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MY BRUSH WITH HISTORY
BY THE READERS
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Christmas in the Delta
In December of 1968 I was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division stationed in the Mekong Delta in the southern part of South Vietnam. On this day, which was either December 26 or 27, my troop, Troop D, 3d Squadron, 5th Cavalry, was to see the Bob Hope Christmas show. It was a morning performance, starting at around ten. My friends and I arrived early, about eight. The morning was very hot and humid, like most mornings in the delta. The show was to be held in an open area where a stage with a large bunker had been constructed. My friend Driver looked at me and said, “Hutch, don’t think for one second that bunker’s for us.” We all had a good laugh as we waited in the heat.
Outside the base camp we could hear the sounds of a firefight. M-16s and AK-47s made a lot of noise, and we wondered if the show would go on. The performers were to be Miss Ann-Margret, the Golddiggers, Johnny Bench, and of course Bob Hope. Ann-Margret was a sexy lady with beautiful flaming red hair. The Golddiggers were a singing group, all pretty with very long legs. Johnny Bench was a famous baseball player for the Cincinnati Reds, a great catcher with a hot bat who hit in the .30Os for years. He was my favorite player. And Bob Hope, well, everybody knew who Bob Hope was. He had performed for men in World War II and Korea, and now he was performing for us.
At ten the show started. The firefight outside the base got louder and seemed to be coming closer. Ann-Margret sang some songs, the Golddiggers did their bit, Johnny told some baseball stories and had a big impact on me and my friend Tom Grose. The noise of the fire-fight didn’t seem to bother Johnny. He went on with his stories, sometimes making a comment about the battle that would make us laugh. When Bob Hope came out onto the stage, he seemed nervous and stood close to the bunker door. He also wore a flak vest for protection. But he was very funny and put on a great show.
As the show ended, many troops headed toward Ann-Margret and the Golddiggers for autographs. Driver, Grose, and I headed straight for Johnny Bench. I had carried a baseball card with his picture on it for years and thought it would be nice to have him sign it. We stood in a long line for quite some time. Tom gave up and headed back to our company area; Driver and I stayed. The line finally started to move, and I was only a few feet from Johnny when I heard Tom shout, “Hutch, we’ve got a mission!” Tom had gotten back to the company and been ordered to find me. I asked when. Tom shouted, “Now! Pilots are waiting.” I turned to look at Johnny as I started to make my way toward Tom. “Hey, Hutch, be careful,” he said. The look Johnny Bench gave me I will never forget: He had this sad and concerned look. As he waved at me, I heard him ask the officer beside him, “How young are they?”
When we arrived, the pilots were just getting into the helicopters. Soon we were in the air and flying over the area where the show had been held. I looked down and waved, thinking, hey, I didn’t get my card signed, but Johnny Bench had looked right at me and called my name.
After that Tom often teased me before missions, repeating what Johnny Bench had said to me, “Hey, Hutch, be careful.” I was careful, or lucky. I returned home. When I think back to that day in December 1968, I can still hear the words and see the look Johnny Bench gave me. Tom Grose was killed on February 25,1969. I often wish that Johnny had told Tom to be careful.
—Johnny Hutcherson lives in Wallingford, Connecticut. |
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The Fugitive
In June of 1953 a friend and I, both eleven years old, were cliff climbing in a park in Cleveland when I tumbled down the slip- pery shale and broke a wrist. After inching our way down to the roadside, we hitched a ride in a garbage truck to the park police station. By the time my parents learned what had happened I was sitting in the emergency room of Bay View Osteopathie Hospital in suburban Bay Village, quite a distance from my west-side Cleveland home. I never did find out why I was taken there and not to the nearby hospital in Fairview Park.
An intern set my wrist, plastered on a cast, and released me to my relieved father. On the following day, however, we received a call from the hospital. One of its more experienced orthopedic surgeons had reviewed the X rays and was dissatisfied with the way my wrist had been set. So back we went, my father and I, to the hospital. The surgeon, a tall, nice-looking fellow with thinning hair and an easy smile, told us he would have to break my wrist again and reset it. When I woke up from the anesthesia, I had a new cast, and six weeks of healing lay ahead.
“Hell of a nice guy,” my father said. It was quite a shock the following summer when Dr. Sheppard was arrested for his wife’s murder. |
In August I was back at Bay View in the hands of the same congenial doctor. He took off the cast and offered some leisurely advice on how to rehabilitate my wrist. My father and I thanked him for his care and kindness and left for home. A week or so later the bill came from the hospital: $150. It seemed fair, but our physician, I guess, had reckoned differently. There was an ink slash through the charge and below it the revised figure: $75. “Hell of a nice guy,” my father said, as he noted the signature under the discounted bill, Samuel H. Sheppard, D.O.
It was naturally quite a shock when, the following summer, local newspapers announced Dr. Sheppard’s arrest for the murder of his pregnant wife. What followed, of course, was one of the most sensational trials in decades, with biased news coverage by the Cleveland Press, prosecution charges of a cold-hearted, adulterous husband, and a seemingly lame defense that a “bushy-haired” intruder had committed the crime. Sheppard was convicted in the media even before the unsequestered jury reached its own verdict. He was sentenced to life in prison. The case inspired a television series, “The Fugitive,” which ran from 1963 to 1967, and a movie in 1993.
The rest of Sheppard’s life, especially in light of recent evidence that strongly suggests he did not commit the murder, resembles Greek tragedy. Ten years after the trial the Supreme Court overturned Sheppard’s conviction, declaring in effect that the trial had been a sham. A second trial and an acquittal followed. There was reasonable doubt after all. So Dr. Sheppard was free, though not vindicated.
Lingering public suspicion haunted him for the rest of his life. After a brief unsuccessful effort to resume his medical practice, he drew new notoriety for his drinking, his emotional turmoil, his divorce from his second wife. There was mocking coverage of his admittedly bizarre spell on the pro-wrestling circuit during the year before he died. A brain hemorrhage finally struck him down in April of 1970.
Over the years a number of books have argued his innocence. But the most persuasive case of late has been the result of his son’s long crusade to vindicate his father by identifying and proving the guilt of the “bushy-haired” intruder (evidence suggests the man was a window washer named Richard Eberling). I wish him well. His father was no saint, but he was a more gentle man than many once thought.
—Samuel J. Thomas is a professor of history at Michigan State University in East Lansing. |
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The Odd Couple
During the fall of 1973, when my wife, Jane, and I were undergraduates at the University of Texas at El Paso, we had dinner with what we will always consider the oddest couple ever to dine at one table: Angela Davis and Francis Gary Powers. This occurred at a symposium sponsored by New Mexico State University and held at the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Mescalero.
Jane and I drove two and a half hours from the searing desert of El Paso to the cool pines of the Lincoln National Forest, and were seated just in time to hear Angela Davis speak about her Communist leanings and her political troubles in California. She was followed by Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who had been shot down over the Soviet Union, imprisoned for a few years, and later traded for a Russian spy on a bridge in Berlin. At the time of the symposium, Powers was working as a helicopter pilot for the Los Angeles Police Department.
When the speeches were over, the two sat together on a sofa to answer questions, Davis with her long black hair and colorful dress and Powers in a suit, white shirt, and tie.
After the question-and-answer period we all were invited to dinner. We walked into a restaurant and lined up in front of the buffet. Davis and Powers were right behind Jane and me, and after getting their trays of food, they asked if they could join us.
During dinner Davis was quiet, hardly saying anything other than “Please pass the butter.” Powers, on the other hand, was very talkative. He told about when the U-2 airplane jerked violently and began to fall. He thought the problem was caused by a mechanical malfunction; he did not believe the Russians had the technology to shoot him down at that altitude. He blew the canopy off the aircraft, but he worried that because of modifications to the plane, he could not eject without his legs being chopped off at the knees. So in a panic he climbed out of the cockpit.
“Unfortunately I forgot to unfasten my umbilical cord,” he said between bites of prime rib, “and for a long three to five seconds I was hanging by this cord while the plane nose-dived toward earth.
“Then suddenly my cord snapped, and I fell clear of the airplane. I passed out, and my parachute automatically opened at a preset altitude. I came to while floating to earth, and I immediately began tearing up all the documents, maps, and other paperwork I had in my pocket. I found my ‘silver dollar,’ within which was a small pin containing poison. I knew the Russians would want that dollar, so I removed the poison pin, threw the dollar away, and hid the pin in my clothing. It went through three searches by Russian authorities before it was found and confiscated.”
Jane, Davis, and I ate silently while we listened to his account of his discovery by two farmers, who took him in their pickup truck to the local authorities. As he rode between them, one of them wrote “USA” with his finger in the dust on the dashboard.
“I just sat there and didn’t say a word. I was scared to death,” Powers said. “But there was never any torture the entire time I was in Russia.”
My wife asked him if he had made any friends while in prison.
“Two,” he said, “both Russians, and to this day I correspond with both of them. They’re still in prison in Moscow.”
Jane and I drove our Volkswagen bus back to El Paso, and for the next two weeks we told our story to anyone who would listen.
I have since lost a photo of Jane in a knee-length silk dress, the clean-cut Powers, and me with shoulder-length hair. Someday I hope to find that photograph.
—David Leibson is a musician in Austin, Texas.
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Readers are invited to submit their personal “brushes with history, ” for which our regular rates will be paid on publication. Unfortunately, we cannot correspond about or return submissions.
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