Most of the information for this podcast came from:
Skyjack: The Hunt for DB Cooper, by Geoffrey Gray
Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper
Also: DB Cooper: The Real McCoy, by Bernie Rhodes and Russell Calame
D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy
The music for this podcast came from:
Kevin Macleod: I Know A Guy and Vibe Ace
Also, Quantum Jazz, End of Line
Robert E. Lee, Valiant Hero or Misguided Traitor?
Robert E. Lee was born on January 19, 1807. He was the son of Henry Lee III and Anne Carter, Henry and Ann’s fifth child.
Lee was initially assigned to assist in the construction of a fort on the Savannah River, 12 miles from the city of Savannah, Georgia itself. But construction was unsuccessful and it would be sixteen years before Fort Pulaski was completed. Long before that, Lee would be fortuitously reassigned to Fort Monroe, near present day Hampton, Virginia. He visited Mary Custis at her family home, Arlington House, which overlooked the Potomac and Washington, DC. Lee’s initial proposal to Mary Custis was accepted by her and her mother but her father, George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington and the grandson of Martha Washington was initially opposed. Not only was Robert E. Lee from a family with limited financial resources, “Light Horse” Harry Lee’s questionable business practices had brought the hint of scandal to the entire Lee clan.
From a leadership perspective, Lee would also be forced to face the reality of the loss of Stonewall Jackson. Initially thought to be able to recover from his gunshot wounds inflicted by friendly fire, Jackson contracted pneumonia and died on May 10. Lee was uncharacteristically emotional in a letter to his son, Custis: “It is a terrible loss. I do not know how to replace him. Such an executive officer the sun never shone on. I have but to show him my design and if it can be done, it will be done.”
Both of Lee’s parents emanated from two of Virginia’s most aristocratic families. Henry Lee III was a Revolutionary War cavalry officer who earned the nickname “Light Horse” for his equestrian ability during combat. His mother’s family lived at Shirley, one of the oldest and most profitable tobacco plantations in the state of Virginia. At the time of their marriage, Henry Lee was Virginia’s governor and would also serve the state as a member of the US House of Representatives. However, by the time of Robert E. Lee’s birth, his father had suffered significant economic setbacks forcing the family to abandon the Lee ancestral home of Stratford Hall.
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Robert E. Lee: Valiant Hero or Misguided Traitor?
George Parke Custis was kicked out of Princeton, left St. John’s College of Annapolis after only one semester and made a living renting out all of the various plantation properties that he had inherited. By comparison to the industrious and spartan Robert E. Lee, Custis was an indolent patrician who lived on the wealth of his ancestors. Eventually, understanding that his daughter was enthusiastic about marrying Lee, Mary Custis’ father agreed to the marriage of his only child, which took place at Arlington House on June 30, 1831.
Lee immediately realized that the attack was not only a failure but a disaster. On his horse Traveller he is said to have galloped forward and greeted his defeated troops by saying “It is my fault.” Of Pickett’s 6,000 men, 3,000 were casualties including all 15 regimental commanders. Other units suffered similarly bringing casualties to approximately 6,500 suffered in less than an hour. Lee quickly became concerned that Meade might follow with a counterattack but when he ordered General Pickett to prepare his division for such an eventuality, Pickett is said to have replied, “General Lee, I have no division.”
Lee’s disappointment in his defeat at Gettysburg was so profound that he submitted his resignation to Jefferson Davis. Lee indicated that he was to blame for the loss at Gettysburg and he questioned whether he could continue to meet the physical demands of military command. Davis emphatically rejected Lee’s offer of resignation, telling him that replacing would be an impossibility.
Lee did not live long enough to observe the post war reality of race relations, especially in the southern United States, but, based on the attitudes that both he and his wife expressed during their lifetime, he would not have found them problematic.
General Lee not even sure as to what he would do with the rest of his life. He was 58 years old but other than the military he had no other occupation. He must have considered it fortunate when the rector of Washington College in Lexington, VA offered him the presidency of the school. Besides a salary which included a percentage of tuition, Lee was promised a residence. In exchange he would administer the school and be asked to teach a course in philosophy. Robert E. Lee accepted the position.
In late September, Lee prepared for the beginning of Washington College’s 1870-1871 academic year. On September 28, at a meeting of the directors of his local church, Lee’s last official act was to agree to make up the remaining $55 of the rector’s salary out of his own pocket. He walked home and when he got to the dinner table, he was unable to lead his family in grace or even speak at all. They sat him down and called a doctor, Lee clearly afflicted by some traumatic event which turned out to be a massive stroke. Robert E. Lee lingered for two weeks, lying quietly in a bed in the main room of his home surrounded by family. He died quietly on October 12, 1870, aged 63. His glorification began immediately with a name change of Washington College to Washington and Lee University, Lee having initiated both law and business schools as part of the school’s curriculum.
Robert E. Lee will always remain a complex and fascinating figure of historical prominence. Hopefully, the pendulum which initially swung too far in favor of insensitive adulation will eventually swing back from strident, out of context vilification to a more sensible middle ground
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Two books were essential during the recording of this podcast: Robert E. Lee: A Biography by Emory M. Thomas
Robert E. Lee: A Biography
Also, Lee: The Last Years, by Charles Bracelen Flood
Lee: The Last Years
Music used during the intro and outro included:
The Return To War, by The Art Of Escapism
And:
Herman Melville: From obscurity to immortality
When he died at age 72, on September 28, 1891, Herman Melville was so obscure that those who even remembered his literary output presumed that he had passed away many decades earlier. Melville’s works were out of print, his last novel published more than thirty years before his death. The title of his epic work Moby Dick was misspelled in Melville’s New York Times obituary and one of his most respected efforts, “Billy Budd, Sailor,” had not even been published.
Despite the initial Shaw family misgivings about how their future son-in-law would make a living as a writer, Herman Melville and Elizabeth Shaw were married in Boston, in August of 1847. They became permanent residents of New York City and the writer spent the next few years grinding out a succession of books.
Packing off his family to his in-laws in Boston, in October, 1856, Melville first set out for Glasgow and then Liverpool and a meeting with his friend, now diplomat, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Their reunion was friendly even warm but Hawthorne’s journal entries, while empathetic, depict Melville as a conflicted, lost soul.
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Herman Melville: From Obscurity to Immortality
Over forty, Melville need not be concerned with actually having to fight for the Union but in 1863, he and his wife decided to move back to New York City, exchanging Arrowhead, which he was unable to sell, for his brother Allan’s East 26th Street home.
Throughout this time period, Melville continued to toil away at his custom’s officer’s job. When he began working at the Customs House in 1866 he took a horse drawn streetcar to work. By the 1880’s, so much time had passed that Melville took the Third Avenue El, an elevated railway, to his office on the Upper East Side.
Melville would remain in this position until his resignation on December 31, 1885. By that time, his wife had inherited a considerable amount of money from an aunt and other relatives, enough to allow Herman to retire.
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Much of the material for this podcast came from:
Herman Melville: His World And Work, by Andrew Delbanco
Melville: His World and Work
Also: Herman Melville A to Z: The Essential Reference To His Life And Work
Herman Melville A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work (Critical Companion) by Carl Rollyson (2001-01-03)
Music selections for this podcast included:
Erik Satie: Gymnopedie Number 3, by Kevin MacLeod
and
Ted Ngoy, the ultimate American Dream, including donuts
Eventually, in 1976, one of Ted’s customers showed him an ad in the local newspaper, the Orange County Register, advertising a donut shop for sale. Ngoy had meticulously saved 20,000 dollars, the seller financed the rest of the $45,000 purchase price.
By 1985, Ted was a millionaire and a very respected member of the Cambodian community. He and his wife moved into a 7,000 square foot home in Mission Viejo and Ngoy became active in the Orange County Republican Party.
Most media accounts of Ted Ngoy end sometime around 2014. It’s hard to keep up with an individual so far away from the western press, even in the age of the internet. But, judging from his Facebook page, he is alive and surviving quite well. His “photos” page features him, a man in his seventies, with a much younger and beautiful woman who he began dating when she was in her teens. Judging from the photo they seem quite happy.
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The information for this podcast came from two articles:
“Dunkin’ and the Donut King”, November 2, 2014, California Sunday Magazine.
Also, “From Sweet Success To Bitter Tears”, January 9, 2005, Los Angeles Times.
“From Sweet Success To Bitter Tears”
The music played during the intro and conclusion is “Why”, by McNorman.
Frida Kahlo, Mexican icon
Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo Calderon was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyoacan, Mexico. Today, Coyoacan, officially a borough of the Federal District, is part of the urban sprawl of Mexico City. But when Frida was born it consisted of open space, farm and ranch land. Although her birth probably occurred at her grandmother’s house, Frida would spend her childhood and much of her life living in the Casa Azul, the blue house built by her father in 1904. Carl Wilhelm Kahlo was born in Germany and emigrated to Mexico in 1891, when he was nineteen, his Hungarian father, a wealthy jeweler, paying for his passage.
Known during her lifetime as merely the wife of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo subsequently ascended to artistic prominence and popular culture fame in her own right, becoming a worldwide social and political icon. Her sickly childhood, painful existence, tortured relationship with Rivera and brief life provided a tragic backdrop to her artistic accomplishment, now recognized as unique and transcendental. She remains so revered in Mexico that her works have been designated as national heritage objects, prohibited from foreign export. Internationally, she is now perceived as one of the most important and original artists of the twentieth century.
La Cas Azul, Frida Kahlo’s ancestral home.
In early September, Frida got a telegram from her family back in Mexico City informing her that her mother was seriously ill, her breast cancer now entering a terminal stage. Accompanied by her American friend Lucienne Bloch, she was forced to take trains and even a bus over the flooded Rio Grande back to the Mexican capital, an arduous journey that took five days. One week after her arrival, her mother died, leaving her father in a state of grief and confusion. She would remain in Mexico for a month to grieve with her family and also check on the house that was being built for her and Diego. Her prospective home would have a bridge that connected two separate wings of the structure, one for her and one for him.
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