So your sons are commissioned in the Marines after 9/11. One of them is killed. You get to answer a question from The President of the United States: “Is there anything I can do for you?” “Yes. Get me an age wavier to join the service.”

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BZ, LCDR William Kristoff, USN, MC,

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It’s Memorial Day.  This is my tribute to one who went before me:  Seaman 1/C Omer Dee Simms, USN.  Here is some of the story of this man’s life that we are lucky to have heard.

(Note:  All pictures below are the small versions.  Click to get the original size provided)

Omer Dee Simms was a sailor aboard USS FRANKLIN (CV-13) on March 19th, 1945, when a Japanese kamikaze slammed into the flight deck and created a hellish place at sea for the crew of that aircraft carrier. 50 miles from the island of Kyushu, they were without power, on fire, and aircraft, on deck and in the hanger bay, loaded with aviation gas and ordnance were “cooking off.”

Who was Omer Simms? He was a son, a brother, a husband and a father.

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He was born in McKinney, Texas Nov 17th, 1911. When he was called to serve his country on Dec 16th, 1943 he was working at a boot factory. He was enlisted in the US Navy on Dec 31st, 1943.

He was the father of Richard Don Simms.

His wrote his wife, Blanche, and his son, Richard.

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In Boot Camp, he got to experience the wisdom of the military medical system, and he shared this with his sister in a letter:

He was assigned as a cook aboard USS FRANKLIN (CV-13) and rode her into battle, as the noose of the Allied Forces tightened around the virtual neck of the Japanese Homeland. The Japanese we’re going down without a fight, and, on the 19th of March, 1945, a single pilot brought hell to earth for that crew. Omer was 31 years old when he joined the service, so, the service being what it is across many generations, I imagine he picked up a nickname of “Pops” or “Gramps.” They probably looked up to him, because he had more life behind him than they did.

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(Click on the picture for the archived photos of the attack on NavSource)

725 dead, 265 wounded in the attack. Omer Dee Simms was a hero that day. He saved 12 of his shipmates, by not giving up on getting the door open, to allow the 13 of them to remain trapped in a compartment, with fire raging around them. Once he led that group to safety, he went back inside the skin of the ship to help get others to safety. He did not survive the day.

Here is the notice Omer’s family received from the Department of the Navy:

George Black owes his life to Omer Simms. He made the following statement to describe the efforts and situation he faced that horrible day in battle:

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Click here for this file scanned and converted to PDF

There are no bridges, streets, museums, schools or military barracks named after Omer Dee Simms, but, he, like so many others, had courage in the midst of battle and chose to carry on, to get the mission done, in this case to save your shipmates.

For a detailed story of a newly built carrier, that entered the Pacific and went straight to combat, took a seemingly mortal wounding off Japan, yet was underway on her own power the later that day, and steamed stateside herself to arrive at the shipyard for repairs, get the book “Inferno” by Joseph Springer. The story of Omer Dee Simms is in there, with the other reports of danger and death and courage.

The memory of Omer Dee Simms is kept alive by his son. Richard Don Simms, pictured above, who graciously provide me with the information and materials for this post. Richard shared in his items, a letter he sent to his father, but was returned unread:

In addition to that help, he has been one to help keep the memory of the crew of the USS FRANKLIN (CV-13) in the public eye, having attended the reunions and being declared an honorary crew member of the storied vessel.

Richard also shows his appreciation to our service members today, providing them with his presence at the DFW Airport, as reported in these two articles:

To complete my post, it is worthy of note that Seaman 1/C Omer Dee Simms, USN, has been honored by his home state of Texas in the following resolution in 2006:

Sean from San Francisco has used his geoscience education to create a Google Earth Map layer of those who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been at this for a few years now, and it now complete.

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Take a minute and read of the research and connections to many organizations to indicate the home of record for each of the service men, and see the tribute it will create for their families and friends.

Fitting news for a day such as this, as we remember those who went before us and gave us the gift of continuing freedom beyond their time on this earth.

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Two Pennsylvanian’s quit the Flight 93 Memorial Commission last week, protesting Park Service plans to condemn five crash-site properties that it never negotiated for in good faith. Consider the case of the Lambert family, who have been on their land for three generations:

“It’s absolutely a surprise. I’m shocked by it. I’m disappointed by it,” said Tim Lambert, who owns nearly 164 acres that his grandfather bought in the 1930s. The park service plans to condemn two parcels totaling about five acres — land, he said, he had always intended to donate for the memorial.

“To the best of my knowledge and my lawyer, absolutely no negotiations have taken place with the park service where we’ve sat down and discussed this,” Lambert said.

Lambert said he had mainly dealt with the Families of Flight 93 and said he’s provided the group all the information it’s asked for, including an appraisal.

They are condemning land that he was trying to GIVE to them, just because he had the gall to expect the Park Service to actually do its part.

Project members have embraced the “absolute moral authority” conceit

How dare anyone not rush to give these grieving 9/11 family members whatever they want? Didn’t they hear Maureen Dowd’s proclamation that “the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq [or on 9/11] is absolute”?

When crash-site owner Mike Svonavec put up a donation box to try to cover some of the cost of hiring security guards for the hugely popular Temporary Memorial, Patrick White, cousin of Flight 93 hero Louis Nacke, told the press:

That land has been paid for with 40 lives … the donation box is an insult to that cost.

When Svonavec insisted that the Park Service follow its own legally required procedures for assessing property values (procedures that, as it happens, take into account current property values, not just pre-crash property values), White accused Svonavec of trying to profit from the blood of his cousin:

“I think Svonavec believes his land, because it has the blood of my cousin and 39 other people, it’s worth more,” he said.

Using the flag of victim-hood to defend Paul Murdoch’s terrorist memorial mosque

Project members use the same trick to deflect criticism of the giant Islamic-shaped crescent that is now being built on the crash-site. When people point out the hidden terrorist memorializing features—things that no one knew about when the Crescent of Embrace design was chosen—like the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, or the 44 glass blocks emplaced along the flight path, Project members not only deny these easy to verify facts, but they pretend that they are being accused of intending to honor the terrorists:

“That’s an absolute, unequivocal fabrication that is being portrayed as fact,” said Edward Felt’s brother, Gordon Felt [about the 44 blocks claim].

He says he is insulted people would believe he would participate in anything that honored his brother’s killers.

In The Church of Liberalism, Ann Coulter slammed the media for granting the Jersey Girls an “absolute moral authority” card, not questioning the Girls’ practice of blaming the Bush administration instead of al Qaeda for their husband’s deaths on 9/11. The Jersey Girls were bad enough, but nowhere is the flag of victim-hood being used to cover up more bad behavior than at the Memorial Project.

Active cover-up of an ongoing Islamic supremacist plot

Like the Jersey Girls, the Memorial Project gives Islam a pass for 9/11. Project members might not have known about the Mecca-orientation of the Crescent of Embrace, but they DID know that it was a giant Islamic-shaped crescent. Now they are doing far worse. Now they DO know that the giant crescent points almost exactly at Mecca, and are consistently misleading the press about it.

Their own Muslim consultant told them not to worry about the Mecca-oriented crescent, claiming that it can’t be seen as a mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built) unless it points EXACTLY at Mecca (a claim that was contradicted earlier this month by Saudi religious authorities).

So what does Project Supervisor Joanne Hanley say when asked about the Mecca-orientation claim?

The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site.

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They are actively and knowingly covering up clear evidence of an ongoing al Qaeda sympathizing plot. Bad behavior indeed.

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I guess it’s now “Die with your hot boxers on, and showing!”  Yeah, notice he hasn’t got any boots on, either.  What’s the world coming to?

Army Spc. Zachary Boyd of Fort Worth battles the Taliban on Monday in Afghanistan as he wears his “I love NY” boxer shorts. Boyd rushed from his sleeping quarters to join his fellow platoon members.

That’s one mean NY kinda guy in my book! How would feel as a dead Taliban showing up in Paradise saying “Some soldier in his boxers nailed me!”?  They’d be laughing at you for the rest of eternity!   But, then again, some of those guys wear burkas to avoid being captured…

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Update 5/14/2009: An interview with his parents!

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A Muslim consultant told the Park Service in 2006 that the Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 cannot be seen as a mihrab (the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built), because the giant Islamic-shaped crescent does not point exactly at Mecca:

Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.

Saudi religious authorities recently had to address this question when observers noted that some 200 mosques in Mecca itself do not point directly at the Kaaba (the “Sacred Mosque” that all Muslims are supposed to face for prayer). Meccans who worried that their prayers might not count were assured by the Islamic Affairs Ministry that “it does not affect the prayers.”

The necessity for such a rule is obvious. Throughout most of Islam’s 1400 year history, Muslims who were any significant distance from Mecca had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. Thus it became established religious principle that what matters is intent. It is the mind of the believer that needs to face directly towards the Kaaba, and directly towards God. This principle applies in Mecca the same as anywhere else.

All the great mosques of the ancient world point well away from Mecca

Older mosques often point 10, 20, 30 or more degrees away from Mecca. The most famous mihrab in the world, the mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain, points more than 45° off of Mecca:

The Cordoba mihrab points south, while Mecca is east-southeast of Spain.

In contrast, the Crescent of Embrace points a mere 1.8° north of Mecca, ± 0.1°, which is highly accurate by Islamic standards.

The Muslim consultant who lied to the Park Service was a classmate of architect Paul Murdoch

Who told the Park Service that a mihrab has to point exactly at Mecca to be legitimate? It was Nasser Rabbat, a professor of Islamic architecture at MIT and an expert in the history of mosque design. No one knows better than Professor Rabbat that mihrab orientation does NOT have to be exact.

There is only one reason why Rabbat would lie to the Park Service about such a basic fact. He recognizes that the giant Mecca-oriented crescent at the heart of the Flight 93 memorial IS a legitimate mihrab, and he wants this al Qaeda sympathizing plot to succeed.

A look at Rabbat’s background shows that he was a classmate of Crescent of Embrace architect Paul Murdoch, both getting masters degrees in architecture from UCLA in 1984 Jezebel’s Kiss release and both doing their masters work on Middle Easter subjects. (Murdoch wrote a “masters project” titled: “A museum for Haifa, Israel.” Rabbat wrote a master thesis on house design in Cairo and Damascus.)

This prior connection between Murdoch and Rabbat raises the possibility that Murdoch himself was able to orchestrate the Park Service investigation into warnings about his own design. By the same token, having the two classmates both show up in the Flight 93 memorial raises the possibility that Rabbat was Murdoch’s source of expertise on how to incorporate the full complement of typical mosque features into his Crescent design. (For the dozen typical mosque features, see Crescent of Embrace, chapter 5.)

The Crescent of Embrace also includes an exact Mecca-orientation

While exact orientation on Mecca is not a traditional requirement, modern mosque designers do generally employ now-available techniques for orienting their mihrabs more precisely on Mecca than was previously possible. Murdoch satisfies this modern norm (and provides hidden proof of intent) by including a true thematically-defined crescent that does point exactly at Mecca.

Murdoch’s thematic explanation for his crescent design is that the circle was broken on 9/11 by the path of Flight 93. The terrorist-piloted airplane smashes our peaceful circle, turning it into a giant Islamic-shaped crescent (that just happens to point to Mecca). The terrorist-memorializing implications of this theme are hardly less overt than the Islamic symbol shapes themselves. Nothing particularly subtle here folks.

The symbolic breaking of the circle occurs at the upper crescent tip, where the fifty-foot tall, thousand-foot long Entry Portal Wall is parted by the Entry Portal Walkway, which follows the flight path through the wall:

The section of wall to the right of the walkway in this image is symbolically “broken off” by the flight path. Remove this symbolically broken off part, and the remaining crescent structure points EXACTLY at Mecca, ± 0.1°:

What symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11: a giant Islamic-shaped crescent pointing EXACTLY at Mecca.

Rabbat knew about this too, since the original report that Rabbat was commenting on detailed both the slightly inexact Mecca-orientation of the full Crescent of Embrace, and the exact-Mecca-orientation that results when the symbolically broken-off parts are removed. Same for the Park Service. As the original recipient of Alec Rawls‘ report, the Park Service knew about both orientations. They also knew, because it was also in the original report, that a mihrab does NOT have to point exactly at Mecca. Yet they still publicly touted Rabbat’s claim that the crescent can’t be seen as a mihrab because it doesn’t point exactly at Mecca. A veritable web of self-conscious lies by Rabbat AND the Park Service.

The design is called a broken circle now, but the circle is still broken in the same place as before (where the flight path crosses the upper crescent tip). The unbroken part of the circle, what is symbolically left standing in the wake of 9/11, remains completely unchanged. It is still a giant-Islamic shaped crescent, still pointing exactly at Mecca.

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On this day in 1945, on the island of Okinawa, a young man saved his comrades o nthe battle frield…and had never carried a weapon.

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James Helinger, Sr passed away this morning at 11AM, peacefully at home.

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I met him by accident, but grew by my association with him over the last 4 years.  He was a character, proud of the moniker of “Damn Glider Pilot.”  He loved General George S. Patton, his friends, and the things he did as Special Services Officer at the Munich Air Base during the Occupation period.  He tried to enter the service on Dec 8th, 1941, but was told he had to be 18 to fly.  He waited until Feb 22nd, 1942 to get in line at the Post Office in Louisville, KY to begin his service to the nation in a time of war.  He wanted to fly, and at that time, gliders weren’t even part of the picture.  He loaned me some of his books.  After reading one (ther are actually very few written), I called to say how lucky I was to have gotten to know him.  Airborne Glider operations had a about a 60%+ fatality rate for pilots.

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He spoke, for the Glider’s Pilot’s Association

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, telling the technical points of flying gliders into harm’s way, but rarely mentioned combat, but certainly he knew things I never will.  We spent  many evenings, Mondays in particular, at a local pub, where the special was Fish and Chips.  He told and retold the story of being handed a newspaper cone on the streets of England, and how he enjoyed that new experience.  Other nights, he indulged in his habit of some fried chicken, something not on his diet, but he still thought he could have some, because he had earned it.  He and I could talk of common things the military life imparts upon one’s life, the fun, the not so fun, and the really unintelligible Army (Navy? way of doing things., and also of business and life in general.  Some things, despite our age difference of 30 years, were the same for us, in our own times.

Later, he brought a bit of London to the Tampa Bay area, buying double decker buses and using them for his advertising business.  He could buy one a year, and he did for several.  I understand they were regularly full for the trips between St Petersburg and the Tampa Bay Bucs games.  During our time together, we went to Sun’n'Fun a few years ago and he stood by the Steermans and Vultees and told me of what it was like to take them, particularly the “Vibrator” up for his flights.  That year, we also had dinner with the Stinson owners who flew in for the event.  He got quite a thrill out of meeting those people and sharing about his escapades in the old days.

He had a big heart and was always ready with a joke.  At his 85th birthday, just recently, the crowd was large and you could tell he had known many of them for a very long time.  I was blessed to have helped get some of his recollections out to the world in this blog.  I was also fortunate to have had some of his pictures to scan in.  Here are some of them:

Glider pilots were also rated as co-pilots in the C-47s.

Jim “at the office” in a CG-4 Waco glider. Lots of plywood and steel tubing, and canvas.

Jim with his L-5 Stinson Spotter plane. This may have been to one he flew under the Eiffel Tower, with the not yet famous actress Denise Darcell in the front seat. I failed to find out definitely.

Work got in the way, this past year, for traveling to Ohio for the Reunion with Jim and his wife.  We had discussed it, but, I let some of real life interfere.  This year, in October, the Reunion, most likely the last one that will be held (they voted to stick it out one more year in the 2008 meeting), will be in New Orleans.  I had already mentally committed to not let anything stop me from being his escort this year.  Jim and I discussed it a few weeks back at dinner.

I have his stories he shared posted around the blog.  Here’s an easy way to get to them

.  Read of a young man, who survived to come back,  have a family, grow a business, raise two guide dogs, become my friend and tell me some tall, or maybe not so, tales of a time before my time.

Update 5/6/2009: Jim’s Obituary Twelve and Holding ipod in the St Pete Times.

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