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Posts Tagged ‘journalism’

2009 paperback edition of Rick Atkinson's "The Long Gray Line" by Henry Holt & Company.

Last night I visited the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Lexington and was surprised by a selection I found in the new paperbacks section near the front door. It was a new edition of Rick Atkinson’s “The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966″ by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Atkinson.

Although I haven’t read the entire book, I am somewhat familiar with it because one of the West Point graduates it profiles is Retired Col. Jerry Cecil of Winchester. I interviewed Cecil for a feature story for The Winchester Sun not long after I came here four years ago and used the book and a Newsweek magazine article about the “66-ers” as resources for the story.

Cecil, who still lives here in Winchester, is actively involved in veterans’ issues at home and around the country, and is a liaison between this community and West Point, was the most highly decorated member of the class that served in Vietnam after graduating, having earned the Distinguished Service Cross.

Cecil is mentioned a few times in the book, including an account of an act of heroism in which, Atkison said, he kept many of his men from being killed.

The incident happened on Nov. 11, 1967, when he was leading his platoon on patrol near the old French fort of Ben Het, not far from the place where the borders of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam meet. Sensing an ambush, he ordered his men to open fire, and for many hours they were pinned down by enemy fire while helicopters dropped ammunition and chain saws to clear a landing area.

“His sudden action saved the platoon from annihilation,” Atkinson wrote, although every man but one was either wounded or killed that day.

Also during the firefight, Cecil risked his life by scrambling up the ridge three times  to carry wounded soldiers to the landing zone.

James Salter of The Washington Post describes the book as “Enormously rich in detail and written with a novelist’s brilliance . . . A very moving book.”

Published by Henry Holt & Company, the 624-page paperback is available from Barnes&Noble.com for $12.24.

Here’s a book I can hardly wait to read: “Republican Leader: Political Biography of Senator Mitch McConnell” by Kentuckian John David Dyche. I learned about it today on the official Facebook page of the Republican Party of Kentucky.

Although I don’t agree with Fred Barnes’ assessment of McConnell as possibly “the most influential Kentuckian in national affairs since Henry Clay” (I believe Abraham Lincoln, Alben Barkley, John Sherman Cooper and Carl D. Perkins should get more credit), McConnell is our state’s longest-serving senator and — one must give him his due — a redoubtable political operative, if not a prolific legistlator. For that reason, if for no other, I think this will be a fascinating read.

It’s due to be published on June 15.

Tom Gish

For more than half a century, The Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg, Ky., under the leadership of owners Tom Gish and his wife Pat, exposed public corruption, poverty and environmental degradation in Eastern Kentucky. Their battles helped establish the state’s open meetings and open records laws.

When they bought the weekly in 1956, its motto was “A Friendly Non-Partisan Weekly Newspaper …” The Gishes changed its motto to “It Screams.”

The Eagle’s strong voice and watchful eye often brought the Gishes trouble. But they didn’t back down. When they criticized the Whitesburg police for mistreating youth, a policeman, using coal company money, paid arsonists to firebomb the newspaper offices, destroying the building. But the Gishes published the next week’s edition from their home — with a new twist on their slogan: “It Still Screams.”

Tom Gish died today at age 82.

“He was the bravest and most honest man I ever knew,” said his son, Ben Gish, editor of the paper. David Thompson of the Kentucky Press Association called him “the consummate journalist.”

Read Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Andy Mead’s article and more about Tom Gish at the Institute for Rural Journalism’s blog at irjci.blogspot.com