Ruben Tucker was born in Ansonia, CT on 29 January, 1911. He graduated from West Point with the class of 1935. He was known in his military career for his aversion to paperwork. He joined the 82nd Airborne and rose to command of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He won a bevy of medals for heroic service at Sicily, Anzio and Normandy. His commanding officer, Gen. James Gavin later said in a 1982 interview that “when Tucker left Italy, he had an orange crate full of official charges against his soldiers and he just threw the whole crate into the ocean.”
23
May 2013
Assembling Your Family Tree
Calling all genealogists! Come to a workshop on June 5 from 11-12:30 in the Library Technology Center. John O’Donnell, Danbury Library’s local history and genealogy expert, will be talking about the Ancestry database, how to create a research log, and the Genealogical Proof Standard. Register for this workshop online at danburylibrary.org, click on “Events” or call (203) 797-4527.
John O'Donnell |
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16
May 2013
Lincoln Funeral Train
As part of the celebration of the sesquicentennial celebration of the Civil War there is an ongoing effort to reconstruct the Lincoln Funeral Train from 1865 and have it ready to retrace the original route of the train in 2015 to commemorate this special anniversary. The original train carried the body of Lincoln as well as that of his son Willie from Washington, D.C. to his hometown of Springfield, Illinois.
John O'Donnell |
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02
May 2013
Stonk
Recently while reading a World War Two book, The Path to Victory by Douglas Porch, I came across a word which I was unfamiliar with. The word is stonk which means a concentrated artillery bombardment. It is said to be formed from elements of the artillery term Standard Regimental Concentration. Bruce Cutler who was a poet who served in the Naples campaign in 1944 wrote a poem about it:
your stonk is your American way of winning the war
your stonk is when you take your whole production, Rock Island
Arsenal ’42 or whatever arsenal
in South Carolina, South Dakota, no difference
you throw it at the krauts from six to eight a.m.
maybe add a naval stonk to your stonk being the really big suckers that take out the little towns on the mountainsides…
John O'Donnell |
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22
Apr 2013
Spirit of Public Service
We know that the patriots in the Revolutionary war were highly motivated and imbued with a dedicated sense of public service. One great family example of this spirit is shown in the career of Jonathan Trumbull. He served as Governor of the colony of Connecticut from 1769 until 1776. Then he was Governor of the state of Connecticut from 1776 until 1784. His children likewise served the country and state as well. Jonathan Junior was the second Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1791 to 1793 and the Governor of Connecticut from 1797 to 1809. George Washington always referred to Trumbull as “the first of the patriots.”
John O'Donnell |
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