Janie Chu, 101, one of the last survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, died Dec. 30 in her Oakland home of causes associated with old age. Born in San Francisco, Chu was just 3 years old and sleeping in her crib in the family’s Chinatown flat when the shaking began in the pre-dawn hours of April 18, 1906. Her family fled their home and joined others camped in Huntington Park across from the Fairmont Hotel. After briefly living in Berkeley, her family relocated to Tucson, where she was the first girl of Chinese descent to graduate from high school in that city, her family told Associated Press.
Alfred Pugh, believed by veterans officials to be the last surviving wounded U.S. combat veteran of World War I, has died. He was 108. Pugh, who often told visitors that the key to a long life was to “keep breathing,” joined the Army in 1917 and fought in France during World War I with the 77th Infantry Division. In 1918, he was wounded in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the last major battle of the war. VA officials in St. Petersburg said that Pugh was not only the last wounded World War I veteran on record but that he was also the oldest wounded combat veteran in the United States. He was also one of fewer than 1,000 remaining American veterans of World War I.
Martin Sheridan, whose survival in a massive Boston nightclub fire in 1942 made him unfit for duty but inspired him to become a frontline news correspondent in World War II, has died. He was 89. The posh Cocoanut Grove nightclub near Boston’s theater district was jammed with about 1,000 people — more than twice its legal capacity of 460 — when a match struck for illumination possibly triggered the historic 12-minute fire that took the lives of 492 people nearly 62 years ago. Sheridan, then a freelance writer and public relations man, was at the club with cowboy star Buck Jones, whom he had shepherded through Boston on a war bonds tour. Sheridan’s first wife, Constance Misslin, was with him. Both she and Jones died. One of the first reporters who enlisted as a noncombatant with the Army, he reported on Pacific conflicts for the New York Times and the North American Newspaper Alliance as well as the Globe. Sheridan hit beaches with troops and became the only reporter on a B-29 bombing raid on Tokyo in March 1945, adding his own beer bottle to the bomb load.
May they all enjoy a thousand fiests and as many virgins in Valhalla. Except possibly Janie, I’m not sure if she’d like Valhalla so the inferior Heaven will have to suffice.
Sad to think of these direct connections with history leaving us.
By the way, the beer bottle thing was common with Allied aircrews–there was a strongly-held (if unfounded) belief that the whistling beer bottles falling from the sky put the German searchlight and anti-aircraft crews off their aim; and on the more practical side, the musical pitch of said bottles was controlled by partially filling them before “flight” with urine, as a further offering for the people of the Greater Reich.
This is very interesting. I’ve never heard that before. I’m not doubting you, but do you have a link or cite, so I can read more about that? I tried Googling “beer” “bottles” + “bombs” but couldn’t find anything, unless I missed an entry. I wonder if this is still a common practice.
Not to hijack Eve’s thread, but the beer bottle story is something I’ve heard from many ex-aircrew for about 30 years, in talks with them, as well as in books: as far as on the web:
thank you eve. you seem to find the most interesting people.
i’m adding one. this priest along with the janitor mr raymond, saved a roomfull of children in one of the most horrific fires in the us. there are survivors of this fire but the numbers are starting to dwindle. finally after 45 years there is a place for them to talk about the day none of them could forget, and were told for years never to mention; www.olafire.com
