August 25
“You know, we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.”
~Burt Lancaster as Moonlight Graham
Field of Dreams
1944 – After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris was liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division.
German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation, and instead signed a formal surrender.
1950 – In anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order putting America’s railroads under the control of the U.S. Army. In a public statement, Truman insisted that “governmental seizure [of the railroads] is imperative” for the protection of American citizens as well as “essential to the national defense and security of the Nation.”
1965 – Archibald Wright “Moonlight” Graham died in Chisholm, MN at the age of 88. He was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Rochester, MN … beside his beloved wife Alecia.
An American professional baseball player who really did appear as a right fielder in a single major league game for the New York Giants in 1905, he completed his medical degree that same year and subsequently left baseball and became the beloved “Doc Graham” in Chisholm for 50 years.
His story was popularized by Shoeless Joe, a novel by W. P. Kinsella, and the subsequent 1989 film Field Of Dreams (albeit with some historical discrepancies), starring Kevin Costner, and featuring Burt Lancaster and Frank Whaley, respectively, as older and younger incarnations of Graham.
1967 – George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was murdered by John Patler, a former member of the group.
Patler had been a captain in the American Nazi Party and the editor and cartoonist for the party’s magazine, Stormtrooper. However, he was expelled from the Party in March 1967 for alleged “Bolshevik leanings” after disagreeing with Rockwell about some of the party’s policies.
Federal officials had approved a military burial at Culpeper National Cemetery because Rockwell had been an honorably discharged veteran.
The cemetery specified that no Nazi insignia could be displayed, and when the fifty mourners violated these conditions the entrance to the cemetery was blocked in a five-hour standoff, during which the hearse (which had been stopped on railroad tracks near the cemetery) was nearly struck by an approaching train.
The next day Rockwell’s body was cremated and the location of his ashes is still unknown.
1975 – Bruce Springsteen released his Born To Run album.
Two singles (Born to Run and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out) helped Springsteen to reach mainstream popularity, and album tracks Thunder Road, Backstreets, and Jungleland became staples of album-oriented rock radio and Springsteen concert high points.
The album was a commercial success, peaking at #3 on the Billboard 200 and eventually selling seven million copies in the United States.
1984 – Truman Capote, the author of the pioneering true-crime novel In Cold Blood died at the age of 59.
Capote, a flamboyant figure who first achieved literary fame at age 23 with his novel Other Voices, Other Rooms and also wrote the 1958 novella Breakfast At Tiffany’s, died of liver disease in Los Angeles.
1986 – Paul Simon released his landmark Graceland album.
In the early 1980s, Simon’s relationship with his former musical partner Art Garfunkel had deteriorated, his marriage to actress Carrie Fisher had collapsed, and his previous record, Hearts and Bones, had been a commercial failure. In 1984, after a period of depression, Simon became fascinated with South African street music. He and recording engineer Roy Halee visited Johannesburg, where they spent two weeks recording with South African musicians.
Graceland became Simon’s most successful studio album and his highest-charting album in over a decade; it is estimated to have sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. It was lauded by critics, and won the 1987 Grammy for Album of the Year.
2000 – Jack Nitzsche died of cardiac arrest at the age of 63.
He was a songwriter (co-wrote Needles And Pins with Sonny Bono, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for co-writing Up Where We Belong for the film An Officer And A Gentleman), musician (played piano on the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black and Let’s Spend The Night Together) and producer (co-produced Neil Young’s Crazy Horse and Harvest albums).
And if I may be allowed a personal sentiment, Nitzsche was the composer of the soundtrack for the 1984 film Starman, for which he won a Golden Globe nomination for Best Score.
The closing theme (below) is the most haunting, yet beautiful film music I have ever heard in my life. It absolutely gives me chills.
2009 – Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, D-Mass., died at the age of 77.
He was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and was the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history, having served there for almost 47 years.
The Chappaquiddick incident on July 18, 1969, resulted in the death of his automobile passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. The incident and its aftermath hindered his chances of ever becoming President of the United States.
His one attempt, in the 1980 presidential election, resulted in a Democratic primary campaign loss to incumbent President Jimmy Carter.
2012 – Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the surface of the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, died at the age of 82, after complications from coronary artery bypass surgery.
2017 – Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States in thirteen years.
Over the next few days, the storm caused catastrophic flooding throughout much of eastern Texas, killing 106 people and causing $125 billion in damage.
2018 – Senator John McCain died of brain cancer at the age of 81.
While on a bombing mission – his 23rd – over Hanoi in October 1967, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. McCain was a prisoner of war until 1973.
A U.S. Senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death, McCain was the Republican nominee for president in 2008 but lost to Barack Obama.
Prior to his death, McCain requested that former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama deliver eulogies at his funeral and asked that neither President Donald Trump nor Sarah Palin, his running mate in the 2008 presidential election, attend the service.
Compiled by RayLemire©2023 RayLemire.com/ Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.