Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

World War II

Can’t Forget, Won’t Forget: 18 February 1943

Seventy-one years ago Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans were arrested at the University of Munich for dropping leaflets protesting the evils of the Third Reich.

Sophie, Hans, their friend Christoph Probst, and several others were members of the White Rose, a group Hans and three fellow medical students founded to declare opposition to the Hitler regime and to rally the resistance movement.


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Sophie, Hans, and Christoph knew they faced certain death if they were discovered. The story of these incredible young people (Sophie was only 21 at the time of her death) is not widely known in the United States, but in Germany their contribution to freedom is recognized and respected.

Three Important Moments in America’s Economic History (in Pictures)

The previous post looked at the economic history of the United States over the past two centuries. In that post, what stood out most was the fact that the economy of the United States has always been one of the strongest in the world.

There are three defining moments of American history after 1800, and this post will examine them. They are the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. How did these events affect the economy?

More below.

A Personal Remembrance on Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day I am remembering the members of my immediate family who served in the Armed Forces.

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Colonel Norwood Hughes

11/10/1914 – 09/25/1992

My Uncle Bud was a career soldier. He served in the Western front in World War II.

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Private Eugene Hughes

10/01/1924 – 07/04/2006

My Uncle Gene lied about his age to join the Army in World War II. He was captured by the German Army and spent time in a prisoner of war camp.

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Sergeant Hazel Adele Wilson

05/19/1917 – 12/08/2001

Aunt Hazel was one of the first women to join the Women’s Army Corp.

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General Jack Lloyd Wilson

01/30/1919 – 05/04/1999

My Dad was in Tinian in the Pacific during World War II. Dad helped to develop the encryption device that was used during the war. He remained in the Army Reserve all his life and was made a General.

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Master Sergeant Michael Eugene Wilson

12/03/1946 – 05/29/2013

My brother Mike was a Vietnam veteran. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Chaplain’s Assistant. He won the Bronze Star for bravery when his unit came under attack and he rushed out and threw two of his fellow servicemen onto his shoulders and carried them to safety.

They are all gone now but on this Memorial Day I am remembering them with love and pride.

Reflections On America: Immigration

Having recently arrived on your welcoming purple shores, I’ve been thinking about immigration. It’s a subject that amazes and perplexes me, and one that our witless politicians are finally beginning to grapple with, but for all the wrong reasons. They see what all the rest of us have seen for years: the US is no country for old [white] men.  While our politicians were busy re-fighting the battles of the past, millions of folks in search of opportunity have quietly entered the country and begun living, working, and studying along with the rest of us.

Conte sailing dayIt’s an enormously complex and interesting challenge. As usual, the politicians approach it primarily from the perspective of near-term personal advancement. They can’t win without the Hispanic vote, gosh darn it all to heck. Guess it’s time to do something, they sigh. Just have to be careful not to scare away the old white guys, so we’ll be sure to include a big fence with concertina wire and armed guards. Plus our contractor friends will get some good work out of it.

Me? I’m not a politician, thank [insert name of deity here]. I’m just the daughter of an immigrant mom, trying to connect the dots in hopes that I can figure out what’s happened so far, and what might come next. So please pull up a chair, and let’s try to sort this out together.  Maybe we can make some sense of all this.

A World War I veteran in the medical corps and prominent neurosurgeon in Berlin, my grandfather left Nazi Germany in 1938, arriving in the US. He learned English, and obtained a position as a university lecturer (for a salary of $500 per year) while studying to re-take all of his medical boards in every field of medicine, not just his specialties of neurology and psychiatry (in English, of course), before being allowed to practice medicine. Then, in order to become a naturalized citizen, he had to leave the US and re-enter. He took a bus from Boston to Miami, traveled to Cuba by boat, then back into the US. Only then could he send for my mother and grandmother to join him.

Back in Germany, my mother and grandmother packed up their belongings under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, who required that every item taken out of the country be inventoried. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be an irritating and time-consuming hassle.

Heightening the danger in this case was the fact that my grandmother was smuggling out hundreds of black-listed books by authors that had been critical of the Third Reich.

Picture: The Conte di Savoia – Gateway to America for My Mother and Grandmother