May 16, 2018
Arlington National Cemetery Service for my step-father, Colonel John Pfalzgraf, US Navy, US Air Force, Distinguished Flying Cross.
Arlington National Cemetery Service for my step-father, Colonel John Pfalzgraf, US Navy, US Air Force, Distinguished Flying Cross.
Travel day to Washington, D.C.
There’ll be no more heroes They’ll be reduced to zero When that rough god goes riding Riding on in Van Morrison I got an email the other day that started with the greeting “Motherfucker!”. It wasn’t meant to be a friendly slap on the back – it was more of a threat. And it came […]
Congratulations to Villanova on the National Basketball Championship. Papoo would love the Jesuit celebration.
Walter Timothy Crofton (Papoo) was an Irish tough who put himself through Georgetown University on the GI Bill, supplemented by driving a cab around DC. He always loved the Jesuits – rooting for Notre Dame whenever they weren’t playing the West Virginia Mountaineers. He returned to Parkersburg, West Virginia and when we visited in the […]
“You,” Mother Jones yelled at the gallused, grizzled men. “have stood and seen yourselves robbed.” Of every ton of coal they mined, “so much was taken out, and professional murderers were hired to keep you in subjugation, and you paid for it! Damn you, you are not fit to live under the flag. You paid […]
My Father used to say that he turned down an Ivy League scholarship (Brown University) so he could play basketball at West Virginia University with Jerry West (known to NBA fans as “The Logo”). He loved telling the story about a game early in his college career when his parents drove in to Morgantown to […]
My great great uncle, LP Somerville, ran away from home to fight in the Spanish American War that made Teddy Roosevelt famous as well as President. Like many of the mountain settlers in Appalachia, LP was proud, adventurous, self-reliant and patriotic. Even ornery. That did not make him unique in West Virginia. I can remember […]
In 1781, Hugh Henry Brackenridge left the relatively cosmopolitan city of Philadelphia to ‘make his bones’ in what was known as The Wilderness. He settled at The Forks (where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio) – or present day Pittsburgh. He lived through the first open and armed rebellion in the […]
The family at 75 Lemoyne Ave., Washington, Pennsylvania.