Features

Combat is the primary challenge of a Marine, in fact the raison d’etre of any fighting service, but there are long periods of conditioning and training between battles, providing opportunities for new experiences, many unique to those in the military.

As an honor graduate of the University of Washington’s Army ROTC program, I was offered a commission as a second lieutenant in the regular U.S. Marine Corps, effective July 1, 1937, a week before my 21st birthday. However, approval of military commissions that year were delayed in the Senate.

If you’d like to get a mint julep at your favorite bar, you better cash in this week. This Southern staple can be hard to locate at any time other than that because a lot of bars don’t normally stock mint. And without mint all you have is, well, bourbon and sugar.

Churchill Downs, liquor stores and bourbon distilleries want you to believe the premixed concoctions they’re selling are just as good as the basic ingredients, but, let’s be honest, nothing beats that simple blend of sugar, fresh mint, crushed ice and good bourbon.

A slipped disc is a painful condition involving one or more of the 23 discs that cushion the bones of the spine.

As with other causes of back pain, it is often incorrectly assumed that surgery is the only logical treatment. The truth is many of these injuries do not require surgery.

Shelby Countians must be doing something right, judging by the county’s steadily rise as one of the healthiest counties in the state.

Shelby County is up to third this year, according to the 2013 County Health Rankings of all states, complied annually by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Each day – every day for nearly 16 years – Tania Williams awoke in the orphanage in Ukraine.  Sixteen – the dreaded age that orphans in this Eastern European country “age out” to the streets, often thrown into a life of prostitution, drugs and crime. For Tania, it was a time of fear and anxiety, faced with no family and no physical or emotional support.

In my 30 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, from 1937-1967, when I was promoted from second lieutenant up the ranks to brigadier general, I encountered a lot of interesting characters who had a lot of interesting things to say, some of them amusing and others career-changing. These appear in chronological order:

“The Marine sentry did not salute me when I came across the gangway. I consider this a reflection on the captain of Marines.”

John David and Mary Helen Myles have a 174-year-old baby.

They have restored their 2-story brick Federal-style home they bought in 2002 with such loving care that the structure, known as the Dale Place, received the Ida Lee Willis Memorial Foundation Preservation Project Award in 2006.

Myles, a Shelby County Family Court judge, is widely known throughout Shelby County for his love of history, and he went to great lengths to ensure that the house, when restored, should be as much as like the original as possible.

I have listed below a few remarks that stand out in my memory of service in the regular U.S. Marine Corps from 1937 to 1967, in the ranks of second lieutenant through brigadier general.  They appear in chronological order:

“Give it to 'em boys; give 'em what General Cheatham says!”

– Bishop-General Leonidas Polk at the Battle of Perryville (1862), conscious of his role as an Episcopal bishop, after Maj. Gen. Cheatham had shouted to his troops, “Give ‘em hell, boys.”

All over Shelbyville on Wednesday, people were texting each other, calling, and rejoicing when the news broke around 3 p.m. that a new pope finally had been selected.

When newly elected Pope Francis appeared on television before a huge crowd in St. Peter’s Square in Rome and asked for his congregation’s prayers, a Shelby County priest said he was overcome with emotion.