Memorial Chapel. I will put the links below. But as a dx "one of the few remaining interiors totally designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his studios"
 

https://www.lakeviewcemetery.com/our-grounds/wade-memorial-chapel  
 

In addition there are some other must sees such as the Garfield Memorial Chapel and the burial site of John D Rockefeller and many family members. It is marked by a giant obelisk. Entrance to the cemetery is free. 
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_View_Cemetery
 


10/13/25 03:08 PM #16339    

 

Michael McLeod

Janie:

Wow! I'm jealous! , tust

You know, part of the thrill of that particular form of art is that it's so enveloping - the light through the stained glass surrounds you, and of course the stained glass itself is three dimensional and it literally emanates the images and the colors. And the glass itself is - I want to say "macho." It's three dimensional,solid, lined with soldered metal - kinda delicate but kinda macho! It was a privilege to write about it and to interview scholars and caretakers of a historic masterpiece. And I actually goyt intrigued by it and wound up dabbling in stained glass creations myself. But I ain't no Tiffany, trust me.

 


10/13/25 07:50 PM #16340    

 

David Mitchell

another chapter from my book - but written mostly by the guy in the story. I asked him to give me the gist of it, and I polished it a little bit.

I worry that this may push the limits of my promise to keep it suitable for this Forum - my apologies if this goes over the line for some of you. It's a relatively mild episode by comparison.

 

-----------------------------

 

13 -“CHU HOY” DECOY -  JB’s First Time

 

As with all “Hunter Killer” units, we had quite a number of “shoot downs”. This is the first of a couple for one of my fellow Scout pilots. A very upbeat guy named JB from Texas who you could not help but like.

JB arrived in Vinh Long just weeks after me in January of 1969 and was assigned to our Scout platoon, in Comanche Troop. During the next two weeks, he received 10 hours of training to fly the OH-6a (Loach). His training consisted of the usual several missions as the observer, followed by a couple of missions with another of our experienced pilots - flying as a “wing” pilot behind a Scout “lead”. But our platoon leader believed, that Commissioned Officers are to lead - thus, by the end of February JB was one of the scout “leads" in the platoon. By March 19, he had been in a couple of fire fights and taken some hits in his OH-6a. Thus, some experience, but not really "seasoned". 

Sometime about March 19th (1969), JB was working that day out of Chi Lang (“chee lang”) - up the Mekong River near Cambodia) to support a Special Ops team. Upon landing, they hot refueled and departed with the first team consisting of the usual two OH-6a “Scouts”, two AH-1G “Cobra” gunships, and a UH-1h (Huey) Command and Control(C&C) flown by Capt. Conley. JB’s “wing man” was 1st. Lt. Jim Jackson who was even newer than JB. JB’s observer that day was Spec-5 Carter from Pampa, Texas.

They were looking for enemy personnel and materials being moved into the “AO” (Area of Operations - the area of our search). The Scouts were low level above the grass and reeds along a major canal at about twenty or thirty knots airspeed. Fresh trails were evident. They knew that people were close. 

The AO had been declared as free fire” - shoot on-site - (an infrequent, but occasional condition in certain locations with very frequent, recent, and intense enemy activity, but not close to civilian areas). However, C&C had radioed that they wanted a prisoner if possible. 

They found a submerged sampan (long narrow boat) and started to hover low and slow to part the grass and reeds with their rotor wash to find the owners. They found one and he quickly "Chu Hoy”-ed – (surrendered - stood up in the open with weapon raised over his head with both arms). JBs Observer covered him with his CAR-15 as they circled the guy, advising C&C that they had a prisoner. This is where things got hairy as out of the corner of his eye, JB sighted three Viet Cong, armed with AK-47's who jumped up and proceeded to hose their ship down. JB immediately yanked full power (more than full) to get quickly away from all the automatic weapon fire.

He vividly remembers 1st Lt. Jim Jackson passing on his right side to return mini-gun fire on them. JB’s ship ended up some distance from the VC where they finally went down. Both himself and his observer were wounded - the Observer far worse than JB. 1st Lt. Jackson then picked them up and transported them to Binh Tuey Field EVAC hospital near Can Tho. 

 As a result, Specialist Carter, his observer, lost a leg and JB was hit with shrapnel in one leg. The larger piece of shrapnel was removed in surgery, but smaller pieces continued to work their way to the surface over time. JB convalesced for 19 days at a medical facility at Cam Ranh Bay - where he also got to enjoy the world-famous beach. 

After recovering, he returned to our unit where he continued to fly the Scout mission for several more months, including a second “shootdown”. That promted him to quit the Scout platoon and switch to flying in the C&C ship until his D.E.R.O.S. date (“Depart ERoute Over Seas”) – the end of  his tour of duty.

                                                          *

Note: One of his days about nine months later, as the co-pilot in the C&C would have a special significance for me.                     


10/13/25 07:53 PM #16341    

 

Joseph D. McCarthy

Mike, although not on par with Tiffany's work just to add a little bit about stained glass windows.

Some of you, especially IC graduates, may remember the North Broadway United Methodist Church.  In the 1960's they reovated the church.  They replaced the pulpit, the altar, the pews and the Stained glass windows.  My father purchased all of that, and as I remember assisted in the replacement of those items..He old the pulpit and altar to a 'Black" church near East Fifth Avenue.  The pews were sold to various  ministries throughout Central Ohio.  I helped deliver many of those items.  I remember one storee front ministry on E. Main Street where we delivered pews.

But the best was the Stained glass windows,  not that colored glass most use today.  The family slowly sold of the many windows.  They were outstanidng works of art.


10/13/25 08:03 PM #16342    

 

David Mitchell

   Joe,

I remember that church - sort of.

My favorite grandmother lived on Oakland Park Ave., right behind that church (If I recall correctly)

And my favorite older cousin was married there.

 


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