Vietnam Saigon Evacuation

Looking back....

They still cry at the wall

WASHINGTON, DC – The walk downhill to the foot of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial takes you 10 feet below ground to a place heavy with grief.

The Wall, at its base, has become the Vietnam generation’s symbol of great sorrow for the 58,256 veterans who were killed or missing in the war.

It’s a special place for the people who go down there, a tour guide said Sunday to a handful of tourists who were about to take that walk on Veterans Day. By design, the walk back to the surface offers a chance for them to bury their sadness in something akin to a tomb.

Hundreds of thousands of people tried that Sunday when the nation marked the 25th anniversary of the black granite monument. By nightfall, there were nearly as many mementos leaning against the list of war dead, everything from flowers to heartfelt poems.


A large silver foil sculpture of a deer was among the many wreaths that stood attention on the lawn opposite the memorial. It was the work of Joel “Artist Bohmeal” Paplham, who calls himself a compassionate non-veteran from West Allis. Wis.



Someone else took the time to put together a framed collage of photographs and other such images associated with the war as a marijuana leaf and peace sign. A portrait of President Bush with red drops of paint across his forehead was even included in the design.

Vietnam War veterans, some wearing old war uniforms, stared silently into the names, only to see their reflections between the letters. The mirror affect makes it impossible to look at the names without reflecting on your own thoughts about war, the tour guide said. The experience sends a chill down the spine, tightens the muscles around the throat and puts a tear in the eye of most who make the journey.

Anyone who was alive and paying attention when Maya Ling Lin’s design was chosen for the $9 million memorial would remember the public outcry over her being a daughter of Chinese refugees living in America. People were angry because her family came from a land whose government had backed the enemy North Vietnamese Army.

Regardless, Linn has given us something incredibly special in our nation’s capitol, an honor roll that still brings together our collective sadness about what happened in Vietnam. But the guide was dreaming today when he suggested that the Vietnam generation has been able to drop off its pain over the war at the base of a wall.

Mr. Stewart, your table is waiting

Actor and regular nice guy Jimmy Stewart preferred this table at Chasen’s, the once-popular celebrity hideout in Beverly Hills. It’s not immediately known, however, if this was where the lanky star sat during his bachelor party in 1949 when two midgets dressed in diapers entertained the crowd.

But the booth where Stewart and his wife, the former Gloria Hatrick, regularly dined on Thursday evenings can be found in a museum dedicated to the late movie star in his hometown of Indiana, Pa. To add to its collection of everything Jimmy, The Jimmy Stewart Museum purchased the booth after the restaurant closed in 1995.

Located on the fourth floor of Indiana’s public library, the museum has a fantastic collection of black-and-white photographs that were shot on the sets of some of his films in a career that spanned seven decades. One especially cool photo shows a young Stewart wearing a suit with a loosen tie from the 1939 movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” about a junior senator who tries to clean up corruption in the nation’s capitol. The gray, sweat-stained hat Mr. Stewart wore in seven films, including “The Man from Laramie,” is so special that it is kept in a Plexiglass box.


Also on display is a granite stone that marks the May 20, 1908, birthplace of James Maitland Stewart. The museum was given the marker when it was recovered years after it was stolen from the actual site where the Stewart family home once stood about a block down Philadelphia Street, Indiana’s main drag. “There’s another one there now,” my tour guide said today.

Stewart is still cool 10 years after his death, especially in the town otherwise famous for having Indiana University of Pennsylvania. So much so that nearly 10,000 stop by his museum each year.

Light to lower bills

A better light bulb has been replacing those old standard bulbs by the millions as American households grow greener.

The bulb otherwise known as a compact fluorescent lamp has become the darling of the environmental movement because of its energy efficiency, and a favorite of consumers who want to save money.

“There are very few people who will argue about cutting down on their electric bill with no real sacrifice,” said Jeff Schmidt, director of Pennsylvania’s chapter of the Sierra Club.

It seems that, almost overnight, consumers have become turned on by greener products as more and more people buy into arguments for global warming, he said.
Homeowners now want organic solutions to beautify their lawns or clean the scum off the kitchen counter. Some people in exclusive neighborhoods have even taken to using old-fashioned clotheslines to do their part to lower greenhouse gases.
Better Homes and Gardens magazine announced Friday that it will embark on a 15-city tour in March to promote the launch of Green Works, a new line of household cleaners made from plant-based ingredients.

“Our customers are passionate about … everyday practices for living green,” Gayle Butler, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, stated in a news release.
Anyone who has walked down the lighting department at big-box retail centers can’t help but notice the growing assortment of fluorescent bulbs on the shelves.
“Call your local Home Depot and ask them to compare their sales,” Schmidt said.

The compact lamp was actually developed at General Electric during the oil crisis in the early 1970s. But the product was kept secret for a time because of the high cost of production. Other manufacturers began in the 1980s to market the lamp, but consumers didn’t buy them in great numbers because they didn’t emit a lot of light and were too bulky for most lighting fixtures. In the past year or so, the bulbs have become more compact to the point where they are about the same size as the traditional incandescent lamp, technology that dates to the 1800s.

The fluorescent lamp is particularly attractive to consumers because it lasts longer, and just one bulb can reduce the average electric bill by more than $30 over five years. But the growing greener movement doesn’t end with one light bulb.
California University of Pennsylvania has been recognized by the state for its energy management program that has gone as far to require switches in dorm rooms that turn off the air conditioning if a student opens a window.

Peters Township attempted to copy nature when it built a new $5 million recreation center in 2004 with two wings at the entrance that are supposed to make the building look like a hawk. Fluorescent lighting is used exclusively in the gymnasium, which has windows that help to warm the building and provide enough light so people don’t need to turn on the lights when it’s sunny outside.

“We were looking at it more from the standpoint of cost effectiveness than the green aspect of it,” said Michael Silvestri, township manager in Peters.
But now, he said, township supervisors are in the early stages of developing a broader green program, one that may introduce the use of biofuels for the township’s fleet of vehicles, he said.

There are communities across the nation that are doing far more than Peters to save the planet. As many as 800 municipalities, including Pittsburgh, have joined the Sierra Club’s “cool cities” program, Schmidt said. Westmoreland County, meanwhile, is looking into the concept.

The cool cities make a pledge to purchase some electricity “off the grid” from such sources as wind generators, he said. They also agree to buy hybrid vehicles rather than gasoline-guzzling sport-utility vehicles.

“It’s kind of an alignment of the planets,” Schmidt said.

(Published with permission of the Observer-Reporter)

Trail to a tragic story

People who walk or bike the Yough River Trail through Rostraver Township find themselves surrounded by tranquility along the former Pennsylvania and Lake Erie Railroad.

Many pass through the area near Cedar Creek Park in Westmoreland County without ever knowing that the tunnels under the path are part of an old coal mine with a story that is anything but peaceful.

Nineteen miners were will killed there in a methane gas explosion in June 1901, even though a company boss had posted a danger signal before the disaster. The warning, however, was ripped down by another boss who apparently was more concerned about coal profits than the employees. That boss would also perish inside Port Royal Mine No. 2.

Crowds were kept back from the portal by ropes. Relatives and friends of the missing miners were warned that the gas could set off another explosion that would rock the area like an earthquake, according to a story published at the time in The New York Times.

But that didn’t hold back the Rev. Carroll of nearby Smithton who volunteered to lead a search party into the portal. The company warned him against going into the mine about the same time that a second blast took the lives of 10 or more rescuers, the newspaper reported.

Seven bodies would be recovered before the mine was flooded and sealed four months after the initial explosion. The bodies were found side-by-side in what the reporter referred to as the “death chamber.” Some men were still holding their lamps or mining tools when they died. Other bodies were forever entombed inside the deep mine.

The Rostraver Township Historical Society has erected a new memorial to these mining victims alongside the popular hiking and biking trail. For more information on mining history in Westmoreland, check out Ancestry.com. It just may startle you to find out how many other miners met their deaths there over the years.


(Captions: An unidentified man strolls along the Yough River Trail in the area above the abandoned Port Royal Mine No. 2. A new memorial to the mining disaster in Rostraver Township that has been placed beside the trail. Please note that the Beveridge name was spelled wrong on the honor roll, and that the victim was not related to the author of this blog.)

Not your MOMA

The art of James Turrell at Pittsburgh’s peculiar Mattress Factory doesn’t contribute much to global warming. Save for a few purple and red lights, the permanent exhibit has visitors feeling their way around several pitch-black rooms to experience “a blurring of the boundary between what is seen outside oneself and what is seen in the mind’s eye,” the museum's brochure guarantees about the installation.

Personally, I would rather gaze at the bold brushstrokes of a Monet or Van Gogh in a well-lit gallery than bump into complete strangers and black walls to experience the Los Angeles-born Turrell’s vision of spiritual awakening. But you have to give the Mattress Factory high marks for creating this brand of hip museum space for a contemporary artist to express himself.

Located in the city’s historic Mexican War Streets district since 1977, the museum in an old Stearns and Foster warehouse was developed as an experiment by a group of rebellious artists. Over the years, the place has earned the respect of art critics from around the world. The latest issue of GQ magazine even included the Factory as a must-see destination along the “Great American Art Drive” through such unlikely rust belt cities as Detroit and Toledo, Ohio.

There are 14 more months to breathe in The Tom Museum in Pittsburgh before it becomes an altogether different hybrid house for a new visiting artist. Pittsburgh puppeteer Tom Sarver, at times, guides people through the colorful and cluttered spaces where he cooks dinner, beds down at night and hangs thought-provoking art that speaks to everyday living. He might even play with miniature boats in an ornamental pond in his basement. And the best part – there is enough light to take in his weird show.

(Caption: The Tom House entrance at Pittsbugh's Mattress Factory)