The Peregrin Falcon

Recently I was sent one of those dreaded “check this out” emails. The kind that I have repeatedly reminded my fellow staff workers to not send to me under any circumstance. We have a new person in our office who has not had my lecture on the spreading of computer virus via lol cats, so she sent me a email with a simple title. The title was Ed Freeman.

Ignoring my own advise I read the email that began “You’re an 19 year old kid. You’re critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam .” I was instantly pulled in to the story and needed to know the truth behind the story. After a little investigating, I came across this actual story from The Idao Statesman written by Katy Moeller.

Here is the story that I truly wish more people have read and that I am sure was completely missed by the mainstream media, both during his Medal of Honor ceremony carried out by former President George W. Bush, and after his death last August in 2008.

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IDAHO VETERAN OF THREE WARS, MEDAL OF HONOR HERO DIES

Among those who visited Ed Freeman in a Boise hospital were those he had saved.

BY KATY MOELLER - kmoeller@idahostatesman.com
Published: 08/21/08

As Ed “Too Tall” Freeman lay ill in a Boise hospital over the past few weeks, many came to pay their respects to the 80-year-old national war hero and former helicopter pilot. One unexpected visitor offered a very personal thank you to Freeman, a veteran of three wars and recipient of the highest military award - the Congressional Medal of Honor - for his actions on Nov. 14, 1965, at Landing Zone X-Ray, Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam. “A guy came into the hospital and said, ‘You don’t know me, but I was one of those people you hauled out of the X-Ray,’” said Mike Freeman, 54, one of Ed’s two sons. “He said, ‘Thanks for my life.’ “
Freeman died Wednesday.

His Medal of Honor citation credits him with helping save 30 seriously wounded soldiers in 14 separate rescue missions in an unarmed helicopter. Since the Medal of Honor was created during the Civil War, 3,467 have been awarded, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. The heroics of Freeman and the others involved in the Ia Drang campaign are immortalized in the Mel Gibson movie “We Were Soldiers,” which is based on the book “We Were Soldiers Once … And Young.” A sequel, “We Are Soldiers Still,” was released this month.

Freeman, a Mississippi native who married an Idahoan, began his military career at 17 with a two-year stint in the Navy during World War II. “He joined the Navy and hated it. The ocean thing was not his bag,” Mike Freeman said. So he joined the Army, serving four years in Germany before getting deployed to the Korean conflict.

The 6-foot-4 tell-it-like-it-is Southerner got the name “Too Tall” because he was told he was too tall to be a pilot. That didn’t stop him from pushing to fly. “He was tenacious about getting into flight school. He drove them insane until they let him in,” Mike Freeman said.

He proved his mettle by becoming one the Army’s most heralded helicopter pilots. Two streets at Fort Rucker, Ala., where Freeman trained to be a helicopter pilot, were recently named in honor of Freeman and Maj. Bruce P. Crandall, his commanding officer in the Ia Drang campaign.

In the early 1960s, Freeman served as aviation adviser to the Idaho Army National Guard. “He was a super instructor. He was not one of these guys who get excited very easily,” said retired Maj. Gen. Jack Kane, former commanding general of the Idaho National Guard. Kane, a second lieutenant in 1963-64, got his first helicopter lessons from Freeman. Decades later, Kane attended the 2001 Medal of Honor ceremony for Freeman at the White House.

“It was, really, a super-moving moment,” said Kane, who was in a meeting at the Pentagon when Freeman called to invite him to the ceremony.

Freeman retired from the military in 1967 and a few years later moved to Idaho with his wife, Barbara, and sons, Mike and Doug. But he didn’t give up flying. He went to work for the Department of Interior’s Office of Aircraft Services. Mike Freeman said his dad made sure that helicopter pilots contracted by Department of Interior agencies were up to snuff. “Anyone who flew for the government had to get past him,” he said.

Freeman retired from flying in 1991 with more than 25,000 hours of flying time, including 18,000 in helicopters, according to his family and a 2002 newsletter published by the Idaho Military Historical Society and Museum. That’s nearly three years in the air.

Freeman became a highly sought-after speaker, and he still gets hundreds of letters each year from admirers of all ages. He rarely missed Friday lunches at Boise’s Din Fung Buffet, where a group of Purple Heart veterans met each week for the past seven years. “We’re a bunch of loose cannons. We have our own opinions, but everything is in jest,” said Dick Bengoechea, 84, who was a U.S. Army tank driver in Germany during World War II.

On Friday, a miniature helicopter and Medal of Honor book will be placed at the head of the group’s table in memory of Freeman. One of the traits Bengoechea admired about Freeman was his candor.

“He didn’t care about rank,” Bengoechea said. “If he thought he was right, he didn’t care if he told a general he was wrong. He was a man’s man.”

Freeman, a Republican who his son says was anything but politically correct, was much more than a great patriot.He was a devoted family man whose many passions included Volkswagens (he had many over the years, including The Thing) and fly fishing with his grandson, Scott. In the past year and a half, Parkinson’s disease ravaged Freeman’s body. With the help of his sons, he was able to live at home until he became gravely ill three and a half weeks ago.
“He was a caring guy who cared about his family,” Mike Freeman said. “I’ll miss that a lot.”

Katy Moeller: 377-6413

http://www.idahostatesman.com/102/story/477355.html

Here are just a few words from the past that might shed a little light on why we are having the Tax-Day Tea Party phenomena. I will be spending time at a Tea Party today so I figured a quick post to give a little perspective to the ones who will label the rest of us as radical or loony or dissident. We are the people who make this nation run and whose work funds the bailouts and whose work funds the entitlements and whose work gives the handouts and who are tired of working for a ungrateful spoiled lazy whiny populous. We are the people who will no longer remain silent about the profligate and contumelious spending from the public funds.

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“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“Government is the people’s business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.”

“The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.”

“If I could paraphrase a well-known statement by Will Rogers that he never met a man he didn’t like — I’m afraid we have some people around here who never met a tax they didn’t like.”

“Government is bad when it takes more than 30 percent of a taxpayer’s income in taxes. Proudhon was wrong when he said property is theft; it’s our federal budget that is institutionalized theft.”

“Every dollar the Federal Government does not take from us, every decision it does not make for us will make our economy stronger, our lives more abundant, our future more free.”

“Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an ever-increasing degree interferes with the people’s right to know. Government tends to grow, government programs take on weight and momentum as public servants say, always with the best of intentions. But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector of the economy.”

Ronald Reagan
about taxes

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The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Albert Einstein

For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
Mark Twain

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.
Benjamin Disraeli

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.
Plato

There is no such thing as a good tax.
Winston Churchill

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When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.
Ron Paul

Many of you are well enough off that the tax cuts may have helped you. We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
Hillary Clinton