ED SULLIVAN

 

     Ed Sullivan was born in Manhattan New York in 1901. He’s the man who shaped popular culture in America for almost twenty-five years.  When he was forty-six years old, The Ed Sullivan Show, originally called Toast of the Town, premiered live on CBS, the year was 1948. Within a few years roughly 50 million people watched it every Sunday night!

     At that time, television was so new that the network producers didn’t really know what to do with it. Sullivan modeled his show for the world to see, his show did a little of everything. It had opera singers, rock stars, novelists, poets, ventriloquists, magicians, pandas on roller skates, and elephants on water skis.

     At a time when Hollywood saw television as a threat, Ed Sullivan was the first person to persuade movie stars to come on his show and talk about their new movies. He brought celebrities into everyone’s living room. His formula was “Open big, have a good comedy act, put in something for children, and keep the show clean.” Women were not allowed to show any cleavage. When Elvis Presley performed, the camera shot him from the waist up only so as not to show his hip movements. When the Rolling Stones came on the show to play their song, “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” he made them change the words to make it more suitable for television. His show required the performers to act with dignity. It is interesting to note however that this was censorship, done in order to keep the broadcast to Sullivan’s standards of dignity.

     Sullivan was a shy man who couldn’t tell jokes or sing or dance. He was a handsome man when he started the show, but unfortunately a car accident in 1956 severely damaged his face and his teeth. Many people said he looked like he was in pain, and he was. He loved talented performers and he personally chose every guest for his show. He spent most of his free time searching for talent in nightclubs, often staying out until 4:00 in the morning. It was Ed Sullivan who discovered the violinist Itzhak Perlman on the streets of Tel Aviv.

     Sullivan broke down barriers, even though his sponsors begged him not to, he invited African American performers and celebrities onto his show, including Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Richard Pryor, and James Brown. All he cared about was talent. At the end of his career in 1971, there were twenty different variety shows on television, all appealing to different demographics. He said, “If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure. It transcends all barriers.” Ed Sullivan died in 1974, he was 73 years old.

ANNE FRANK

 

     Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. She is most popularily known for the diary entries she made while hiding in an attic during the Nazi regime.  Anne’s father had been an officer in the German Army during World War I.  In 1933, when Hitler began his campaign against the Jews, Otto Frank, Anne’s father feared for his families’ future in Germany. He moved them from Frankfurt and headed for the Netherlands.

     In May, 1940, the Germans invaded and took control of the Netherlands, which meant the Franks were once again forced to live under Nazi rule. By 1942, any Jew found in Nazi territory were arrested and sent to death camps (labor camps) just for being Jews. Fearful for their lives, the Frank family was forced into hiding. While in hiding Anne continued writing in her diary regularly.

     Anne and her family lived in the attic for two years. She wrote in her diary regularly, but she didn’t just write about the Nazi persecution or the experience of living in secret. She also wrote about the ordinary details of her adolescent life. She wrote about how much she hated potatoes and how her older sister was clearly her parents’ favorite. She described the jokes people made, and about the crush she had on a young man whose family was also living in the attic. After her first kiss, Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “My head lay on his shoulder, with his on top of mine. Oh, it was so wonderful. I could hardly talk, my pleasure was too intense; he caressed my cheek and arm, a bit clumsily, and played with my hair.”

     Anne confided to her diary. She wrote: “Sometime this terrible war will be over. Surely the time will come when we are people again, and not just Jews.” She made her final entry in the diary on August 1, 1944. Three days later, the hiding place was discovered by the Gestapo, and Anne and her family were deported to Auschwitz. Anne was later moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus in March 1945, just 2 months before Holland was liberated. Of the Frank family, only Anne’s father, Otto, survived. In 1947, he published his daughter’s diary, which had been rescued from the floor of the secret room. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was published in English in 1953. In it, Anne Frank wrote: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.”

     Anne Frank was only 15 years old when she died but her legacy of hoping that all people would be treated simply as people without the labels of “Jew” , “black” , “Catholic” , etc. lives on to this day.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

 Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1706. He was the youngest son of 17 children born to a candle-maker. He learned to read at age 4, and even though he only had two years of formal schooling, he had a passion for books. At age 16he founded his own newspaper, The New England Courant.  He wrote and sold essays, published his advice in Poor Richard’s Almanac and established the very first community fire departments and public libraries. Franklin had a natural curiosity about how things work. He spent much of his life trying to find ways for people to live better. He invented a number of different devices including the Franklin wood-stove, bifocals, and the lightning rod. When he invented his safer, heat-efficient Franklin stove, he never bothered to patent it because he had created it for the good of society. He left behind countless literary works on religious, philosophical, scientific, political, and economic subjects.

 

It was Ben Franklin who said, “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man.” Franklin developed these 13 steps to self improvement when he was 20 years old and continued to practice them for the rest of his life.

 

1.       “TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”

2.       “SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”

3.       “ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”

4.       “RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”

5.       “FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”

6.       “INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”

7.       “SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”

8.       “JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”

9.       “MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”

10.   “CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.”

11.   “TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”

12.   “CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”

13.   “HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was 84 years old.

I WANNA BLAB!

 

 

Hey everybody,

     Hope you are all having a spectacular day today!! I’m pretty much a blabber mouth,  just have to get my two cents in every now and then.

     I just wanted to touch on something ever so briefly. When designing this blog, I was fully aware of the fact that nobody is perfect, hopefully you will keep that in mind when you’re reading. I’m not making a confession here(‘.-.’),  just making a point that many of the people you will read about in this blog, may or may not be perfect in every way, in fact many of them have probably made enormous mistakes throughout their time. No the people being “Spotlighted” are not perfect but they have made an impact on society and that is why this blog is dedicated to them, hopefully one day I’ll be writing about YOU! 

     If there is anything you feel I’ve left out about anyone and you feel it’s too important not to include, please drop me a line or make a comment directly. I am always open to suggestions and feedback.    

Thank-you very much for reading this blog, hope you enjoy the read and maybe even learn a thing or two. 

Much love,

dale Goodie

 

ELIE WIESEL

 

     Elie Wiesel was born in northern Transylvania near the Ukrainian border in 1928. He was just 15 years old when he and his family were shipped to Auschwitz by the Nazi’s, his mother and sister were killed upon arrival in the camp. He and his father stayed together for the next year, but after they were forced to march to Buchenwald, his father died of malnutrition and dysentery. Wiesel believes he would have died soon after his father if the camp hadn’t been liberated by American soldiers on April 11, 1945. He saw American jeeps rolling into the camps, and he later wrote, “I will never forget the American soldiers and the horror that could be read in their faces. I will especially remember one black sergeant, a muscled giant, who wept tears of impotent rage and shame. … We tried to lift him onto our shoulders to show our gratitude, but we didn’t have the strength. We were too weak to even applaud him.”

     Afterwards he refused to return to his homeland and went instead to Paris. Wiesel wrote a 900-page memoir in Yiddish called “And the World Has Remained Silent “(1956). While translating the book into French, he found himself editing it ruthlessly until he had cut the 900 pages down to just 127. He said, “I was inspired by the marvelous example of Giacometti, the great sculptor”. Wiesel called the edited version of his memoir “Night.” Dozens of publishers turned it down because they said nobody wanted to read such a sad book. But when it came out in 1958, it went on to become the first widely read book written by a Holocaust survivor.

     In time, Wiesel was able to use his fame to plead for justice for oppressed peoples in the Soviet Union, South Africa, Vietnam, Biafra and Bangladesh. The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity was established soon after he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for Peace. The Foundation’s mission, rooted in the memory of the Holocaust, is to combat indifference, intolerance and injustice through international dialogue and youth-focused programs that promote acceptance, understanding and equality.

     The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind,” noting that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler’s death camps,” as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace,” he has delivered a powerful message “of peace, atonement and human dignity to humanity.”

     Elie Wiesel is currently 80 years old.

QUEEN MIN OF KOREA

 

Queen Min was born in Yeoju County, Gyeonggi Province, Joseon in 1851. She was not like any other Queen who came before her, she was an assertive and ambitious woman.  As Queen, she was expected to act as icon to the high society of Korea, but Min rejected this belief. Instead, she read books which only men were supposed to read and taught herself philosophy, history, science, politics and religion. This tradition of the pursuit for scholarly advancement is still a characteristic of the Min women to this day.

     In May 1885, Queen Min gave her sponsorship to the first all girls’ academy, Ewha Academy, now known under the name of one of Asia’s finest elite universities for women, Ewha University. This was the first time in history that any Korean girl, commoner or aristocratic, had the right to an education.

    In January 1886, under the commission of Queen Min, a new newspaper named the The Seoul Weekly was published. The publication of a Korean-language newspaper was a significant development, and the paper itself played an important role as a communication media to the masses until it was abolished in 1888 under pressure from the Chinese government.

     Still today in Korea she is viewed by many as a national heroine, for striving diplomatically and politically to keep Korea independent of foreign influence. She had planned to modernize Korea.  Min began the reorganization of the government; twelve new bureaus were established that dealt with foreign relations with China, Japan and the west. Other bureaus were established to effectively deal with commerce. A bureau of the military was created to modernize weapons and techniques. Civilian departments were also established to import Western technology.

    On October 8, 1895, assassins acting under direct orders from Miura Goro entered Gyeongbok Palace. Upon entering the Queen’s Quarters, the assassins killed three women suspected of being Queen Min.  When they confirmed that one of them was Queen Min, they burned the corpse in the pine forest in front of the Okhulu, and then dispersed the ashes. Her killers were given safe-conduct from Inchon to Japan under the protection of the Japanese government.

     Queen Min was 43 on the day of her assassination.

 

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE “The Lady with the Lamp”

 

 

     Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany (she was named after her birth village Florence).  Nightingale decided at a young age to commit herself to nursing. This demonstrated a passion on her part, but also a rebellion against the expected role for a woman of her status at that time, which was to become a wife and mother. Nightingale announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845, bringing intense anger and distress to her family.

    

     In December 1844, she became a leading supporter for improved medical care in London.  Florence Nightingale’s most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On October 21^st 1854, she and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, trained by Nightingale went to Turkey. Upon her arrival she and her nurses found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference. Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. There was not even equipment to process food for the patients. Florence and her colleagues began by thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and reorganizing patient care. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the Army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.

 

The Lady with the Lamp

 

During the Crimean campaign, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname “The Lady with the Lamp”, originating from a phrase in a report in The Times: “She is a ministering angel without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.” Florence Nightingale was arguably the most famous Victorian after Queen Victoria herself. Nightingale’s work served as an inspiration for nurses in the American Civil War

 

 In 1869, Nightingale and Elizabeth Blackwell opened the Women’s Medical College. In 1883, Nightingale was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria. In 1907, she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. And in 1908, she was given the Honorary Freedom of the City of London. Her birthday is now celebrated as the International CFS Awareness Day. Florence Nightengale died in 1910, she was 90 years old.

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

 

                The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses, used in the 19th century by black slaves in the United States to escape to either Free states or Canada.  The Underground Railroad was not literally underground and it wasn’t a railroad either, “underground” meant secret, and “railroad” was the hidden terminology.  Escaped slaves would move along the route from one “station” to the next, “stations” was coded meaning resting spots where they would sleep and eat during the day to avoid being captured by slave hunters.  Many people associated with the Underground Railroad only knew their small part of the operation and not the whole scheme.

Hundreds of slaves obtained freedom to the North every year.  The “conductors” who ultimately moved the runaways from station to station, would sometimes act as if they were actually a slave and enter a plantation, then they would direct the fugitives to the North. The slaves would travel about 10–20 miles (15–30 km) per night sometimes by boat, train, or wagon, yet mostly on foot. When they would stop at the so-called “stations” or “depots”, a message was sent to the next station to let the station master know the runaways were on their way.  Money was donated by many people to help buy tickets and even clothing for the fugitives so they would remain unnoticeable.  Many fugitive bondsmen escaped via the Railroad and established livelihoods as free men, then they would later purchased their wives, children, and other family members out of slavery.

    

     People who helped slaves find the railroad were referred to as “agents” or “shepherds “, abolitionists were the ones who would “fix the tracks”, “Stationmasters” hid slaves in their homes, Escaped slaves were referred to as “passengers” or “cargo”, the Railroad itself was often known as the “freedom train” or “Gospel train”, which headed towards “Heaven” or “the Promised Land”—Canada.

SAPPER MIKE McTEAGUE and the Wounded Warriors Fund

 

www.woundedwarriors.ca

The Headlines read

Bike bomb kills 4 Canadian troops September 18, 2006 KABUL, Afghanistan

     Mike McTeague was one of the Canadian soldiers severely injured when a suicide bomber on a bicycle in Afghanistan blew himself up near NATO troops while they were handing out gifts to children.  The explosion killed four soldiers and wounded dozens of others, including civilians. Mike McTeague was one of the wounded, taking a ball bearing to the neck from the debris and was not expected to live.

     He miraculously defied death but was told he wouldn’t walk. Once again he beat the odds and regained mobility in both of his legs. Mike McTeague is now considered a “wounded warrior”.  Captain Wayne Johnston, and Mike’s father Sean McTeague were Senior NCO’s together many years earlier in the Infantry and maintained contact for over 30 years, when Mike was wounded his father asked Captain Johnston to be the assisting officer to accompany the Family to Germany.

     Upon return to Canada Captain Johnston continued assisting Mike and his Family. “Words cannot explain how humbling, emotional, and yet so rewarding being an assisting officer to one of the wounded has been. Suffice to say it has been the most important work I have done in my 33 years service.” said Johnston, “Mike was a miracle in that he wasn’t expected to live” (when the family goes to Germany it isn’t the best news). In general the soldiers stay in Germany no more than 2 weeks. They are then moved to a hospital in Canada. Depending on the wounds hospital stays can be a week or two or even months. They noticed in Germany that the troops had very little in the way of their own. More to the point they had little to pass the time in the way of electronics and entertainment, “they were basically staring at four walls”.

     In addition the support staff was spending out of their own pockets to get the little things in life. Thus, the Sapper Mike McTeague Wounded Warrior Fund was started – the fund supports all Canadian Forces members wounded during operations, at the outset of their healing process. It also aims to improve the general morale and welfare of the soldiers and their families by working through first-line caregivers, medical staff, chaplains and assisting officers. Hospitals that care for Canadian Forces personnel are equipped with a large library of, music, DVD’s and video games, an Internet-equipped laptop or computer, telephone services and Personal hospital TVs are also provided. As part of the project a small Padre’s Contingency Fund has also been established in Landstuhl Germany to aid in the morale of the soldiers. The purpose of the contingency fund is to provide the care givers in Germany the ability to give immediate assistance for items like clothing, a meal other than the (hum drum) hospital food, etc. While being a wounded soldier can be very stressful it can be equally stressful for the soldiers’ family, both mentally and financially. The Sapper Mike McTeague Wounded Warrior fund reduces this impact by augmenting existing CF support programs.  Mike still struggles to regain full mobility at St Johns Rehab Centre in Toronto to this day, he is 22 years old.

If you would like to donate to The Sapper Mike McTeague’s Wounded Warriors Fund, you can do so at www.woundedwarriors.ca

 

 

MARTIN LUTHER KING

     Martin Luther King Junior was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929, he was an African-American clergyman who supported social change through non-violent means. A powerful speaker and a man of great spiritual strength, he shaped the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

 

     King was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama from 1954-59.  He successfully led blacks in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.  After the boycott ended, King returned to his home town of Atlanta and became co-pastor with his father of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, a position he held until his death.

 

     On the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, King organized an equal rights march in Washington, D.C. that drew 200,000 people. In a speech that day King said:

 “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”  “We cannot walk alone.” 

 

     King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming at the time the youngest recipient ever.

Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old.