Vet deaths

Seems like aging entertainers are dying off; no big shock considering there is still a considerable stock of Boomers like Richard Simmons and even some pre-Boomer folks persisting into their ’80s and ’90s. Even cancer-stricken younger folks like Shannon Doherty passed, as well. Today we’re looking at a couple more vets from the entertainment world.

James B. Sikking passed at the young age of 90 from complications of dementia.

“Hill Street Blues” would debut in 1981, a fresh take on the traditional police procedural. Sikking played Lt. Howard Hunter, a clean-cut Vietnam War veteran who headed the Emergency Action Team of the Metropolitan Police Department in a never-named city.

The acclaimed show was a drama, but Sikking’s character’s uptight nature and quirks were often used to comic effect. Sikking based his performance on a drill instructor he’d had at basic training when military service cut through his time at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1959.  AP

I think he was the only one on the show who occasionally called Captain Trujillo by his real first name, Francis. His timing was spot on and he played a character anyone in the military could have known. He went on to star in “Doogie Houser, MD” I am told – did not watch it so can’t say, but I rank HSB in the top 10 TV shows of all time.

A more unusual choice also passed – Dr. Ruth, aka Dr. Ruth Westheimer, also passed. Safe to say everyone of a certain age remember this wizened chirpy tiny woman giving sex advice in her German accent for years…you may not be aware she was trained as an Israeli sniper.  Yeah, that one blew my mind a little too.

The Haganah was the main military force for the Jewish people in Palestine before World War II. After the war, it was called on to establish the modern-day Jewish state.

The Jewish people of this region had an underground security force of their own since the early 1900s, but when the British came in, they began forming paramilitary groups. And they were necessary. Throughout the interwar years, Jewish settlers in the mandated area were subject to violence, Arab riots and even a full-on Arab rebellion.

Before the war broke out, 10-year-old Karola Ruth Siegel, the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish couple, was shipped to Switzerland for her own safety. Her father had been sent to the Dachau concentration camp after the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938. While she was living in an orphanage there, her mother disappeared and her father was killed at Auschwitz.

When the war ended, Karola moved to Palestine and began using her middle name. While living in Jerusalem in 1948, she joined the Haganah, which was in the middle of the insurgency. The group trained her to be a scout and sniper, because she stood just over 4½ feet tall. She joined just in time to serve in the Israeli War of Independence, which began that same year.

The future Dr. Ruth was stationed in Jerusalem in June 1948. The Jordanians had cut off supplies to the city, where some of the heaviest fighting of the war was taking place. House-to-house fighting raged through the quarters of the city as the Arabs launched an estimated 10,000 artillery and mortar shells per day at the Israelis.

One of these mortars hit her unit’s barracks, killing two and seriously wounding Ruth before she ever fired a round of her own. She was temporarily paralyzed and nearly lost both feet. As Israel began to turn the tide and win its war for survival, the future Dr. Ruth was relearning how to walk.  Military.com

Have to say, I was both impressed and blindsided. Who knew? Serious props to the lady.

Category: Veterans in the news