Editorial
Front Page - Friday, December 24, 2010
Are we there yet?
Adios MMX
Jay Edwards
The year winds down, as they always do. 2010 is gone forever. We can’t get it back. Some wouldn’t want to I’ll wager.
Like the Haitians who saw their capital city, Port-au-Prince, all but destroyed in January, ending the lives of 230,000 of their countrymen.
Or the many people of the Gulf Coast, whose lives were changed by the BP oil spill. Or the millions of Americans still out of work even though they were told the recession officially ended in 2009, in June, I believe. Maybe June 15. I pick that day because it’s Mom’s birthday and she would like that, I think. Mom is one of the lucky ones. She isn’t looking for work, at least not that I’m aware of.
Then there are those who don’t have to worry about recessions ever again; or earthquakes or oil spills or taxes or braces or getting their car totaled out by someone who doesn’t have insurance (sorry, bad week). I write of those whose time has been served, at least on this earth that is. Here are a few of them to remember.
“I am in control here.” It was 1981 and a guy who was trying to impress Jodie Foster had just shot the president. Hours after the assassination attempt on President Reagan, the secretary of state took the podium in the press room at the White House and tried in his hawkish manor to instill confidence in a nation with the words – “Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.”
Alexander Meigs Haig died February 20. He was 85.
Forced into show business by her mother Rose when she was a toddler, Ellen Evangeline Hovick was launched in vaudeville as “Baby June” and also appeared in Hollywood movies. She couldn’t speak until the age of three, but the films were all silent anyway. She would cry for the cameras when her mother, Rose, told her that the family’s dog had died.
When she was only 16, in an effort to escape her overbearing mom, June eloped with Bobby Reed, a boy in the act. Rose reported Bobby to the police, and he was arrested. Rose later went to the police station to see Bobby. She took a pistol from her purse, aimed it at his chest and pulled the trigger. Lucky for him she forgot the safety was on.
Bobby and June later married and divorced. June had a long career as June Havoc, on Broadway and in films, but she never gained the notoriety of her older sister Louise, who became the most famous stripper of all time, Gypsy Rose Lee. June Havoc died on March 28 at the age of 97.
“I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have,” said 84-year-old Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens in October 2008. Referring to his conviction on federal corruption charges, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican also claimed, “I am innocent.”
Stevens had been convicted of seven counts of making false statements on Senate ethics forms to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and work on his Alaska home from an oilfield contractor at the center of a corruption investigation in the state.
Eight days later, in a bid for his eighth term, Stevens was narrowly defeated.
A decorated WWII pilot and survivor of a plane crash in Anchorage in 1978 that killed his first wife Ann and four others, Stevens was true to his words.
He would be exonerated on April 7, 2009 when Federal judge Emmet Sullivan formally accepted Attorney General Eric Holder’s motion to set aside the verdict and throw out the indictment, based on what Sullivan called the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen.
Sixteen months later Stevens was again on a small aircraft over the Alaskan landscape, headed towards some salmon fishing with eight others. One of those was Sean O’Keefe, a former NASA administrator and longtime Steven’s friend.
The last thing O’Keefe remembers was flying over the scenic wilderness. When he woke up he was still strapped to his seat. He shouted for his 19-year old son Kevin and heard his son ask in a dazed voice when they were going to get to the fishing. “We’re not,” the father replied, “we crashed.”
Of the nine on board, four survived, including O’Keefe and his son. And Senator Ted Stevens remarkable career had ended at the age of 86.
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