On the road
Monday, December 30, 2013
Profiles Honor Flight DFW Fall/Winter 2013
Robert enlisted into the U.S.Army Air Forces in January 1944
at the age of 18. He trained as a gunner on the new B-29 Superfortress. This
airplane was the first with a pressurized cabin, and a crude computer assisted
gun system that featured a central fire control system on the bomber.
After basic training and advanced gunnery school, Robert was
sent overseas to the South Pacific. The B-29 was built as a long range bomber, perfectly
suited to the long range missions over limitless and vast bodies of water. This
was of course every mission in the South Pacific.
Robert was assigned to the 73rd Bomb Wing, 499th
Bomb Group, 877th Squadron of the 13th Army Air Forces.
One of his most memorable missions was flying over Tokyo on
a fire bombing raid. The mission was low level and the heat thermals coming up
from the city because of the fires from buildings burning caused Robert’s
bomber to go over and stood on its right wing, until the pilot regained control
of the B-29 and went back to level flight.
Another time one of the B-29’s engines was hit and put out
of action, but the pilot limped the bomber back to Saipan.
Robert was awarded the Air Medal with Oak Leaf cluster and
the Good Conduct medal. The 499th also received a unit citation for
the successful bombing of the air-field on Okinawa prior to the invasion of
that island by soldiers and Marines.
Robert was discharged on December 16, 1945.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Friday, December 20, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
January 2014 Dallas Police shield
On January 14, 1970 the Dallas Morning News reported the death
of Dallas Police Officer Robert Shipp. The article stated that Shipp, who had
only turned 21 the past week, was riding with his partner E.E. Hardy in West
Dallas.
The officers had stopped a traffic violator in the 1900
block of Akron which was a dead end street. The lone suspect was a 27 year old
ex-convict who lived on Akron. As the officers attempted to stop the vehicle
the suspect bailed out of the vehicle and started running towards a house which
was later found to be his residence. Hardy caught up and grabbed the suspect
and they began fighting. The suspect took Hardy’s weapon out of his holster and
as Shipp came to the aid of his partner, the suspect fired one round from Hardy’s
.38 revolver and hit Shipp in the lower left side.
Hardy then grabbed Shipp’s weapon and fired at the suspect,
hitting him in the neck. About this time, the brother of the original suspect
drives up and jumps out of his car. He then began fighting Hardy. The officer fortunately
got the best of the interfering brother by whacking the suspect on the head
with Officer Shipp’s service weapon. Officer Shipp was taken to PMH where he
was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.
Officer Shipp was a 1967 graduate of Samuell high school in
the Grove. This was a time when many Dallas officers grew up in the Grove and others
lived there during their time on the department, including this writer. I knew
Officer Shipp’s younger brother, Gordon, who also went to Samuell. Officer
Shipp was president of the student body and vice-president of his class. He was
also a National Honor Society student and an all-district football standout in
1966. He had married is high school sweetheart, Paula Rush less than two months
after he joined the DPD.
Officer Shipp was hired on at a time when the hiring age was
lowered to 19 and a half years. The thinking was that the officer would turn 21
about the time he graduated the academy. I remember that in 1976, one had to be
21 to even apply, like in my case. I’m not sure what it is now. This was also a
time when the DPD, as well as other departments around the country were having
a hard time attracting recruits. The lowered age would have opened up a whole
new pool of applicants.
Charged in the slaying were Charles Millage, 27 and David
Glen Millage, 29. The younger brother who was shot by Officer Hardy, was in PMH
and was thought at the time to be paralyzed from the gunshot wound to the neck.
Later however, this brother died of the gunshot wound. The other brother was
given a five-year prison term.
Officer Shipp is buried at Grove Hill Memorial Park.
A few days before Officer Shipp’s slaying, the manager of
the Joker Club, 7341 Gaston Ave. had driven back to the club after she had
closed up for the night. It seems a burglar alarm had gone off and as she drove
behind the club she noticed the back door open. Not wanting to enter the open
door, the manager instead entered the club through the front door and (of
course) the burglar then ran out the still opened back door. Jerry Bishop was a
regular patron of the club and a friend of the manager. He drove up to the club
after the manager had called him to come and give her a hand searching the club.
Bishop was still in his car when he saw the suspect running across a field
behind the establishment and Bishop took off after him driving his car across
the field. The manager says she heard two shots coming from the darkened field
soon after. About this time Bishop drove back to the club with a gunshot wound
to his head. The burglar had apparently turned and fired two shots at Bishop
and hit him in the forehead after the rounds traveled through the windshield.
Bishop was taken to PMH where he recovered from the wound. The burglar got away.
In other burglary news of the day a couple of bad guys broke
into a home on Cherokee Trail near Love Field. They made off with a collection
of firearms worth around $8,760.00 (?) Not $8,700.00, or $ 8,800.00 but…anyway.
Then later a burglar went into a DFD station on Lombardy Lane
while the fireman were out fighting a fire. The thief took two fine (still
black and white I’m sure) City of Dallas television sets. The burglar was
pretty mad I would say because the captain of the fire station said that one of
the sets didn’t work and that they had to bang on the set to get any type of reception.
And, a rookie fireman’s job that day would be to stand by the set holding a TV antennae
just right to get a signal from the towers at Cedar Hill! I’m sure the burglar
thought twice from then on about burglarizing a City of Dallas facility again and
risking his life and a somewhat savory reputation I’m sure. What’s really sad
is that the fireman probably did without a TV for a couple of years before the
City got around to replacing them.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
January 2014 Hogwash
January 2014 Hogwash
I had been trying to
get into the “Harley Dream Experience” in Milwaukee for a couple of years now.
This is a program offered to Harley-Davidson museum members and is limited to
twenty people, so the odds of replying to the e-mail before nineteen or so
other Harley enthusiasts nationwide got the chance was pretty remote. This time
however I was sitting at my computer one morning and it popped up, so there I
was.
The Harley Dream Experience is held twice year, once during
the holiday season, and the other around May 1st. I always wanted to
do the Christmas experience but since I’d never been to Milwaukee during the
winter, I knew that I was taking a chance with the weather. Turns out, the
weather in Dallas was worse than Harley-Davidson’s hometown and I had a downed
tree in my front yard to prove it.
Once we were in Milwaukee, Bill Davidson, the son of legendary
Willie G. Davidson met us at the Harley-Davidson museum. He was a nice guy and totally
open for questions and the usual bike rider banter. The other eighteen or so
people that got into the museum experience were from all over the country. The
good thing is that no one knew the other, so there was not the usual group of
five or six that had known each other before and took off by themselves so
everyone had a good time getting to know each other.
After lunch again
with Bill at the museum’s restaurant we were introduced to our tour guide for
the H-D archives. I’ve been to the museum a few times before but tourists could
only go so far. We were led through the so-called gates into an area that only
H-D employees of the museum, and then only those with authorization, get into.
There were racks and racks of bikes, which moved by rails side to side to gain
access to bikes in the rear of the large, carnivorous warehouse. We saw Arnold’s
“Fatboy” that he rode in one of the “Terminator” movies and John Travolta’s “Wideglide”
he rode in “Wild Hogs.” There were also rare racing bikes like the VR-1000
superbike that was the test bed at Daytona for the V-Rod back in the late
nineties. There was also a Can-Am style bike, you know the one with the two
wheels in front, sitting in a prominent area. The bike had a V-Rod engine I
believe, and the tour guide said only that it was a prototype. Who knows?
Later that night we attended a cooking with fuel, that being
“alcohol” by the chefs at the museum restaurant called “Motor.” After this we
went back to the “Iron Horse Hotel” where we were put up by the company. It’s
right across from the museum and I had always wanted to stay there during the every
five years anniversary celebrations that I’ve attended over the years. This boutique
hotel is super expensive during the big rallies in Milwaukee even if you could get
a room. It was built by a wealthy Harley loving guy that has covered motorcycle
parking in front. The hotels bar was the scene that first night as the group
exchanged the tpical war stories of days in the saddle, what kind of bikes you
owned, marriages you’ve had, the usual biker conversations…
Next day we were led on a “steel toe tour” of the engine
plant on Pilgrim Road. It was an interesting tour that included lunch with a
bunch of H-D engineers. The questions to them ranged from the problems with the
clutch with the 2014’s, the overflow problems…with the 2014’s.All is well they
said, just teething problems that were bound to come up during real world
riding. Later we were given a tour of the H-D University at the old Juneau
plant. Tourists are never given a tour of this facility we were told. No
pictures were allowed at most of the facilities we toured by the way. The
University was were H-D employees go to be trained anything from marketing to
working on new motorcycles. What was particularly interesting were the two
floors dedicated to troubleshooting bikes. One floor was for mechanics, the
other electronics. Dealerships send their techs to this school to learn how to
work on new models, this of course being the 2014’s. There were twenty or so
new motorcycles on each floor, the challenge was for the techs to determine
what was wrong with each one in a limited amount of time.
That Friday night, our group and about six hundred of your
new closest friends were invited to the big Christmas party at the “campus”
that included the museum and other buildings that made up the facility. It was
a fun time and Bill Davidson showed up as well. Once again he was a fun guy
that was agreeable to all these people with cameras wanting a picture with him.
A limo took us back to the Iron Horse that night and the group once again hung
out at the bar. All pretty much agreed that the “Dream Experience” was well
worth the time and money. A toast was given and of course all agreed to get
together at another time, in another place.
But you know how that goes.
Monday, December 16, 2013
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Sunday, December 15, 2013
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Monday, December 2, 2013
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