Bob CollinsWalt Straka, 98, is the only surviving member of the 194th Tank Battalion in Brainerd, who were ordered to the Philippines in September 1941, a few months before Pearl Harbor. They were the first tank unit in the Far East. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Veterans
Over the years, the Veterans Administration has worked out a plan to erase the reports of terrible treatment and conditions in VA nursing homes, including a 2009 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story about a home in Philadelphia where a veteran’s leg had to be amputated after an infection in his foot went untreated for so long his toes turned black and attracted maggots. Read more →
‘We have no idea why someone would do such a horrible thing, but we couldn’t let these wonderful people who served our country go without their flags,’ said Kenyon police chief Lee Sjolander. Read more →
Frank Levingston, the nation’s oldest living World War II veteran has died. He’d held the distinction for only two weeks. Read more →
The U.S. has been at war so long you’d think people would ‘get’ the whole ‘support our troops’ thing by now.
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Bill Aldridge, 80, wasn’t homeless when he died a month ago. But he was alone. He had no family and nobody stepped forward to make any funeral arrangements. Read more →
The word ‘volunteer’ doesn’t begin to convey Virginia Claudon Allen’s service, which took her from helping the most seriously injured fliers at a Florida hospital to rallying morale in Burma as ‘G.I. Jill,’ the antidote to the anti-American messages of Tokyo Rose. Read more →
Far be it from us to recommend you go listen to another radio station today, but go listen to another radio station today. Read more →
It’s been five months since Chris Ring jumped into Lake Itasca and started swimming. He’s been swimming most every day since. Read more →
It’s Veterans Day, of course, so everyone is saying all the things they should be saying on a day to honor people who served in the military, many of them forced to do so by the threat of prison time if they didn’t.
It’s also a day when we might remind ourselves that are words are empty in the face of reality contained in a recent investigation this week from Colorado Public Radio that didn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserved.
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People plan their grocery shopping excursion to the Cub in Edina to coincide with Ronnie Steffen’s performance after he finishes his. Read more →
You don’t often hear funeral services start with a tribute to a news reporter, but, then again, mentally ill homeless people who freeze to death alone don’t often get funerals.
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The efforts of Pioneer Press reporter Mara Gottfried to help find the family of a homeless vet who froze to death in a St. Paul park is the type of story to make you want to call that relative with whom you’ve lost touch. Read more →
This is the sort of scandal that can keep the media and Washington talking for weeks. The opportunists smell blood in the water.
That’s weeks longer than the scandal about homeless veterans in America. Read more →
Justus Belfield, 98, of upstate New York, had his moments of fame this week when this picture of him saluting in uniform from his nursing home bed raced around social media. Read more →