Category: We Remember

Bobo sends us the sad news that John Gavin (born Juan Vincent Apablasa) has passed at the age of 86. He was known for his roles in A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), Spartacus (1960), and Psycho (1960).

According to Wiki, he was a Navy veteran;

During the Korean War, Gavin was commissioned in the U.S. Navy serving aboard the USS Princeton offshore Korea where he served as an air intelligence officer from 1951 until the end of the war in 1953. Due to Gavin’s fluency in both Spanish and Portuguese, he was assigned as Flag Lieutenant to Admiral Milton E. Miles until he completed his four-year tour of duty in 1955.

He received an award due to his work in the Honduras floods of 1954.

He also served as Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Mexico (1981–86).

Tim sends us the sad news that Sergeant Major Samuel M. McAllister died in a parachute accident late last month, just days after Marine Corporal Alejandro Romero of the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, died in a similar accident.

According to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Sgt. Maj. Samuel M. McAllister, 45, died on Jan. 24 in Eloy.

A USASOC spokesman told the Army Times that McAllister was posthumously promoted from master sergeant to sergeant major.

The Army Times reports that the accident is still under investigation.

Stars & Stripesreports that the body of First Sergeant Nicholas S. Amsberry was discovered near the train station in Parsberg, Germany which serves the Joint Multinational Readiness Center at Hohenfels training area.

The Mesa, Ariz., native was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, out of Fort Riley, Kansas and he was on a nine-month deployment to participate in Operation Atlantic Resolve.

From AZCentral;

Amsberry’s cause of death has not been specified and is currently under investigation by German police and the U.S. Army, according to [Major Jonathon] Knapton.

“There’s no indication that an additional party or foul play was involved at this time,” Knapton said.

“Our deepest sympathies go out to the family of 1st Sgt. Nicholas Amsberry,” said Lt. Col. Peter Moon, commander, 1st CAB. “We know the death of a family member is an immeasurable loss.”

1st of the 18th Infantry was the last unit I was assigned to when I retired while they were part of the Third Brigade, 24th Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia. I know the Parsberg railhead like the back of my hand. It seems like half of my time in Germany was spent going to and leaving Hohenfels.

Devtun sends us the sad news that actor John Mahoney has passed at the age of 77. He is best known for his role in the spin-off television show “Frasier” as Martin Crane, a cranky Seattle police officer who’d taken a bullet in the hip and then been forced to live with his neurotic son, Frasier.

He was a British citizen who came to the US at the age of 11 to visit his sister, a war bride of the Second World War. That visit influenced him to move here when he was 18, then he joined the US Army to speed up the citizenship process, and he became a US citizen in 1959 when he was 19.

Today we get the sad news that Mort Walker, the creator of the iconic Beetle Bailey comic strip has passed at the age of 94.

Like most of his generation, he was a veteran, according to Wiki;

In 1943, Walker was drafted into the United States Army and served in Italy, where he was an intelligence and investigating officer and was also in charge of an Allied camp for 10,000 German POWs. After the war he was posted to Italy where he was in charge of an Italian guard company. He was discharged as a first lieutenant in 1947.

HMC Ret sends us the sad news that Naomi Parker Fraley has passed at the age of 96. She is believed by some historians to be the original “Rosie the Riveter” of World War II motivational posters. That’s her in the picture above during those years when she worked in a Navy machine shop. The original caption read “Pretty Naomi Parker looks like she might catch her nose in the turret lathe she is operating”;

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the 20-year-old Naomi and her 18-year-old sister, Ada, went to work at the Naval Air Station in Alameda. They were assigned to the machine shop, where their duties included drilling, patching airplane wings and, fittingly, riveting.

It was there that the Acme photographer captured Naomi Parker, her hair tied in a bandanna for safety, at her lathe. She clipped the photo from the newspaper and kept it for decades.

After the war, she worked as a waitress at the Doll House, a restaurant in Palm Springs, Calif., popular with Hollywood stars. She married and had a family.

The article discusses all of the “real” Rosie the Riveters.

“I didn’t want fame or fortune,” Mrs. Fraley told People magazine in 2016, when her connection to Rosie first became public. “But I did want my own identity.”

Bobo sends us the sad news that actor Bradford Dillman has passed at the age of 87. According to Wiki, he appeared in many television shows of the 1950s and 60s, such as Ironside, Shane, The Name of the Game, Columbo, Wild Wild West, The Eleventh Hour, Wagon Train, The Greatest Show on Earth, Breaking Point, Mission Impossible, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Barnaby Jones and Three for the Road, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Before his acting career, he was a sailor and a Marine;

While at Yale, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1948. He graduated from Yale with a BA in English Literature.

After graduation, he entered the United States Marine Corps as an officer candidate, training at Parris Island. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in September 1951. As he was preparing to deploy to Korea, his orders were changed, and he spent the rest of his time in the Marine Corps, 1951 to 1953, teaching communication in the Instructors’ Orientation Course. He was discharged in 1953 at the rank of first lieutenant.

Ex-PH2 sends a link to the sad news that Joseph John Triolo, the last known Pearl Harbor veteran of Lake County, Illinois has passed at the age of 97.

“When I got to my gun station, the ammunition boxes were closed. I couldn’t open ’em,” he said. “So the gunner’s mate finally came up, and I says, ‘You gotta get the keys to these ready boxes.’ So he got the keys and he opened them up.

“I got the machine gun going. I was firing on the plane that sunk the Utah. I could see that pilot in the cockpit very plainly. And I observed the roll of the Utah as the ship rolled over — it almost rolled over instantly. As it rolled over, those men that got out of the hull, they followed the turn of the ship until they went into the water, then they swam ashore.”

Triolo, a native of West Virginia, saw the Navy as his way out of working in the coal mines. He went on to finish his career in the Navy at 38 years old and as a chief boatswain’s mate and a Korean War veteran, too. After the Navy he became a teacher in the North Chicago School District for 21 years.

He’ll be returning to West Virginia for his final journey and eternal rest.