Last week, LZ LAKEHAWK readers and listeners got to better know the official chopper pilot of our muddy boots, vet-saluting weekly endeavor: Marine Maj. Buzzard Miller.
We ran out of ink before we could cite his family s military heritage, which included his uncle Dan Karales, who fought with the Army in the European Theater during World War II while another uncle, Marine Herbert Light, jumped with the lst Parachute Battalion in the Pacific.
Buzzard s mom, Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Patricia Anne Miller; and his father, Staff Sgt. Harry Alvin Miller, Jr., an anti-aircraft artilleryman who assured his son that his Dad s unit valiantly defended Detroit from the North Koreans.
We will fight our country s battles, the Marines Hymn assures us in song, in the air, on land and sea.
But 245 years of USMC history points to other successes where strafing enemy positions and planting the American flag on some desolate, war-savaged hill was not required.
America s Corps of Marines guarded the U.S. mail in 1921; they earned the name Sea Angels in Tsunami-clobbered Bangladesh in 1992; and they have fought forest fires out West on a number of occasions in the last three decades.
And at this writing, busloads of incoming recruits anxiously await their turn on Parris Island s feared and fabled yellow footprints – which will happen only after two weeks cautious COVID testing in Jacksonville, where the Palm Coast and its legendary civilian-military partnership put together the means to feed, house and process a few hundred almost Marines.
Daily Commercial readers met when former editor Tom McNiff introduced LZ LAKEHAWK in June of 2018.
But as my crusty, crazy-like-a-fox mustang infantry officer pal, Steve Luhrsen, is fond of saying: You don t have to invent Buzzard. He already exists.
Yessir, he does.
Born in Houston in the shadow of NASA ground control, the boy was born to fly. Young Kurt Lowell Miller, Sr. really wanted to be an astronaut. Badly.
He applied for the program multiple times and pursued every possible venue for getting in through a side door by competing for scholarships in long-term space-study tracks, but finally settled on pursuing a degree in safety engineering from Texas A&M – an Aggie, doncha know.
He had a special way of expressing it, too, always making that first word, love, come out a little louder and more drawn out. He left no doubt in my young heart and mind what life was really supposed to be about, Longley said. And at family gatherings, with Uncle Tom always the most senior person present, we would unfailingly carve out time and attention for our uncle to give us his word, which every time included take care of your family and treat people right.
Former Staff Sgt. Hayes, who cut his teeth in the Quartermaster Corps throughout England, France and Germany during some of the most significant wartime operations of the last century, died March 6, a month shy of his 97th birthday.
You don t have to be a spiritual lone ranger dailycommercial.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailycommercial.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.