On June 6, 1944, a 56-year-old general with a secret walked onto Utah Beach under fire, armed with a cane and a pistol.
The secret: his heart was failing. He had hidden it from the army doctors so they wouldn't pull him from the mission.
His name was Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Son of the President. He had begged three separate times to lead the first wave ashore at Normandy before his commanders finally said yes.
When his landing craft drifted 2,000 yards off course, every instinct said redirect the following waves to the correct zone. Instead, Roosevelt walked the beach himself, alone, under artillery fire, cane in hand, reading the terrain.
His verdict: "We'll start the war from right here."
He then stood on that beach and personally greeted every regiment that landed after him, pointing them inland, cracking jokes under shellfire, steadying 18-year-olds who had never seen combat. He did this for hours.
Years later, Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic act he had ever witnessed in combat.
His answer, without hesitation: "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach."
Roosevelt's son, Captain Quentin Roosevelt II, also landed at Normandy that same morning. He was named after his uncle, Quentin Roosevelt, who had been shot down as a fighter pilot over France in World War I.
Three generations. Three wars. One family.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died in his sleep 36 days later. Heart attack. The thing he had been hiding finally won. He never learned he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
He was buried at the Normandy American Cemetery.
In 1955, his family had his brother Quentin, killed in WWI, exhumed from where he fell in France and reinterred right beside him. Quentin is the only World War I soldier buried there.
Two brothers. Two world wars. The same French soil.
Their father had once said: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
Both of his sons did exactly that.
Note what has happened today. Iran insisted on Israel ceasing fire in Lebanon as part of US ceasefire, then made their proxy in Lebanon keep firing at Israel, then used Israel’s response as a pretext to break off negotiations.
They know Washington is desperate for a deal before the world economy drops off a cliff and Americans pay a fortune at the gas pump. Tehran is running rings around Trump. The Iranians have a strategy and Washington does not. This is an absolute tragedy.
Closest to a US-Iran deal ever! The only issues left to resolve:
1. Unfreezing of assets
2. Removal of sanctions
3. Immediate or gradual removal of blockade
4. Control of Hormuz & changing of fees
5. Disposal of enriched uranium
6. Uranium enrichment
7. Lebanon ceasefire
@GovCox@MLB Good luck filling a stadium for ~80 home games a year after the initial excitement is gone. The (former) minor league ballpark at 13th South was amazing, but you abandoned it for Daybreak. “This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater…” Lk 12:18
@mikewhitmore@travelingflying Yes I did.
In ‘77 I had an after school job at the mall in Billings, MT. One evening the line into the mall theater stretched to a length never seen before. I asked someone in line what was playing. Of course, they replied “Star Wars”. That’s the first time I had heard of it.
After reading this, maybe we should outlaw billionaires. ;) Seahawks stadium is a wonderful place. What a waste it would be to tear it down in a few years. Give me team owners who care about their teams more than revenue streams. https://t.co/yA5GVonj6V
I want to tell you a landlord story.
Once we paid first, last, and deposit, we had only that much left in the account. One of our kids was 4. One was 3 months old. We had one tradesman’s income to live on. The rent felt a little high but the house had 3 little bedrooms on a rural road, and it felt perfect. Our landlord was a local guy who’d gotten married to a woman who had higher aspirations than a 1000 square ft ranch from 1990.
He wanted us to treat it like our own and never move. When I was diagnosed with cancer that fall and the rent was late, he said to let that month go. For 12 years, he never raised our rent. He paid for anything that broke. He hired John to improve the house. When he finally raised the rent, he also offered to sell us the house without listing it. He said he’d realized he wasn’t ever coming back, and we cared for it.
There are landlords like that. But Black Rock is not. And if we let local governments abuse landlords, all the independents will sell and Black Rock will be all we have. Trust me, the big guys want *more* rules, and it will give young families fewer options.
Thank you Ted. You told us the day we signed that you were the world’s best landlord, and it was true.
@planetJoseph Our kids lived to earn those Pizza Hut reader coupons!
I gotta think Pizza Hut makes a profit off it. Usually mom and dad go along too and order something, as well as any other siblings. Good program all around. 🍕 📕
Last night Ben Sasse confirmed my suspicion that Dr. Santiago Schnell, provost at Dartmouth, is quickly becoming the single most influential voice in higher education. If you haven’t already read his essay on AI that broke the internet you should.
“AI has not created new educational problems; it has made old ones impossible to ignore. The habit of rewarding performance over understanding, fluency over depth, and polish over genuine engagement was already present in our institutions before the first language model was trained. AI simply industrializes and accelerates those habits until their emptiness becomes undeniable…”
https://t.co/87WZLfcBtw