Episode 87: Extra Innings - More Baseball Players at Arlington

It turns out that beside Spottswood Poles, there are six other professional baseball players interred at Arlington so I figured that I would present a short vignette for each of them. The story that stood out the most to be was baseball player turned bomber pilot Elmer Gedeon who was awarded the Soldiers Medal before being killed in action in WWII.

Army Captain Elmer Gedeon is buried in Section 34, Grave 3047

Civil War Army veteran and post-Civil War Navy veteran Oscar Bielaski learned to play ball in the service and would go on to become the first Polish American professional Baseball player.

Army Private Oscar Bielaski is buried in Section 17, Grave 17991

I couldn't find a playing picture or image of Bill Stearns, but when he was 45, after he had retired from professional baseball, he volunteered as a an Army private during the Spanish American War. He was posted to Puerto Rico, came down with malaria, and died of the disease, becoming the first Major League Baseball player whose death was directly related to military service, even if it wasn't a combat-related death. Army Private William Stearns is buried in Section 13, Grave 13931.

Doc Lavan used his initial earnings as a baseball player to pay for medical school was a player and practicing doctor at the same time. He was also a Navy doctor in both World War I and World War II.

Navy Commander John Leonard "Doc" Lavan is buried in Section 3, Grave 1352-E

Spottswood Poles is not the only Harlem Hellfighter pro ball player at Arlington. Future Hall-of-Famer Jud Wilson was younger than Poles and after serving in France, was in his prime at the height of the Negro League.

Army Corporal Ernest Judson "Jud" Wilson is buried in Section 43, Grave 1114

Hal "Hoot" Rice served as a tank platoon leader in the Pacific during World War II before playing pro ball after the war.

Army Second Lieutenant Harold Housten "Hoot" Rice was cremated and his ashes placed in Columbarium Court 5, Section MM, Column 8, Niche 3. 

Episode 86: One of the Best Baseball Players You've Never Heard of, Spottswood Poles

Record keeping was haphazard in the early days of baseball - it was even less standardized for African American players in the Negro Leagues. Even so, with the statistics that are available, we can say for certain that Spottswood Poles was one of the best. With hitting like Ty Cobb and speed that rivaled Cool Papa Bell, it is likely that if Poles had played in the heyday of the Negro League, not long before Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier, that he would be in the Hall of Fame today.

Poles baseball career was interrupted by World War I. He joined the unit that would go on to be known as the Harlem Hellfighters (see Episodes 31-32) and see some of the heaviest fighting of any American unit in the Great War. Army Sergeant Spottswood Poles was 74 when he dies in 1962 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 42, Grave 2324.

 

Episode 85: The First Arlington Burial

The first person buried at Arlington wasn't a soldier or a sailor killed in the Civil War, but Mary Randolph, a socialite who decided to publish a cook book as a way to earn money when her family hit on hard times.

Originally published in 1824, The Virginia House-Wife was the first-of-its-kind cookbook published in America. It is still in print today with its most recent edition published in 2013. Intended for a regional audience, the book emphasized fresh ingredients common to Virginia and other areas of the South.

After Mary's youngest son was injured from a fall while serving in the Navy, her cousin George Washington Park Custis, the owner of Arlington Plantation, allowed him to stay at the estate during his convalescence. Mary moved to Arlington House to care for her son and her devotion took a toll on her own health. He died and Mary passed away four years after the publication of her book, not realizing that she would continue to be one of the most famous women in Virginia for the next forty years, though the civil war.

When it became clear that Mary would not regain her health, she selected one of her favorite spots on the plantation as her final resting place, about 100 feet south of the Arlington House front porch. She died on January 23, 1828. She was 65 years old. Today her grave is located in Section 2, Grave S-6. The brick wall surrounding her grave was to protect it from free roaming cattle.

Episode 84: Godspeed John Glenn, Part II

 

At 77 years old, John Glenn is the oldest astronaut to fly on a NASA mission. Only pioneering aviator Wally Funk (82) and actor William Shatner (90), both tourists passengers on different Blue Origin flights, were older during their trips into space.

Shortly after the STS-95 mission, Glenn retired after 24 years in the Senate but continued to live a full life, traveling the world with his wife Annie.

In 2011, Glenn and Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were presented the Congressional Gold Medal...

...and in 2012 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He passed away in December 2016 and after laying in state at the Ohio Capital Building his remains were eventually brought to Arlington National Cemetery where he was buried on a rainy April 6, 2017.

Annie specifically asked for the funeral interment to be delayed until that day. It would have been John and Annie's 74th wedding anniversary.

Air Force Colonel John Herschel Glenn, Jr. is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 34, Grave 1543. He was 95 years old. Three years later, in May 2020, Anna Margaret Castor Glenn, John's beloved Annie, joined him. She was 100 years old.

Episode 83: Godspeed John Glenn

 

After John Glenn left NASA, he became fast friends with Robert F. Kennedy. This above image, taken the day before RFK was assassinated, shows RFK (front) with two of his boys and John Glenn riding a Matterhorn bobsled at Disneyland.

The Kennedys and the Glenns started vacationing together not long after Glenn left NASA. They spent a lot of time together at Hyannis Port, MA but at least once they traveled to Idaho to brave the rapids of the Salmon River.

It was partly because of Bobby's influence that Glenn first agreed to run for one of Ohio's two senate seats. His first campaign was a disaster and he had to withdraw after suffering an injury that wrecked his equilibrium. 

After his friend, RFK, was assassinated, Glenn felt it was his duty to get elected and try to honor his friend's legacy as best as he could.

Glenn was first elected to the Senate in 1976 (his wife Annie watches as he takes the oath of office for the first time) and would go on to serve four terms - the first four term Senator from the state of Ohio.

Before retiring from the Senate in 1998, the seventy-seven year old convinced NASA to let him return to space to run experiments on how space affects those over sixty-five. The press conference announcing his mission drew more attention than most anything he did as an elected official and featured a large picture of Glenn in his Project Mercury days.

Episode 82: The Space Shuttle, Part VIII

 

Sadly, the Space Shuttle Challenger was not the only orbiter lost during the shuttle era. Twelve years later, on February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas while reentering Earth's atmosphere after a 16-day mission in orbit.

During it launch, a large chunk of foam broke off and struck the orbiter's left wing. The strike damaged tiles on the wing designed to protect the shuttle and her crew from the extreme heat of reentry.

During reentry, some of the tiles damaged during launch failed, sending the shuttle into an unsurvivable spin. It broke up during reentry and all crewmembers were lost.

More than 85,000 pieces of Columbia were recovered on the ground (most in Texas) during a lengthily search period, including one of the shuttle's main engines seen above. 

The recovered debris was shipped to Florida, catalogued, and laid out to support the investigation. The recovered pieces constituted about 38% of the shuttle.

In 2004, more than 400 people were on hand for the dedication of the Columbia Memorial in Section 46  at Arlington National Cemetery, right next to the Challenger Memorial.

In 1996, Teacher in Space runner-up Barbara Morgan returned to NASA, this time as a full fledged astronaut and made it to space on the Endeavour as part of STS-118.

In 2018, astronauts Ricky Arnold (above) and Joe Acaba, both educators who followed in Christa McAuliffe's footsteps, first into middle and high school teaching and then into NASA, traveled to the International Space Station and performed the four experiments that Christa has spent so much time on Earth preparing for but never had the chance to give. You can see Christa's Lost Lessons, as they are called, on challenger.org.

Earlier this year, Joe Acaba (who also happens to have been the first Puerto Rican in space, became Chief of the Astronaut Office.

NASA's shuttle era came to an end on July 21, 2011, when Atlantis landed, finishing STS-135.

Episode 81: The Space Shuttle, Part VII

 

The Space Shuttle Challenger flew nine successful missions before that fateful January day in 1986.

STS-51L commander, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Francis Richard "Dick" Scobee was 46 years old.

He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 44, Grave 1129-4.

The elementary school Dick attended in Auburn, Washington was renamed in his honor

STS-51L pilot, Navy Captain Michael John Smith was 40 years old.

He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 7A, Grave 208-1.

The regional airfield in his hometown Beaufort, North Carolina was named after him.

STS-51L mission specialist Judith Arlene Resnik was 36 years old. She is buried under Arlington's Challenger memorial which I will have a picture of later.

Judy's flight suit is on permanent display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

STS-51L mission specialist, Air Force Colonel Ellison Shoji Onizuka was 39 years old. 

He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii.

Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, California named a street in El's honor.

STS-51L mission specialist, Ronald Erwin McNair was 35 years old.

He is buried at Dr. Ronald E. McNair Memorial Park in Lake City, South Carolina.

Which also has a larger than life statue of the city's favorite son.

STS-51L payload specialist, Gregory Bruce Jarvis was 41 years old.

His ashes were spread at his favorite surfing spot in Hermosa Beach, California.

A sculpture called Jarvis Memorial was commissioned by his alma mater, the University of Buffalo, and is part of that school's permanent art collection.

STS-51L payload specialist and Teach in Space winner, Sharon Christa McAuliffe was 37 years old.

She is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Concord, New Hampshire.

When New Hampshire built a science and space-themed discovery center, it was named after the state's two world famous astronauts, Christa McAuliffe and Alan Shepard.

Arlington National Cemetery dedicated its largely privately funded Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial in 1987, It is located in Section 46, Grave 1129-8, near the USS Maine Monument, across the street from the cemetery's memorial amphitheater. 

In 2004, President George W. Bush awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to each member of the STS-51L crew.

After the disaster Jean Michel Jarre renamed the song Last Rendezvous, that Ron McNair had wanted to record the saxophone part for while in orbit, Ron's Song

And John Denver made good on his promise to record a song about the Teacher in Space winner. It was not the song he thought he would write but the lyrics came to him as he watched the footage of the shuttle disaster over and over again on TV.