History Snoopin': Once There Was a Ballpark

There used to be a ballpark

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by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, October 28th 2019

 

“There used to be a ballpark where the field was warm and green

And the people played their crazy game with a joy I’d never seen.”

Frank Sinatra recorded those lyrics in the summer of 1973. Written by Joe Raposo, famous for giving the Muppets happy songs to sing, this plaintive tune seems to mourn the passing of a baseball park; yet, Sinatra’s style somehow gives the song a wistful sense of a love affair gone astray.

 

Mile Field, Medford, Oregon - Abandoned 2003

Baseball fans in our valley once had their own love affair with a now-vanished ballpark. The 2004 leveling of Miles Field in south Medford to make way for a new Walmart saddened local baseball fans. Lifetimes had smelled its grass and tasted hotdogs in the stands, but few remembered the beginning.

Claude Miles was born in 1887 and spent most of his life in Medford. There he found his passion for sports, especially baseball, a game played in the valley since at least the 1860s. Most of the serious games were played on a dusty diamond in Fordyce Grove, not far from today’s Central Medford High School.

In the spring of 1904, wealthy investors set up the Rogue River Baseball League with teams in Medford, Ashland, Gold Hill and Jacksonville. They signed quality out-of-town players, but also signed local talent. Claude Miles, youngest player in the league, got a contract to play second base with the Medford Grays.

 

Medford Grays - Baseball 1904 - Shorty Miles bottom right

They built a new ballpark north of town and built a covered grandstand and laid out a field surrounded by a wooden fence.

Because he was the shortest player on the town’s baseball team, Claude Miles earned his lifelong nickname, Shorty. He pitched a few games, but usually he played infield.

When the old ballpark was sold and the field covered over by today’s McLoughlin Middle School, Medford’s ballclub needed a place to play.

In March 1926, what would become Miles Field opened at the new county fairgrounds just south of town. Home plate sat 45 feet from the grandstands in the middle of a half-mile auto racetrack.

Local schools didn’t play baseball there; so various semi-pro leagues came and went as Medford struggled to keep a team on the field. When the Depression hit, the ballpark began to fall apart and soon the city’s only baseball field was called “the worst in Southern Oregon.”

Hope returned after WWII when the field was modernized. Baseball fans discovered a refreshment stand, modern restrooms, repainted fences and an electric scoreboard.

 

Miles Field, Medford, Oregon

Medford’s joy lasted until the summer of 1951 when a midnight fire of suspicious origin leaped through the wooden grandstands. Flames, fed by team uniforms and equipment, ate through the clubhouse and ignited the fence. The scoreboard, the hotdog stands — everything vanished in a soggy pile of charcoal.

Claude Miles believed that baseball kept young boys out of trouble. “Youth baseball needs a decent place to play,” he said. He badgered everyone for donations, including himself, and a new and better ballpark rose on the same site.

When he died, Oct. 22, 1968, Claude “Shorty” Miles was Medford’s “Mr. Baseball.” A year later, it just made sense to call “his” ballpark Miles Field.

The new Walmart opened in 2012. A memorial plaque out front of the store is dedicated to Shorty and his ballpark.

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

To Live and Die a WASP- The 38: Gertrude Vreeland “Tommy” Tompkins Silver - 26 October 1944

WASP Gertrude Vreeland “Tommy” Tompkins Silver – One of The 38

(16 October 1912 – 26 October 1944)

(Excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

Gertrude Vreeland Tomkins (43-W-7) had stuttered all of her life. Even after a year tending goats in the tranquil country, the shy New Jersey girl couldn’t help herself through one embarrassing conversation after another. She had graduated from the prestigious Kent Place, a girl’s private school in Summit, New Jersey, but years of teasing from other students had only made things worse, and a year in the countryside just wasn’t enough.

WASP Pilot Gertrude Vreeland Tompkins Silver

 Gertrude was the third and youngest daughter of Vreeland and Laura Tompkins, born October 16, 1912. … The family lived quite comfortably and the Vreeland daughters had the pick of all the finest colleges, but perhaps, because of her shyness, Gertrude modestly chose the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women in Ambler, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia. There, her interest in farm animals blossomed… For the next decade, when she wasn’t home helping her father at his factory, Gertrude made frequent trips to all parts of the world, sometimes with family, but usually alone. She wanted to see the world’s farms and gardens. She traveled to England, Italy, Spain, and France. Her family remembers that during her trip to New Zealand and Australia in the winter of 1935-1936, Gertrude tried diligently to convince Australian government officials to encourage more people to raise goats instead of cattle, because, as she said, goats were better for the environment and also more nutritious.

Gertrude’s sister, Elizabeth Whittall, told a reporter that when Gertrude was young, she fell in love with a young pilot who was teaching her to fly at a Long Island airfield. No one remembers his name. Gertrude loved to fly and she soon found that aviation had a major advantage. “She didn’t stutter when she was in a plane, or the whole time she was in the WASP,” Whittall said. Probably inspired in part by thoughts of her young

WASP Pilot Gertrude Vreeland Tompkins Silver

man, airplanes had become Gertrude’s newest calling, replacing her farm animals. Sadly for her, the young man felt a sense of duty, and rather than wait for the United States to enter the war, he joined the RAF as a fighter pilot. Not long after his arrival in England he died when German pilots shot him down.

Gertrude entered training at Avenger Field on May 23, 1943, and was one of 59 out of 101 trainees to successfully graduate on November 13. Her assignment was with the 5^th Ferrying Group at Love Field in Dallas. For nearly a year she flew almost every type of plane produced for the Army, and after a month’s worth of training at the Palm Springs Army Airfield, she qualified to fly the P-51 Mustang and other pursuit aircraft. Perhaps it was at Dallas where she met Technical Sergeant Henry Mann Silver. …

Gertrude and Henry announced their plans to marry at the end of November 1943. … September

WASP Gertrude Vreeland Tompkins Silver & husband Sgt Henry Mann Silver

22, 1944, Gertrude and Henry, both in uniforms, married at the Tompkins’ summer home in Bridgehampton, New York. There wasn’t much time for a honeymoon as Gertrude and Henry returned to their duty assignments.

Returning to Love Field, Gertrude received orders to report to the North American Aviation factory alongside Mines Field (now part of the Los Angeles International Airport). She and 40 other women would fly brand new P-51 fighters from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey. ….

On October 26, 1944, Gertrude reported to Mines Field at about 2:00 in the afternoon. She had already flown over 753 hours and 46 of those hours were in P-51s. There was a lingering fog at about 2,500 feet. Temperatures were cool, hovering in the mid to lower 60s. Trouble with a canopy that wouldn’t lock and its subsequent repair, delayed her takeoff until sometime around 4:00 that afternoon. Leaving the runway, she flew west over Santa Monica Bay, disappearing into the fog. Because night was approaching and it would be too dark for her to fly all the way to the first scheduled overnight stay at Coolidge Airfield, Arizona, she would have to land and spend the night at Palm Springs. She never made it. Gertrude Silver had disappeared, but no one noticed for another four days, not until the 5^th Ferrying Group officials in Dallas realized they had not received any reports from Gertrude. They contacted Los Angeles to ask where she was. The next day an extensive search began from Santa Monica Bay in the west all the way east into Arizona. They didn’t find a thing. On November 1, the Army finally notified Henry Silver and Gertrude’s father that Gertrude was missing. She had vanished just 10 days after her 32^nd birthday. Although there have been many subsequent search attempts over the years, Gertrude has never been found.

Henry never remarried and continued to raise his adopted daughter as his own, telling the world that Gertrude was her mother. … In 1964, Henry gave his daughter away in marriage. Six months later—he died at age 60.

Telstar 1: Telephones in Space - Medford, Oregon and Alba, Italy Talk By Satellite

Voyager in space

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, October 21st 2019

One fascinating thing about history is looking back and discovering something you had forgotten or maybe you never knew.

“The only thing new in the world,” said President Harry Truman, “is the history you do not know.”

Sometimes it seems like life’s always been this way and there’s nothing new in the world except the next iPhone. But, of course, that isn’t true.

Who knew that before they mounted machine guns on their airplanes, WWI aviators threw large metal “darts/spears” at each other?

Anyone remember slide rules, transistor radios, or 8-tracks? How about that metal band around a wooden wagon wheel that our pioneers called a tire?

In this day of cellphones and satellites that bring us video, music and instant communication all around the world, is there anyone left who’s old enough to remember how it used to be?

A telephone call to a battlefield soldier was unheard of. Film or video of an overseas news event was hand carried or flown back to the U.S. for delayed broadcast.

That began to change July 10, 1962, with the launch of Telstar, the world’s first telecommunications satellite — what the Associated Press said had “inaugurated an era of ocean-spanning international live television from outer space.”

 

Telstar 1 - 10 July 1962

But, it had done more than that. After first transmitting a picture of an American flag, Telstar relayed the first telephone call from space, a brief conversation between a telephone executive in Maine with Vice President Lyndon Johnson in the White House.

 

Telstar 1-Transmits First Photo and Telephone Call from Space in 1962

Two weeks later, Medford Mayor John Snider watched as a green telephone was installed on his desk.

Medford was one of only 23 U.S. cities, and the only city in the Pacific Northwest, given the opportunity to make a phone call to its sister city through Telstar.

 

Medford, Oregon and Alba, Italy Mayors Speak via Telstar 1

At 3:45 in the afternoon, July 26, the mayor’s voice traveled from Medford to the East Coast transmission site, then on to Paris by Telstar, and from Paris to the mayor of Alba, Italy. 

There, an early-morning (about 1 a.m.) crowd of 3,000 in the town square heard everything on loudspeakers.

It was a brief, yet emotional five-minute conversation, as the Alba mayor, in rapid Italian, thanked America for its help during and after WWII and said he wished he had more time to say all the things his residents wanted him to say.

Mayor Snider said he lost all feeling of the 6,000 miles that separated the two men. “Although I couldn’t understand a single one of the rapidly spoken words, I could feel in each of them a meaning of genuine friendship and warmth. I shall forever be grateful for having had the opportunity to represent my community in this exciting bit of history.”

 

Italian Newspaper Reports on Telstar Telephone Call Between Alba, Italy & Medford, Oregon Mayor in July 1962

The crowd in Alba, waving American and Italian flags, cheered while the town band played the Italian and American national anthems.

Mail Tribune Editor Eric Allen wondered what Telstar could mean.

“In a few years, worldwide TV will be a daily occurrence,” he said. “It is potentially a cultural, sociological and political event of major importance — perhaps even approaching the invention of movable type.”

Telstar, now silent, still orbits the Earth. Barely three-feet wide, that long-forgotten space voyager had changed our world overnight.

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

https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/voyager-in-space

Two WASP Pilots Die on the Same Day

Two WASP Pilots Die on the Same Day

  (excerpt from To Live and Die a WASP)

It was October 1944. Even with the limited number of days and hours left to fly before the program ended, there was still plenty of danger for the women pilots.

Margie Laverne Davis 44-W-9T

(20 December 1922 - 16 October 1944)

Just 23 days before her graduation, October 16, 1944, Margie Davis (44-W-9) was in advanced training, flying solo on a 2,000-mile cross-country flight from Avenger Field in an AT-6 Texan. The destination for the flight of 13 aircraft was Courtland Army Airfield in north central Alabama. Their first refueling stop was the Stuttgart, Arkansas Army Airfield, where the women and Lieutenant Leonard Gonye, their instructor and flight leader, took a break and ate a meal before flying on.

WASP Marjorie Davis

… Born Marjorie Laverne Davis, December 20, 1922, in Hollywood, California, Margie was the second of five children and the first daughter of Clinton and Margaret Davis.

… In Stuttgart, after they finished eating, Margie and the rest of the flight climbed into their planes and took off. At about 7:30 in the evening, Margie was about 90 miles from Courtland Field in Alabama and just over the Tennessee state line, a few miles south of Walnut, Mississippi. The sky was clear and temperatures were slowly dropping into the upper 40s. Except for the stars sparkling in a cloudless sky, it was dark. The sun had set over two hours earlier and the moon had disappeared nine minutes later.

Flying by instruments, Margie was lost and already overdue at Courtland Field. Investigators found one witness who said Margie’s plane had been flying in circles for nearly an hour. Apparently, she had tried to land in a field, but on her approach, she snagged a power line, snapping it in two. She accelerated and went around for another try. Crash investigators believed she had loosened her harness and opened the canopy to lean out in the dark and try to find the fast approaching ground. When her wheels touched down the impact forced her head against the edge of the cockpit canopy—hard enough to kill her. The plane slid to a stop just a few feet from an irrigation ditch.

… As flight leader and trainer, Lieutenant Leonard Gonye was with the women during the entire flight. When he landed in Alabama, he quickly realized that Margie had strayed and was missing. As he began the process of searching for her, word came that she had crashed and that Margie was dead—the last WASP to die in training.

Hallie Stires (44-W-4), WASP and also Staff Advisor at Avenger Field, escorted Margie home to California for her burial in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

 

At nearly the same moment that Margie was about to crash in Mississippi, a telegram was arriving at Darcy Lewellen’s Columbus, Indiana home. His daughter’s plane had crashed and Jeanne Marcille Lewellen Norbeck (44-W-3) was dead.

Jeanne Lewellen Norbeck 44-W-3

(14 November 1912 – 16 October 1944)

Late in the afternoon, October 16, 1944, Jeanne and Marybelle Lyall [44-W-4] flipped a coin to see which of two planes they would fly. A month before her 32nd birthday, Jeanne had just returned from a weekend visit with her parents in Columbus, Indiana. Jeanne won the flight line coin toss and chose the BT-13 that had just been released by mechanics. The previous pilot had said the plane had a “heavy wing,” rolling slightly to the left. It was Jeanne’s job to test it and make sure everything was now in working order.

... Jeanne graduated from training at Avenger Field in April 1944 and was assigned to Shaw Army Airbase in South Carolina, about 8 miles northwest of Sumter. Before she reported to Shaw, she attended the controversial School of Applied Tactics in Orlando, Florida, what some believed was actually officer training for the women. A month later, with the course completed, she reported to Shaw as an engineering test pilot of repaired airplanes.

 

WASP Jeanne Norbeck

... Just before 4 o’clock, Jeanne and Marybelle in separate airplanes were in the air and flying south toward the Shaw Field testing area, about 15 miles away. They were in constant radio contact and when they reached the test area, both agreed that their airplanes were flying well. They separated, flying in opposite directions. That was the last Marybelle ever heard from Jeanne. At 4:15, flying through a clear sky with little wind, Jeanne was heading back to base, flying at 500 feet, and entering the landing pattern. The plane slammed into the ground, upside down, canopy first. Jeanne never had a chance.

... Jeanne Lewellen was born November 14, 1912, in Columbus, Indiana, the daughter of Darcy Lewellen and Mayme Emmons.

… While studying at Washington State University, Jeanne met Edward Norbeck who was finishing his degree.

… During the summer of 1940, Jeanne returned to

WASP Jeanne Norbeck and Husband Edward

her Indiana home for a visit with the family and to tell her father that she and Edward Norbeck were going to marry. Shortly after her return to Honolulu in late September, Edward in a white, three-button, double breasted suit and Jeanne in a simple bridal gown were married.

… Jeanne and Edward lived about eight miles from the naval base at Pearl Harbor and could see the Japanese planes flying over during the December 7, 1941, attack. For nearly a year and a half, they suffered through food shortages, nighttime curfews, and martial law. Tens of thousands of civilians were anxious to return to the mainland, but the U.S. government wasn’t sure of Japan’s military strength east of Hawaii, and the possibility of an attack on the Pacific Coast, so they delayed evacuations for weeks.

In early 1943, with the threat of invasion eased, Jeanne and Edward returned to the mainland. In May, while in Los Angeles, Edward enlisted in the Army and Jeanne briefly returned to Indiana. … Jeanne was also anxious to join the war effort. She had flown some in high school and college and decided to apply to the WASPs.

… No one could remember a WASP’s body ever receiving a military escort home; nevertheless, not only was an Army officer escorting Jeanne’s body to Indiana; he also brought a flag to cover her casket. Now an Army corporal, Edward was studying at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and got a mere, one-day leave to attend the funeral. Jeanne’s body arrived in Columbus late in the afternoon, October 19, and rested in her father’s home. The next morning, after the closed casket funeral service ended, a procession followed Jeanne on the one-mile trip to the Garland Brook Cemetery. Edward returned to Fort Leonard Wood the next morning.

WASP Jeanne Norbeck

 RIP