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 Too Many Good Men are Dying!

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alj
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alj


Number of posts : 9633
Registration date : 2008-12-05
Age : 80
Location : San Antonio

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PostSubject: Too Many Good Men are Dying!   Too Many Good Men are Dying! EmptyWed Feb 10, 2010 7:25 pm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100211/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_wilson

You have seen my posts here concerning an old acquaintance, Charlie Wilson. He died today at 76. That is too young by today's standards.

Let me tell you a little about how Charlie became our congressman.

During the late 1960's, the city of Port arthur, Texas decided to replace an old drawbridge with a fixed-span bridge, connecting the city proper to Pleasure Island, which, at one time, had added to the city's revenues because of its popularity as as weekend getaway, with beaches and yacht basins and clubs, and a runway with a mean roller coaster that I particularly remember. The old drawbridge needed to be replaced. It had been repaired many times over. (One of the repairs was due to my dad's cousin, a bar pilot driving a load of barges with his tugboat, who crashed into the bridge and dismantled it.) The city felt that a new bridge would get people interested in the island again. They found that it would cost much less to build a fixed-span bridge, but that would be illegal, since the waterway between the city and the island was the Intercoastal Canal, the area's only navigable waterway to the Gulf of Mexico. The shipyard that I mention on my website, founded by my great-grandfather, later owned by my grandfather until he sold controlling interest, and my father's place of business, built drilling rigs; and at that time, the rigs had to be built at the yard and hauled to the Gulf, and the City of Port Arthur's plan would effectively block their vessels from reaching the Gulf.

At the time, Orange, Beaumont, and Port Arthur, the Texas "Golden Triangle," were all represented by congressman Jack Brooks. Now, Beaumont and Port Arthur, the two larger of the three cities, were both in Jefferson County, while Orange was in Orange County. Beaumont had no means to reach the Gulf anyway, and the cost of whatever bridge being built to the island was a shared cost between the two cities, so they convinced Congressman Brooks to do a bit of gerrymandering, and had Orange County moved into the East Texas district, which ran up the Sabine to Angelina County, and which was Charlie's district.

In the long run, thanks to my dad, things worked out for the shipyard. the situation led my dad to design one of the first jack-up drilling rigs, and those rigs were able to pass under the fixed-span bridge that was built once Jack Brooks, who no longer needed to worry about any votes coming from Orange County, had petitioned the Corp of Engineers to make an exception to the navigable waterway regulations.

So Charlie became our congressman, and he did a darn good job, taking on the needs of this little port city that had nothing in common with the legislative needs of the rest of his district. I have written before of how my then husband and I met him, and got to know him. He would frequently spend Friday nights in Orange, staying at the hotel which housed the Orange Yacht Club, where Bill and I spent most of our Friday evenings during the early to mid 70's. We talked a lot of local politics over cocktails and dinner on those Fridays.

And I've reported here before, how Charlie was made famous through the film, Charlie Wilson's War, which told how he helped the mujahadeen[sic?] defeat Russia during the Afghan War.

The last time I saw Charlie was at a fundraiser in Orange in 1976, not long before Bill and I separated. But I found him to be a gentle and exceptionally intelligent man. East Texas will miss him.

Ann
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Abe F. March
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Abe F. March


Number of posts : 10768
Registration date : 2008-01-26
Age : 85
Location : Germany

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PostSubject: Re: Too Many Good Men are Dying!   Too Many Good Men are Dying! EmptyWed Feb 10, 2010 9:47 pm

Ann,
good tribute.
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