Nov 30, 2019

We are the Mustangs, the Mighty Tired Mustangs


We are the Mustangs,

The Mighty Tired Mustangs,

Everywhere we go-oh, 

People want to know-oh,

Who we are-r, and what happened,

So we tell em, we got older, had some ki-ids, and then some grandkids, they wore us o-out.




We are the Mustangs,

The 60 something Mustangs,

Everywhere we go-oh, people want to know-oh,

Who we are-r, and what happened,

But we are too tired, so we don't tell em.





OK, needs work, not yet ready for prime time.  Any wordsmith poets out there want to improve on the lyrics? Or Artiste who wants to design the logo? And of course if you want to sing our "Fight" Song, you could do so and send me the youtube video and I will be glad to post it on this blog. You could become famous!  morganparkhigh@gmail.com 


5

2020 MPHSAA Picnic


Nice Facebook Page - EMPEHI Reunion


This is a nice EMPEHI Alumni page created by Kristine Lang.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/34421394018/


 




A GRATEFUL THANKS this Thanksgiving weekend to all the Alumni who participated in the great reunion this past Oct 17th & 18th, 2014! Behold the GOOD deed done! We rocked this thing!!! "All you need is love!" 

These are just a few of the many who came. Alumni ranged from classes of 1954 to 1979, coming all the way from California to the New York islands.

Kristine Lang

Nov 25, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving!




Thanks to Taffy Cannon MPHS 66 for sharing the video below from WKRP Cinncinati video on Thanksgiving.  No turkeys were harmed in this video.

WKRP "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
Nov 24, 2011 - Uploaded by Epic Houston
WKRP "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly"Thanksgiving.

WKRP Thanksgiving Turkey Drop - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p00nBSNIPwg
Oct 13, 2014 - Uploaded by Cuchulainn's Picks
Les Nessman discovers that his station's Thanksgiving promotion just isn't going to fly. For more info ...

Watch WKRP in Cincinnati Online - Turkeys Away | Hulu

www.hulu.com/watch/322
    
Sep 20, 2007
Stream WKRP in Cincinnati season 1, episode 7 instantly. ... This one website, wetpaint, showed 12 Thanksgiving Day episodes, and the  ...

WKRP "Turkey's Away" - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeCGURWzjwE
Nov 24, 2011 - Uploaded by whoohaaa1000
WKRP "Turkey's Away" .... This was a great old Thanksgivingshow. .... WKRP "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly" Thanksgiving  ...

WKRP in Cincinnati Full Episode (Turkeys Away) - IMDb

www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi254935065/
    
Watch the latest WKRP in Cincinnati Full Episode (Turkeys Away) on IMDb.







Thanksgiving Dinner Back in the Good Old Days - Finger Licking Good!


Our turkey dinner in Vietnam

Add a heat tab.... and a veritable feast for our troops.

Delicious and nutritious. It was better with hot sauce.

Some guys liked Nước chấm sauce with it. Nước chấm is a Vietnamese dipping sauce - an acquired taste.


Happy Thanksgiving.





Army Navy football Christmas story

The annual Army-Navy football game was first played in 1890 at West Point, New York. The U.S. Naval Academy prevailed then, 24-20, and did so again last weekend at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

The following is from an article written by Ronnie Polaneczky for the Philadelphia Daily News, published on December 22, 2005.

*     *     *

And now, I bring you the best Christmas story you never heard.
It started before Christmas years ago when Bennett and Vivian Levin were overwhelmed by sadness while listening to radio reports of injured American troops.

“We have to let them know we care,” Vivian told Bennett.

So they organized a trip to bring soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital to the annual Army-Navy football game in Philly.

The cool part is, they created their own train line to do it.

Yes, there are people in this country who actually own real trains. Bennett Levin – native Philly guy, self-made millionaire and irascible former L&I commish – is one of them.

He has three luxury rail cars. Think mahogany paneling, plush seating and white-linen dining areas. He also has two locomotives, which he stores at his Juniata Park train yard.

One car, the elegant Pennsylvania, carried John F. Kennedy to the Army-Navy game in 1961 and ’62. Later, it carried his brother Bobby’s body to D.C. for burial.

“That’s a lot of history for one car,” says Bennett

He and Vivian wanted to revive a tradition that endured from 1936 to 1975, during which trains carried Army-Navy spectators from around the country directly to the stadium where the annual game is played.

The Levins could think of no better passengers to reinstate the ceremonial ride than the wounded men and women recovering at Walter Reed in D.C. and Bethesda, in Maryland.

“We wanted to give them a first-class experience,” says Bennett. “Gourmet meals on board, private transportation from the train to the stadium, perfect seats – real hero treatment.”

Through the Army War College Foundation, of which he is a trustee, Bennett met with Walter Reed’s commanding general, who loved the idea.

But Bennett had some ground rules first, all designed to keep the focus on the troops alone:

No press on the trip, lest the soldiers’ day of pampering devolve into a media circus.

No politicians either, because, says Bennett, “I didn’t want some idiot making this trip into a campaign photo op.”

And no Pentagon suits on board, otherwise the soldiers would be too busy saluting superiors to relax.

The general agreed to the conditions, and Bennett realized he had a problem on his hands.

“I had to actually make this thing happen,” he laughs.

Over the next months, he recruited owners of 15 other sumptuous rail cars from around the country – these people tend to know each other – into lending their vehicles for the day. The name of their temporary train?

The Liberty Limited.

Amtrak volunteered to transport the cars to D.C. – where they’d be coupled together for the round-trip ride to Philly – then back to their owners later.

Conrail offered to service the Liberty while it was in Philly. And SEPTA drivers would bus the disabled soldiers 200 yards from the train to Lincoln Financial Field, for the game.

A benefactor from the War College ponied up 100 seats to the game – on the 50-yard line – and lunch in a hospitality suite.

And corporate donors filled, for free and without asking for publicity, goodie bags for attendees:

From Woolrich, stadium blankets. From Wal-Mart, digital cameras. From Nikon, field glasses. From GEAR, down jackets.

There was booty not just for the soldiers, but for their guests, too, since each was allowed to bring a friend or family member.

The Marines, though, declined the offer. “They voted not to take guests with them, so they could take more Marines,” says Levin, choking up at the memory.

Bennett’s an emotional guy, so he was worried about how he’d react to meeting the 88 troops and guests at D.C.’s Union Station, where the trip originated. Some GIs were missing limbs. Others were wheelchair-bound or accompanied by medical personnel for the day.

“They made it easy to be with them,” he says. “They were all smiles on the ride to Philly. Not an ounce of self-pity from any of them. They’re so full of life and determination.”

At the stadium, the troops reveled in the game, recalls Bennett. Not even Army’s lopsided loss to Navy could deflate the group’s rollicking mood.

Afterward, it was back to the train and yet another gourmet meal – heroes get hungry, says Levin – before returning to Walter Reed and Bethesda.

“The day was spectacular,” says Levin. “It was all about these kids. It was awesome to be part of it.”

The most poignant moment for the Levins was when 11 Marines hugged them goodbye, then sang them the Marine Hymn on the platform at Union Station.

“One of the guys was blind, but he said, ’I can’t see you, but man, you must be f—ing beautiful!’ ” says Bennett. “I got a lump so big in my throat, I couldn’t even answer him.”

It’s been three weeks, but the Levins and their guests are still feeling the day’s love.

“My Christmas came early,” says Levin, who is Jewish and who loves the Christmas season. “I can’t describe the feeling in the air.”

Maybe it was hope.

As one guest wrote in a thank-you note to Bennett and Vivian, “The fond memories generated last Saturday will sustain us all – whatever the future may bring.”

God bless the Levins.

And bless the troops, every one.

___________________


Thanks to MOAS Member Nikki Dovenor for sharing this story.


https://bobmorris.biz/bennett-vivian-levin-honor-americas-heroes-on-special-liberty-limited-train-to-army-navy-game

______________________


Snopes says this is a true story.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/army-navy-train/
Origins:   The last weekend of the college football season (which generally falls in early December) is the occasion for one of the game’s oldest and most famous rivalries, the annual match-up between the football teams of the Army’s and Navy’s military academies. First contested in 1890, the Army-Navy game has been played in a variety of locales in its long history, but it has most frequently been held in Philadelphia due to that city’s favorable location as a metropolis roughly halfway between the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. So popular has the contest been among sports fans and service members that for a forty-year period (between 1936 and 1975) trains were organized on game day to bring ticket-holders from all over the country to the site of the
match.
In 2005, the Philadelphia couple Bennett and Vivian Levin combined the idea of reviving the game day train tradition with their desire to do something for injured American troops — and they already had a good head start on the project since they themselves owned three luxury rail cars and two locomotives. With the goal of transporting wounded service members to the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia from Walter Reed Army Medical Center (in Washington, D.C.) and the National Naval Medical Center (in Bethesda, Maryland), they convinced the owners of an additional fifteen luxury rail liners into donating their cars for a day’s use and arranged for Amtrak to transport the cars to Washington and back. A donor from the Army War College Foundation supplied 100 prime-seat tickets for the 3 December 2005 Army-Navy game, and the Levins used their temporary rail line — dubbed the Liberty Limited — to transport 88 troops and guests to the game round-trip from Washington’s Union Station to Philadelphia, all free of charge.
The event received little publicity due to security precautions and because Mr. Levin insisted that no press or politicians be allowed to ride along on the train, but Philadelphia Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky’s account of it was published in the 22 December 2005 edition of that newspaper, and the text of her column was soon being circulated widely on the Internet via e-mail.

Last updated:   4 January 2006

Nov 23, 2019

Nan Brennan MPHS 66 Rest in Peace


I am very sorry to pass along this information from Mary Caroline Baker Hunt '66:

To those who didn't hear the sad news that Nan Brennan, MPHS '66, died October 7th, 2019. Her memorial mass was today, November 16th at the very beautiful Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic church. Burial was in Holy Sepulcher Catholic Cemetery in Alsip in the Brennan family plot. JB Fournier, Nan's husband of 44 years, and many family members and friends from their active life in downtown Chicago where they lived for decades participated in the ceremonies.



I sat behind Nan in countless classes over the years, always admiring her magnificent gleaming black hair as well as her twinkling eyes and good nature. We kept in touch sporadically over the years, at Christmas and at some of my book signings, and also engaged in the occasional amicable political disagreement.

I am sad that she is gone.

Taffy Cannon, June '66
Carlsbad, California
___________________


So sorry to hear.  

Tom Schildhouse

__________________________________



Sorry to hear it. She was a very nice person. Her family are in our prayers.

Craig Hullinger

_________________________________



Nan was sweet, humble, and thoughtful - with wit and a (mischievous) sense of humor. She was loyal to her family, her friends and her faith, which sustained her and kept true her remarkable moral compass. I never knew Nan to speak unkindly about anyone. She was very realistic, but kind.  

Nan was notably unusual in that she didn’t jump to conclusions about issues.  She was fair and objective,  even about subjects where emotions usually rule.  She methodically read, researched and processed complex facts with her prodigious mind and common sense, separating fact from emotion in everything from hot politics to coming up with the most logical, well informed path forward in difficult, complicated situations.  She possessed the most remarkable and brilliant mind.  This lovely person was the only true genius I have ever known, our friendship a blessing beyond measure.

Nan never called attention to herself.  She neither thought of herself nor hesitated to go to the ends of the earth for those she loved, using herself up in service to others, counting on her faith in Jesus Christ as her Savior and the origin of her desire to love and serve.  

She will be remembered and missed by many.

Mary Caroline

_________________________

So sorry to hear of her passing

Ron McComb

__________________

I remember Nancy from high school, but, I'm sorry to say, I never knew her. 

Such a lovely, moving tribute.

My sympathy goes out to her friends ad family.


Pam Smith Morrissey 

_________________


Thank you, Taffy, for letting us know about Nan's death. She was such a darling girl and a pleasure to know in HS.

Ginny Michet Scanlan