Staff Sergeant Malone, of Wills Point, Texas, a small town east of Dallas, "was G.I. from a very young age. His grandmother, Monah Malone, said he talked about joining the military after watching ‘Top Gun’ as a boy. He picked a specific branch – the army – in seventh grade and followed through on his dream after finishing high school."
Almost the whole town, a place known for its wild roses, turned out for his memorial service.
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Posted in Iraq, Obituaries, The War, Troops
Tagged Iraq, Staff Sergeant Jimy Malone, Wills Point
The best line I’ve heard on author Kurt Vonnegut is that when one was young his books and ideas were most appealing. As one got older, the books were still amusing but the author’s pacifism was annoying for its impracticality. Or something like that. He was also, for me, another casualty of September 11. Because when he joined the Left in comparing President Bush to Hitler, I lost interest in Mr. Vonnegut. Nevertheless, we should say of the dead: R.I.P.
Army Specialist Donica, 22, from Spring, north of Houston, was killed by a sniper in Baghdad Dec. 28. He was the 3,000th U.S. serviceman to die during the war, and therefore the "grim milestone" of 2006 for much of the MSM. Wikipedia misspelled his name in their haste. His family, having none of it, made "a point of deflecting attention" from the fact, according to the March edition of Texas Monthly. Since then, they have put up an impressive Web site "dedicated to the memory of Dustin Donica, the Donica Family, and Dustin’s brothers in arms." The site includes photos and background Celtic music, as well as "American Soldier," a country ballad by Toby Keith. Texas Monthly eulogized Donica as one of more than 275 Texans killed in Iraq, "the highest number from any state other than California, and each one has left behind not just a family but a community."
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Posted in Iraq, Obituaries, Troops
Tagged 000th KIA, 3, American Solider, Dustin Ross Donica, Toby Keith
Checking in with Mystic Chords now and then to play his latest jazz video, gradually got me to thinking about our family legend, my uncle by marriage, the late big band and jazz drummer Don Lamond. He played with Woody Herman’s big bands in the 1940s, then in the 1950s with be-bop artists like Charlie Parker.
"Lamond developed a reputation as an innovative, bebop-oriented drummer, and he can be heard on several classic bebop recordings, including Charlie Parker’s ‘Relaxin’ at Camarillo,’ Serge Chaloff’s ‘Blue Serge," and guitarist Johnny Smith’s ‘Moonlight in Vermont.’"
Later, he played with the studio band of the Tonight Show when Steve Allen was the host. Here’s a YouTube clip from the Tonight Show of Uncle Don in a drum-off with Louis Bellson and Lionel Hampton.
He was married to my mother’s sister for many years. They divorced in the late 1950s, and even word of him dropped out of my life after that. He remarried and moved to Florida in the 1970s, playing with a band at Disney World when it opened. He was still playing there shortly before he died in 2003, at age 82. I was too young to have known him, but he was a family legend–like some musicians, a vaguely disreputable one, and therefore always intriguing.
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Posted in Obituaries, Scribbles
Tagged Charlie Parker, Don Lamond, Steve Allen, the Tonight Show, Woody Herman
The dean of Texas Leftist activists, the acerbic writer and public speaker Molly Ivins, died Wednesday at her home in Austin after a long struggle with cancer. She was only 62.
Who? Why, the Japanese inventor of Ramen instant noodles, who died Friday of a heart attack. He was 96.
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Posted in Obituaries
Tagged Momofuku Ando, Ramen instant noodles
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 