Category: Blue Skies

According to People Magazine, Michael Mantenuto was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound earlier this week. He is best known for his role in “Miracle” – a Disney film about the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team.

After a short career in show business, Mantenuto joined the Army. He was a Special Forces sergeant stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington at the time of his death. He was 35.

The actor was found on Monday afternoon after sustaining a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the King County medical examiner’s office in Seattle, Washington, tells PEOPLE. His death has officially been ruled a suicide. He’s survived by his wife, Kati, and two children: daughter Ava and son Leo.

[…]

Lt. Col. Robert Bockholt, Director of Public Affairs for U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, tells PEOPLE, “Our deepest condolences go out to Michael Mantenuto’s family, friends, and teammates,” adding, “The cause of death is still under investigation.”

Mantenuto enlisted in 2010, two years after making his final film, Surfer Dude. He attended special forces training in 2013, and went on to become a communications sergeant. He was assigned to 1st Special Forces Group, where he was stationed as a communications sergeant until his death.

Thanks to Bobo for the tip.

A number of readers have passed along a link to the sad news that retired Marine Corps Women’s Reserve Colonel Julia Hamblet has passed at the tender age of 100. Stars & Stripes reports that she joined the Women’s Reserve in 1943 and retired in 1965.

In 1946, Col. Hamblet was named director of the Women’s Reserve, but postwar demobilization saw the ranks of female Marines dwindle to fewer than 200.

“I discovered that we could not get the active duty leaders we wanted for our reserve units,” she said, “without providing them the security of the regular service.”

The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was passed in 1948, which made women full-fledged Marines, although they remained in separate units from the men for decades. Female officers could not hold a rank higher than colonel.

By 1953, when Col. Hamblet succeeded Towle as director of Women Marines, she commanded a corps of more than 2,700 female troops. Typical of the news coverage of the time, reporters commented on Col. Hamblet’s age (36) and appearance. Time magazine described her as a “girl who was born to pose for a recruiting poster.”

During the six years she led Women Marines, Col. Hamblet appeared on the nationally televised game shows “What’s My Line?” and “To Tell the Truth.” She voluntarily stepped down in 1959 because “I was blocking other women officers for promotion.”

Devtun sends us the sad news that Clifton James, the actor most famous for his portrayal of Sheriff JW Pepper in two James Bond movies (Live and Let Die in 1973 and The Man With the Golden Gun in 1974), has passed on to his reward from complications with diabetes. Wiki says that he was a decorated World War II veteran;

James was a decorated World War II veteran, United States Army Combat Infantry Platoon Sergeant Co. “A” 163rd Inf., 41st Div. He served forty-two months in the South Pacific, from January 1942 until August 1945. He spent time in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines. His decorations include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts.[

His daughter recounted some of his stories to the UK’s Daily Mail;

In the 1930s, James got work with the Civilian Conservation Corps and then entered World War II in 1942 as a soldier with the U.S. Army in the South Pacific, receiving two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star.

Lynn James said one of the Purple Hearts came when a bullet pierced his helmet and zipped around the inside to come out and split his nose. The second Purple Heart, she said, came from shrapnel that knocked out many of his teeth.

She said her father rarely spoke about the war and never described events leading to his receiving the Silver Star.

‘He lost too many friends,’ she said.

The Navy Times reports the sad news that Charlie Murphy, brother of comedian Eddie Murphy, passed at the age of 57 from leukemia. He also served in the Navy from 1978 – 1984. Wiki says that he was off-shore from Beirut when the barracks there were bombed.

PR.com interviewed him about his time in the Navy

PR.com: Why did you start out in the Navy? And did you always want to go into show business?

Charlie Murphy: When I was a teenager, my whole thing was… I was a street guy. I hung out with street people and when you hang out with a crowd like that you will end up in trouble. So I got in trouble and it was like, “Ok, you wanna to go to prison or you wanna go to the military?”

PR.com: Is that what the judge said?

Charlie Murphy: That’s what I said. Because it was like, this is not gonna stop. When you get out [of jail], if you don’t go away right away, you’ll be coming back there. I got out on a Monday and I signed up for the Navy the same day. It was the best move I could have possibly made because everybody else that I know that I grew up with, two guys survived and everybody else is dead. And out of the two guys that survived, one of them just got out of prison, like, two weeks ago. He went to jail when he was nineteen. There’s only one dude that didn’t go to jail. He’s a barber and he’s still in Roosevelt (Long Island). But, everyone else is dead. So, I did the right thing by leaving. Those guys went on to do hard prison sentences, and get killed and horrific stuff, man. I became a man in the Navy. That’s where I got my first apartment, my first marriage, my first bank account, my first car… it all happened there. That was a good experience.

[…]

Charlie Murphy: And when I went into the military is when I realized I had a very good brain. It’s very easy to learn, very adaptable and very creative. And I started believing in it. Once you start realizing that you can do these things and you believe that you can do something, you start making an effort and you start doing.

NRA’s American Rifleman has posted this:

In 1967, one man single-handedly established the narrative of U.S. Army airborne forces fighting in the European theater of World War II with the publication of a single book. Twenty-five years before Band of Brothers was first printed and 35 years before it was turned into an HBO mini-series, Donald R. Burgett’s Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy (1967) described the experience of fighting the battle of Normandy as an American paratrooper—and it did so with a clarity and frankness that quickly made it a bestseller. The gritty, no-nonsense writing style of Currahee! brought the Battle of Normandy alive in a way that official histories never have—and it did this from the worm’s-eye view of a 19-year-old rifleman.

Those of us who were and are Currahee’s owe a huge debt to Don Burgett for making us most likely the best known regiment in the United States Army. May all of us in the Airborne Brotherhood pray that Don had an easy landing on his last jump into that great unknown.

All you Currahee’s, sound off:

Poetrooper, Bravo and Headquarters Companies, 2d Bn, 506th Airborne Infantry, 2004-2005 1964-1965.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Chief Petty Officer Christian Michael Pike, assigned to a Coronado-based Navy unit, died of his injuries from a fire fight in Afghanistan. He was being treated for those injuries after he was evacuated to Landstuhl Hospital in Germany.

His mother, Diana Pike, posted on Facebook that Pike was shot in the head during a firefight, suffering immediate brain death. She wrote that he was part of a five-man team fighting 16 to 18 enemy troops. Despite a 10-hour battle, Pike received life-saving measures from teammate Ben Pitassi, and was evacuated by helicopter to Germany. About half of the combatants who attacked U.S. forces were killed in the battle, Pike wrote.

“Christian was so proud to be a Navy Chief with the SW Special Ops group and he was living honorably a life he chose. He wouldn’t have it any other way and neither would I,” Diana Pike wrote. “Christian lived every day, fully and with joy in his heart. He was beautiful, compassionate, honorable, happy and he loved his friends, family, and Navy brothers and sisters with all his heart.”