June 2016 – Chris Gibbons: Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life

The Hidden Truths Within a Picture

The Hidden Truths Within A Picture

By Chris Gibbons – Originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December, 2014

“That wasn’t right! My father yelled as his booming voice filled our living room. “You can’t do that to people!”, he shouted at the TV.

“Jesus”, I thought to myself. “What the heck is up with Dad?” It was sometime in the early 1980’s, and a news program had just shown a video of an infamous incident that occurred years earlier, during the Vietnam War.

It’s a chilling video to watch. A North Viet Cong prisoner is standing along a roadside with his hands tied behind his back. A South Vietnamese officer then quickly positions himself next to him, raises his pistol, and fires a point-blank shot to the prisoner’s head. His lifeless body crumples to the ground.

“He’s a God-damned son of a b****! That wasn’t right.” my Dad said again. I was somewhat stunned by his angry reaction. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that he knew the man who was shot. I looked at Dad’s hands, and noticed that they were slightly trembling.

2014 marks the 45^th anniversary of the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize for a photo taken of one of the most infamous incidents of the Vietnam War as South Vietnamese general Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem. AP photographer Eddie Adams and an NBC cameraman filmed the execution, and Adams’ still picture of the incident soon appeared on the front pages of newspapers and evening news telecasts across the U.S. The picture outraged the American public, and it seemed to galvanize the growing anti-war sentiment. The picture soon became a symbol of the apparent brutality of the U.S. supported South Vietnamese regime. In 1969, Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.

But the picture didn’t tell the whole story, and Adams later came to regret the damage that it did to Loan. The Viet Cong prisoner who he shot was reportedly part of a “death-squad” that targeted the families of South Vietnamese policemen. According to witnesses, the prisoner was captured near a ditch where 34 bound and shot bodies of policemen and their families were found. Adams later said, “I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn’t say was, “What would you do if you were the general at that time?” Adams later apologized to Loan and his family.

General Loan eventually escaped Vietnam, and opened a pizza restaurant in a Virginia suburb. Unfortunately, he couldn’t escape his past. Word got out to an angry public of who he was. Someone once wrote an ominous message on the restaurant’s walls, “We Know Who You Are F***er.” Loan eventually had to close the restaurant because of the negative publicity. He died of cancer in 1998, leaving a wife and five children. Adams sent a note to the family that read: “I’m sorry. There are tears in my eyes.”

As for my Dad’s reaction that day, I assumed that, like so many Americans at that time, the execution in Saigon was the final straw. The Vietnam War had once sharply divided the nation, but by the late 1960’s even its staunchest supporters had seen enough. I concluded that my Dad finally realized this as well, and seeing the video again that day must’ve brought back those bitter feelings of anger and betrayal. I quickly forgot about the incident, and never asked my father about it.

It wasn’t until many years later that I finally came to understand the hidden truths behind the picture, not only the story of general Loan, but my Dad’s story as well. We had a quiet moment alone in 2008 on the 55^th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, and I asked him if he could tell me of his worst experience during the war. He said it would be too difficult for him to tell me the worst, but there was one incident that still haunted him. Shortly after his company had set up a defensive perimeter around their base in South Korea, two frightened and dirty Chinese prisoners were brought before a company sergeant. This sergeant was a WW II veteran who my father and the other young soldiers in his company admired and looked up to. “We were very young, and often scared,” my Dad told me. “But he helped us get through some of the toughest times during the war.”

The sergeant needed to understand how these two Chinese soldiers had gotten through so he could fix the weakness in their perimeter. If they escaped and revealed the weakness to the enemy, the lives of his men could be at risk. “Ask them how they got through!”, he barked to the interpreter. The prisoners replied that they didn’t “get through”, but were separated from their outfit, and simply hid in covered fox-holes when the Americans moved into the area. The American soldiers unknowingly piled the dirt and barbed wire right on top of them, and the prisoners simply climbed out later and surrendered. “I don’t believe them. Ask them again!” shouted the sergeant, as he raised his rifle and pointed it at the head of one of the prisoners. My father believed the prisoners and was shaken by the horrible scenario that was now being played out in front of him and his fellow soldiers. Again, the frightened prisoners told the same story.

The sharp sounds of gunshots echoed across the Korean sky, as two lifeless bodies crumpled to the ground.

“It wasn’t right”, my Dad said softly as he remembered the incident and vacantly stared ahead. I looked down and noticed that his hands were slightly trembling.

(Postscript: I originally wrote this story in 2008. I sent a copy to my Dad prior to publication to ensure that my facts were correct. After reading it, he immediately called me and told me that he didn’t want it published because one of the soldiers who witnessed the incident with him was severely traumatized by it. “He was never the same again, he had a lot of issues from it,” my Dad said. He told me that even after they returned home, his friend continued to struggle and the remainder of his life was difficult. My Dad was concerned that seeing the story in the newspaper might adversely affect his friend’s already fragile psyche.

My Dad passed away earlier this year, and before he died I asked him if I could ever publish the story. He didn’t mention his friend this time, possibly because he had passed away. My Dad simply responded, “When I’m long gone.” It was then that I knew that the picture and its hidden truths would now haunt me as well, as I realized that there were actually two young soldiers who witnessed the execution that day who were never the same again.)

Chris Gibbons (gibbonscg@aol.com) is a Philadelphia writer. gibbonscg@aol.com

The Forgotten Hero of the Forgotten War

The Forgotten Hero

By Chris Gibbons – Originally published in the December, 2015 edition of Philly Man Magazine

Although it was 20 years ago, Paul Sweeney still remembers that momentous evening well. On July 28, 1995, the Marine Barracks outdoor facility in Washington D.C. was filled to capacity as the attendees patiently waited for the awards ceremony to begin. Dignitaries in the audience included former Marine aviator, astronaut, and United States senator, John Glenn, Jr. A Marine announcer asked for everyone’s attention. The guests quieted.

“Lieutenant Edward Seeburger, center walk”, the announcer said. The Marine Corps band’s drums beat a military cadence and bugles echoed across the barracks. All eyes then shifted to a gray-haired man in his early 70’s, sharply dressed in a navy-blue suit, as he stood and proudly walked towards the center stage with a noticeable limp, the result of an old war injury. Tears filled the eyes of his family members as they watched Seeburger approach the stage where Marine Commandant Charles C. Krulak waited to present the graduate of Philadelphia’s Roman Catholic High School with the prestigious Navy Cross – only one grade below the Congressional Medal of Honor. “It was quite a moment to see”, Seeburger’s son-in-law Paul Sweeney told me recently, but when you consider what Edward Seeburger did during the Korean War’s Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, it is hard to believe that this award was overlooked and nearly forgotten.

On December 2, 1950, First Lieutenant Edward Seeburger, a veteran of WW II, was leading the remains of his Dog Company Unit as they desperately fought their way south to reach the U.S. held Korean town of Hagaru. Of the 220 Marines originally in his Company, only about 20 were still fit to fight as the rest were either dead or wounded. Out of seven officers, only Seeburger remained. The men were not only fighting the enemy soldiers, but the weather as well. The snow impeded their progress in temperatures that plummeted to minus 20.

Seeburger was near the lone tank at the front of the convoy when it was suddenly attacked by well positioned Chinese troops with small arms, automatic weapons, rockets, and mortars. “One minute there was no action, and then there was artillery and mortar fire,” Seeburger said in a 1995 Philadelphia Inquirer article. ”We couldn’t move. Everybody stopped.”

The Marines took cover, but the American tank gunners could not see where the enemy fire was coming from. The convoy was being decimated. Seeburger knew that he had to do something or he, and his men, would die on the frozen Korean hills. He climbed on top of the lead tank so that he could locate the enemy positions, exposing himself to the enemy fire. “Somebody had to give them some direction,” he said in the article. “We were being hit from both sides and the front. I told them to open up with their weaponry to help our men out.”

Seeburger’s direction was working as the tank’s guns began to neutralize the enemy positions. Suddenly a bullet tore into his right knee, knocking him to the ground. The soldiers advised him to go back with the other wounded, but Seeburger refused. The official Navy Cross citation reveals what happened next: “With well-entrenched machine guns defending a roadblock to the front, and with his ranks depleted by eight further casualties, and he himself painfully wounded and unable to walk, he staunchly refused evacuation, and directed his men in an enfilade movement which wiped out the obstruction and enabled the entire column to move forward. By his great personal valor and dauntless perseverance in the face of almost certain death, First Lieutenant Seeburger saved the lives of many Marines…”

For his actions, Seeburger was immediately recommended for the Navy Cross by his Major, James Lawrence. However, unknown to Lawrence, the paperwork was destroyed when a regimental building burned down. Lawrence long assumed Seeburger received the award but was stunned to learn over 40 years later that Seeburger never received it. Lawrence then spoke to Navy officials and his recommendation was approved.

Edward “Bud” Seeburger from the R.C.H.S. Class of 1940 proudly received the Navy Cross that night in 1995, and it also coincided with the formal dedication that day of the new Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. How fitting it was that on the day that the “Forgotten War” was finally recognized, one of its forgotten heroes was finally honored as well. Sweeney told me that Seeburger never really talked about that night in Korea until he received the award. “It couldn’t have been in a better setting,” Seeburger said in a 1995 Philadelphia Daily News article. “It was quite an honor. My daughter and grandkids are able to see me get this award whereas, 45 years ago, they would not have been around for this…it’s amazing to me.”

Seeburger worked as a park police officer, and then later as an engraver for 32 years at Becks Engraving Co. After retiring, he and his wife moved to Ocean City, N.J., and he worked part-time for the Claridge Casino in Atlantic City. He died in 2007 at the age of 85.

Philadelphia’s Roman Catholic High School, founded in 1890, is still thriving today. In one of the classrooms at the historic school are various plaques honoring alumni who distinguished themselves in battle, and one of those plaques bears the remarkable story of Edward Seeburger. They serve as a reminder to the students of the proud legacy of their school, which is the only Philadelphia Archdiocesan high school, and one of the few in the country, whose alumni have served in the Spanish-American War, WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Over 150 alumni have given their lives in these conflicts. On March 8^th of this year, several of these veteran alumni were honored during Roman’s 125 Year Anniversary celebratory banquet where the school formally recognized Roman’s “125 Persons of Distinction”. The Seeburger family was there to accept the award on behalf of their father. Roman’s Alumni Association felt that it was important to remember and recognize men like Edward Seeburger, whose actions and achievements are so remarkable that they reveal, not only to fellow alumni, but to the rest of our country as well, those quality characteristics that Roman has always strived to instill in its students.

(Chris Gibbons is a freelance writer and a 1979 graduate of Roman. His recent book, “Soldiers, Space and Stories of Life” is available at Amazon.com – link below)

The Fight of the Century

**By Chris Gibbons – Excerpt from his book, Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life. Originally published in the Philadelphia Daily News, March 13, 2006**

The year was 1971, and the priest stood at the front of the church and looked out among the elementary school students of Philadelphia’s Immaculate Heart of Mary School. He had just read a story from the New Testament which recounted a miracle Jesus had performed, and he wanted to engage the students during his homily by asking a question of them. “Who was the most powerful man who ever lived?” he asked the students. A hand immediately shot up among the first-grade students. The delighted priest, surprised that such a young child was confident enough to answer, called on the young boy, and he stood up. I looked over and saw that it was my little brother Pat. “Tell us young man,” the priest proudly intoned. Pat confidently replied, “Joe Frazier!”

That story is now legendary in my family, and we always have a good laugh when we remember it. However, those who know my family well certainly understand my brother’s response. Just a few years prior to that day, my uncle’s friend had given me and my five brothers each a photo of a promising young Philadelphia heavyweight standing in a classic boxer’s pose. Handwritten on the photos were the words: “Keep on smokin’. Joe Frazier.” All of us were in heaven, and our lifelong love of boxing was born that day. We all believed that Smokin’ Joe had personally written those words especially for us, and the heroic status he achieved in our home was unmatched by any other athlete. We closely followed his career, and when he defeated Jimmy Ellis to win the title, we celebrated as if he was an older brother. However, we also all knew that there was one fighter who Joe had to defeat before he was universally recognized as the true heavyweight champion.

March 8, 2021, marks the 50^th anniversary of what many regard as the greatest fight in the history of boxing. At Madison Square Garden, for the first time in heavyweight history, an undefeated champion, Joe Frazier, would face an undefeated former champion, Muhammad Ali. It was billed as “The Fight of the Century,” and legendary boxing announcer Don Dunphy called it the greatest night in the history of sports. Luminaries from the entertainment, sports, and political worlds were seated at ringside. Ali and Frazier received record purses of $2.5 million each, the Garden was sold out a full month in advance, and an estimated 300 million watched it on closed circuit television.

The pre-fight buildup was racially charged as Ali shamefully referred to Joe as an “Uncle Tom” and the “white man’s champion.” These statements were particularly painful to Frazier who was raised as the dirt-poor son of a South Carolina sharecropper. If anyone embodied the impoverished, discriminatory experience of many African Americans of that era, it was Frazier.

On the night of the fight, as they stood in the center of the ring while receiving the referee’s instructions, Frazier and Ali continued their bitter war of words that had started nearly two years before. Ali said, “Don’t you know that I’m God and can’t be beat?” Joe replied, “Well, God’s gonna get his butt kicked tonight!”

Fight of the Century
The fight itself was nothing short of spectacular. Joe and his trainer, Yank Durham, knew that they had to avoid Ali’s piston-like jabs and punishing right hand crosses in order to get inside and land Frazier’s vaunted left hooks to the head and body. They devised a plan to neutralize Ali’s speed and reach advantage, but Joe would have to take two in order to land one.

Joe came off his stool for round one furiously bobbing his head to avoid the jab. Surprisingly, Ali, who had defeated big punchers like Sonny Liston, Jerry Quarry, and Ernie Terrell, was not intimidated by Frazier’s power, and tried to end it early by standing flatfooted and exchanging with Frazier. Joe landed a vicious left hook to the head, and Ali quickly realized that he would have to capitalize on his speed advantage by sticking and moving. The pattern for the remainder of the fight had been set with Ali dancing and landing straight right hands and short hooks behind the best jab ever seen in the heavyweight division, and Joe pursuing in his familiar crouched stance while slipping as many punches as he could in order to get inside. Joe continually rocked Ali with his left hook, but he was absorbing a lot of punishment himself.

As the contest wore on, the battered faces of both fighters revealed the ferocity of the fight, with Frazier’s face a bruised and lumpy mess and Ali’s right jaw swollen like a balloon. It became a dramatic war of attrition. Frazier was staggered by Ali in the ninth round, and Ali was nearly out on his feet in the 11th. As the fight moved into the 15th and final round, Frazier was ahead on all scorecards, and he punctuated his victory by landing a picture perfect left hook that floored the former champion. Astonishingly, Ali got off the canvas and finished the fight on his feet. Frazier was awarded a unanimous decision victory.

Throughout the night, television shows were periodically interrupted with news of the fight, and our house erupted in joy when we heard the news of Joe’s victory. The fight was shown only on closed circuit broadcasts at select locations, and my brother Mike was fortunate enough to see a live broadcast. He captivated us for hours when he returned and gave a blow-by-blow description of the fight. He was better than Howard Cosell.

Unfortunately, Joe passed away in 2011. I’ve often wondered if he ever realized that so many Philadelphians regarded him as their hero, especially six white kids from Philly’s Roxborough neighborhood who never understood Ali’s racial taunts, and didn’t care if Joe was black, white, green, or blue. He was from Philly, and he signed those photos. That’s all that mattered to us.

I’ve often watched videos of that fight over the years, and I don’t think anyone could have beaten Joe Frazier that night. Well, maybe Jesus could have…maybe.

It’s difficult to convey to people who didn’t grow up in the Philadelphia area during the 1970’s the heroic and iconic status that Joe Frazier had in the Delaware Valley. When the news of his stunning loss to George Foreman in 1973 reached our home, my brothers and I were in tears. My brother Pat was so distraught that my mother kept him home from school the following day! But, that incredible night in 1971 when he defeated Ali in the “Fight of the Century” is still indelibly burned within my memory, which is remarkable when you consider that I didn’t actually see the fight until a year later when it was finally broadcast on TV by ABC Sports. Until that day I had relied upon the descriptions provided to me by my brother Mike, and the brilliant sportswriters of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Bulletin, and the Philadelphia Daily News. I recently read a clipping from the issue of the Daily News on the day after the fight. Sportswriter Stan Hochman’s prose from his article is pure gold as he poetically described the epic left hook from Frazier that floored Ali in the 15^th round: “It came whistling out of Beaufort like the Suncoast Limited, screeching on invisible tracks, sending sparks into the night. Only the wail of the whistle was missing. And it crushed into Ali’s handsome head just like the locomotive it resembled.”

More ‘stories of life’, as well as the harrowing ordeals of America’s war veterans and the wonders of space exploration, can be found in the new book by Philadelphia writer, Chris Gibbons: “Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life”. Amazon.com link is below:

Standing Up For What’s Right by Chris Gibbons

Edited version was originally published in the February 20, 2015 Philadelphia Inquirer

It was the late autumn of 1902, Patricia Corkery remembered her Uncles telling her, and twenty-four year old coach William “Billy” Markward gathered his Roman Catholic High School basketball team together at the imposing gothic school building at Broad and Vine streets in Philadelphia. Markward, a Spanish-American War veteran, was starting his first year of coaching at Roman and had just received a disturbing letter from the scholastic league that Roman played in during that era. Although his initial reaction may have been to respond to the league on his own without discussing with the team, Markward also recognized the importance of teaching life lessons, as well as basketball, to his players.

The team was primarily comprised of poor Irish-Catholic boys from the inner-city neighborhoods of Philadelphia, and many were the sons, or grandsons, of immigrants. But there was one boy among them whose background was very different. John “Johnny” Lee was the son of a former slave, and he was one of the first African Americans to play basketball in that scholastic league.

As the boys sat, Markward, a former pro basketball player himself, towered over them and began to read the contents of the letter. It stated that the league was notifying Roman that they would be banned from the league if Lee, a “Negro” player, remained on their roster. Sadly, considering the racial discrimination that was common for that era, this stance was not unusual, but how the team responded definitely was.

In a letter to Roman’s Alumni Association detailing the incident, Patricia Corkery wrote that her uncle and team captain, John Corkery, was the first to stand up and speak: “If Johnny Lee doesn’t play, then I don’t play.” One by one, each of the players, including her other uncle, Maurice, stood up and said that they wouldn’t play as well. As he watched each of the boys pledge to stand with their teammate, Billy Markward, the coach who always stressed the importance of how to live over how to play, must’ve beamed with pride. “Roman stood with Johnny and the league backed down”, Patricia Corkery wrote.

From that moment on, a special bond formed between John Corkery and Lee. Through the years, both men remained active in Roman’s Alumni Association, and their friendship grew. Lee would never forget the courageous stand that Corkery and his other teammates took for him, and when John Corkery died in 1929, Johnny Lee was heartbroken. Patricia fondly remembers the touching scene that took place at her home every year on the anniversary of her uncle’s death. “Growing up in the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia in the late 20’s and early 30’s, my world was white-mostly Irish Catholic,” Patricia Corkery recalled in the letter. “Only one African-American crossed my path. It was once a year (John Lee) came to our house and I had to be on my best behavior. Always, I had to be dressed up and with my best manners for this visit. John Lee came to our house on the anniversary of my Uncle John’s death…and paid a tearful visit to the pictures of Roman’s team still on our walls.”

Over the ensuing years, Billy Markward would consistently turn down numerous college coaching offers and remained at Roman from 1902 to 1942, winning an incredible 20 championships. He achieved legendary status not only at Roman, but in the entire Philadelphia region, and the prestigious Markward Awards are presented annually to Philadelphia’s top scholastic athletes.

As for Johnny Lee, breaking down racial barriers became something of a family trait. Johnny’s granddaughter, Sister Cora Marie Billings, became the first African American to enter a community of nuns in Philadelphia, and the first to join the Sisters of Mercy. She also became the first African American in the U.S. to serve as the leader of a Church parish as pastoral coordinator for St. Elizabeth’s in Richmond, Va. “My great-grandfather (George Lee)…worked as a slave, owned by the Society of Jesus”, Cora wrote in the July 7-14, 2014 issue of America Magazine. “I know that our church and our world are not as they once were and they are not where I want them to be. But my hope is things will continue to get better.”

Lee himself served on Roman’s Board of Trustees, as well as treasurer of the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Holy Name Union. He was active in the St. Vincent DePaul Society, and, in 1955, Lee became the first African American to receive the prestigious Vercelli Medal of the Holy Name Society, the highest award given annually to the Archdiocese’s outstanding Catholic layman. He died in 1958 and Lee Park in West Philadelphia is named in his honor.

Another of Lee’s lasting legacies at Roman is readily evident when reviewing the success that the school has achieved in basketball since 1968. Largely due to the contributions of many great African American players during that span, Roman won an unprecedented 18 Catholic League championships, and their current team is nationally ranked.

When we look back upon this incident from 1902, we can appreciate just how far our nation has progressed in eliminating discrimination. However, the social unrest resulting from the recent incidents in Ferguson and New York are sobering reminders that far too often our society has a troubling tendency to split opinions along racial lines. Our inability to determine the reason why we continue to divide this way leaves us angry and frustrated, and we blame each other for this failure. Perhaps, before we can find an answer and move forward, we need to look back and remember the pledge that was made in the school at Broad and Vine streets over 110 years ago. For what the Roman Catholic High School basketball team understood back then, but what many of us fail to realize today, is that the primary reason for our failure is ignorance, and the first step in defeating it is to stand together and confront it.

Chris Gibbons is a Philadelphia writer. He can be reached at gibbonscg@aol.com

More stories of notable Philadelphians, as well as the harrowing stories of America’s war veterans, can be found in the new book by Philadelphia writer, Chris Gibbons: “Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life”. Amazon.com link is below: