29 April 2019

The Sacred Heart Hospital Fair


The Sacred Heart Hospital Fair

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Monday, April 29th 2019

Much laughter greeted the wheel of fortune’s freaky turns.

Young ladies were winning the finest boxes of cigars, while young gents were blessed with starchy kitchen aprons and silky boudoir caps.

The Oregon mist that some might call rain had threatened attendance, but the Hospital Fair was just too much fun for anyone to stay away, and luckily, the roof of the 3-year-old Cuthbert Building at Sixth Street and Central Avenue was keeping everyone warm and dry inside.

The six-day fair, held in the winter of 1913, was a fundraiser for the Sisters of Charity of Providence, to help them equip the Sacred Heart Hospital, Medford’s newest center of medical healing.

Sacred Heart Hospital, Medford, Oregon

They had used a million bricks and seven months to construct the four-story building that rose up on the edge of Nob Hill, at the intersection of Florence Avenue and Scott Street.

When the doors opened Jan. 3, 1912, the hospital had cost more than $175,000 to build. There was little money left over to completely fill its 125 private rooms, wards and operating rooms with state-of-the-art medical equipment. The fair was a partial answer.
 
Sacred Heart Hospital, Medford, Oregon
Entertainment ranged from the Ragged Meter Twins to the glorious Zaidee.
The Twins were a piano and drum duo who each weighed less than 100 pounds, but were heavyweights when it came “to pounding out the dizzy, izzy, ragtime melodies.”

Escorted by the Bedouins of the Egyptian Desert, Zaidee was a clairvoyant. “From her eyes of unfathomed darkness peer the centuries of the Orient.” Dressed in a robe of shimmering, clinging silk, her face hidden behind a veil, wearing jewels stolen from a mummy’s tomb, she asked a mere 25 cents for a reading, “Fortunate, indeed, are those who see their future through her eyes and heed her words of wisdom.”

There was dancing every night, with everyone promised “a pretty girl for every boy and a handsome boy for every girl.”

The boys found there was a fishing pond, and the girls had a chance to win the most beautiful dolls in the world. For just a 25-cent raffle ticket, why not take a chance?

Madaline was a magnificent doll, “the most beautiful ever exhibited in the Rogue Valley.” With her dainty satin shoes and that bow in her gorgeous bonnet, “she is simply perfection.”

Lady Constance came with a full trunk of Parisian-styled clothes, and Lady Beatrice was certainly a queen, standing in splendor.

There were bride dolls with bouquets in hand, kewpie dolls and dolls from China and Japan.
The dining room could barely keep up with crowds who kept coming back for those delicious 35-cent chicken dinners. On Thanksgiving Day it was a roast turkey with all the fixins.

Two “constables” made up a mock police court, nabbing and pushing a steady stream of “culprits” to the judge who fined them all “for all they were worth.”

The raffles, auctions and over-the-counter sales ensured the fair would “close in a blaze of glory.”
After expenses, promoters handed the Sisters $2,020.08, equivalent to nearly $43,000 in today’s money.

The men turned over their prize aprons and bedroom caps to their “best girls” and, in turn, walked away, the smoke of fine cigars wafting in the air.

It had been a good week for Sacred Heart Hospital.
Sacred Heart Hospital, Medford, Oregon

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.



25 April 2019

Trapped! WASP Edith “Edy” Clayton Keene- The Nineteenth WASP to Die


Edith “Edy” Clayton Keene 44-W-1


Trapped as a passenger in an AT-6 Texan when a wing tore off and the plane crashed near Mission, Texas.

(19 December 1920 – 25 April 1944)

Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Edith Clayton Keene
UCLA Graduate and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) Edith Clayton Keene

Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP

After 23-year-old Edith Keene (44-W-1) graduated from Sweetwater in February 1944, she quickly moved from her first assignment at Hondo Army Air Field, in Hondo Texas to just north of the Mexican border at the Mission, Texas Army Air Base. Edith had learned to fly in the Pomona Junior College Civilian Pilot Training program, given at Brackett Field, an airfield located between the cities of La Verne and Pomona, California.

Around Moore Field, on the Mission Army Air Base, the thermometer was climbing its way to 90º on April 25, 1944. There had been a trace of rain early in the morning, but the afternoon had cleared to a partly cloudy sky with an occasional light southeast breeze from the Gulf of Mexico. Edith was flying an AT-6 Texan with Robert Kuenstler Jr., who had enlisted in the Army a year earlier and had graduated from advanced flight training at Moore Field. Edith was helping Kuenstler with his navigation and instrument flight training. She had traded places with another WASP for the afternoon flight.

Kuenstler was at the stick of the AT-6, while Edith observed from the back seat. Just after 2:30, flying about 12 miles northwest of the field, Kuenstler was going through the usual dips, turns, and rolls before dropping into a dive. As he pulled back on the stick to recover, they both could hear the straining scrape of metal as one of the wings separated and fell away. The aircraft began to fall and Kuenstler quickly unfastened his harness and jumped to safety, but Edith could not. Perhaps struck by the wing, her canopy would not open and she went down to her death with the plane.




22 April 2019

Doolittle Raiders 1942


The passing of heroes
by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
April 22st 2019

Nearly two weeks ago we lost another hero — the last of 80 heroes who took a chance and did the “impossible.”

Lt. Dick Cole, last of the Doolittle Raiders, passed away April 9 at age 103.
 
Doolittle Raider Richard "Dick" Cole
The Doolittle Raiders were named for Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, who had conceived their daring mission. The men flew 16 B-25 bombers off the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet April 18, 1942, and headed for a successful bombing raid on Tokyo. What some called a “suicide mission” was an attempt to raise the morale of American citizens whose confidence was being severely tested just four months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled the country into World War II.

Although Cole was the last of the 80 Raiders to die, as copilot to Jimmy Doolittle he flew in the first bomber to leave the ship.
B-25 taking off from USS Hornet (CV-8)-Destination Tokyo

The passing of Cole immediately brings back memories of Medford’s own Doolittle Raider, Lt. Robert “Bob” Emmens. Emmens was copilot of the eighth bomber to leave the Hornet. After bombing Tokyo and low on fuel, his airplane was forced into an emergency landing in the Soviet Union. There, authorities recovered the crew and held them as unwilling “house guests” for 13 months. [Story below]

Not one of these men was forced to risk his life, and each had the chance to back out — but none did.
We’ll never know what encourages a man or woman to become a hero, but we can try to follow a few steps in their life that led them to their moment.
 


Bob Emmens was born July 22, 1914, the son of Dr. Jocelyn and Fannie Emmens. Dr. Emmens came to Medford in 1911 from Philadelphia after spending six months in Portland.

From an early age, Bob Emmens was a musician. When he was 13, his piano playing at a recital of nearly 20 students in the Emmens home was one of his earliest mentions in the newspaper.

In high school, he helped form the Melody Boys, five student musicians who were noted for their “peppy jazz renditions” at school and other community functions. After graduation in 1931, Bob followed his older brother, Tom, to the University of Oregon, where he studied music.

During summer 1935, he took flying lessons at the Medford airport and surprised his instructor by flying solo after just three hours of instruction. “A remarkable student,” said the instructor. “You never have to tell him anything twice.”

In 1936, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was sent to Randolph Field, California, and then Kelly Field, Texas, for military flight instruction. In February 1938, he received his wings and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant.
 
Robert "Bob" Emmens-Doolittle Raider
Over the next few years, while flying training missions between Washington and his base in California, Emmens was able to make a number of landings in Medford for a family visit. It was here, in October 1939, he married Justine Miller, whom he had met at the university.

Emmens and the other Raiders received orders in February 1942 to report to Eglin Army Air Field, Florida, for unspecified training. Here, Top Secret instruction taught him how to take a heavy bomber into the air over an extremely short distance. Within weeks he was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 650 miles from Tokyo, and about to begin his heroic moment.
 
B-25 bombers on the deck of the USS Hornet. Next Stop Tokyo






Bob Emmens died April 2, 1992, and is buried with Justine in Medford’s Eastwood/IOOF Cemetery.
He and the rest of the Doolittle Raiders brought hope when hope seemed so very far away.



 Bob Emmens: That skinny redheaded kid
by BILL MILLER
Sunday, August 16th 2009

Doolittle Raiders Crew No. 8 B-25 in the Soviet Union
"You guys stay in the ship and keep me covered," he said.

"You know any Russian?" asked Emmens with a smile.

Ski looked up from the bottom hatch, grinned back and shook his head.

With his hands in the air, Ski walked toward the pointed rifles held by a small group of Russian soldiers, while Emmens felt for the trigger of his pistol and opened the plane's side window against a stiff Siberian breeze.

"Gee, those guys look friendly enough," he thought.

Ski said something to the Russians, and suddenly those threatening faces loosened. They lowered their rifles and began shaking hands. Ski turned back to the plane and gave the all-clear signal.

They lied and told the Russian colonel they were on a goodwill tour. The colonel laughed, handed Ski a bottle of vodka, and said, "You bombed Tokyo. Is that not so?"

Indeed, they had. Just before 4 a.m., April 18, 1942, "Ski" — Capt. Edward York — his co-pilot, Lt. Robert Emmens, and a crew of three were the eighth of 16 B-25 bombers launched from the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet.

Named the "Doolittle Raid" for its leader, Col. Jimmy Doolittle, the daring plan was simple, yet dangerous. When the carrier was nearly 400 miles from Japan, the bombers would launch, bomb the Japanese homeland, continue across the Sea of Japan and land at Allied airfields in China. There was little military value, but the public was depressed following Pearl Harbor and needed a victory.

Bob Emmens was born in Medford July 22, 1914, the youngest son of Dr. Jocelyn Emmens, a Pennsylvania native who had come to Oregon in 1911. Classmates at Medford High remembered Bob as that "skinny, scrawny, redheaded kid." After his graduation, he attended the University of Oregon with intentions of becoming a physician, but along the way he discovered airplanes and enlisted in the Army Air Corps Reserves.

After passing Army Examinations in 1941, he was called to active duty and given a regular commission with the 17th Bomb Group. There he learned how to fly the B-25. After a five-hour ocean flight, the men reached the Japanese islands. Climbing to 1,500 feet, they dropped four bombs on a power plant.

"I swear one went down the smokestack!" screamed bombardier Nolan Herndon.

Ski checked his fuel. "We'll never make China," he said. "We're heading for Russia."

Because the Russians were afraid Japan would retaliate if they helped the Americans, Emmens and the crew became virtual prisoners for 13 months, until they escaped. "Guests of the Kremlin," as Emmens would later title his book.

Emmens remained in the Air Force, and in 1958 he was stationed in Japan.

"It took a while," he said, "but I learned to love that country."

In April 1992, a few days before the 50th anniversary reunion of the Doolittle Raiders, Bob Emmens passed away at his Medford home.

In the deepest despair of war, this redheaded hero, and a million more just like him, had risked their lives to return pride and confidence to their country.


Crew No. 8, front, left to right: Capt. Edward J. York, pilot; Lt. Robert G. Emmens, co-pilot; back, left to right: Lt. Nolan A. Herndon, navigator/bombardier; Sgt. Theodore H. Laban, flight engineer; Sgt. David W. Pohl, gunner. - U.S. Air Force 060217-F-1234P-01


Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.




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