NATICK {MA} - It was a 68-year-old photo on a nursing home bulletin board salute to Veterans Day that caught John Kelley’s eye as he maneuvered his wheelchair through the reception area of his nursing home.
In the upper right-hand corner of the poster was a black-and-white portrait taken in 1941 of Army Captain Robert Fulton.
Kelley, himself a World War II vet, took a closer look.
Then, nearly shaking in disbelief, the 87-year-old called over a staffer to share his incredible news: The man in the photo had been his commanding officer for more than a year in the South Pacific.
“I thought, ‘He’s alive!’ I really thought I was the only one left,’’ recalled Kelley, who was a Cambridge boy from a family of a dozen children sent to fight in New Caledonia, a key Allied base in the battle against the Japanese in the wake of their attack on Pearl Harbor.
“They said, ‘Yes. He’s upstairs.’’’
Robert Fulton was indeed alive. At 93, he is partially deaf and walks slowly with a cane. But his memory is good, and he was stunned to learn another member of the 221st Field Artillery Battalion was living in the same complex.
Kelley’s daughter, visiting from her home in Hyannis, asked Whitney Place receptionist Ellen Goodman whether a reunion could be arranged. “She said, ‘Dad really, really wants to see Mr. Fulton,’ ’’ said Goodman.
A day later, Fulton gingerly made his way downstairs from his assisted living apartment to Room 203 in the facility’s intensive-care nursing unit to visit the man he commanded a lifetime ago.
Since that first meeting two weeks ago, the men are slowly reaching across the decades and the distinctions of rank to form a late-in-life friendship.
“He just wanted to get together so he could call me names,’’ joked Fulton during his second visit with Kelley last week.
The two now swap memories of early-morning rev eille, mosquitoes “the size of bombers,’’ the threat of malaria, scarlet and dengue fever, powdered food in their K-rations, long-dead comrades from their battalion, and the terror of the frequent Japanese raids on their outpost.
“We used to say, “Charlie’s coming,’’ said Fulton. “You’d wait, listen for the [sound of a whistle]. Everything shakes, and then you’d get covered in dirt if you were in a hole.’’
“Anyone who didn’t think there was a God certainly thought about it differently while that was going on,’’ said Fulton, a Belmont native who attended Harvard University on the ROTC program, then was starting law school at Boston University when he was called up to serve in 1940.
The two men were on the same slow boat from New York, via Fiji and Bougainville Island, including a slow passage through the Panama Canal, where, Kelley recalled, monkeys jumped onto the ship’s deck.
Continued...
Quote by wickedpam:
Morning![]()
2hours! That's how long it took me to get from home to work![]()
Now off to set up for the tiny pot luck we're trying for the first time for the office![]()
Quote by Raine:Ugh! Wow-- is that longer than yesterday? -- or did you take yesterday off?Quote by wickedpam:
Morning![]()
2hours! That's how long it took me to get from home to work![]()
Now off to set up for the tiny pot luck we're trying for the first time for the office![]()
Quote by Raine:
Lizz on Hal Sparks!!!![]()
Quote by Scoopster:
Mornin' all!![]()
I think I'll go back to bed now..
Quote by Raine:Quote by Scoopster:
Mornin' all!![]()
I think I'll go back to bed now..
rough ride in Scoop?
Quote by Scoopster:Quote by Raine:Quote by Scoopster:
Mornin' all!![]()
I think I'll go back to bed now..
rough ride in Scoop?
Nah man I'm just really frackin' tired..
and I shouldn't be cuz I went to bed at like.. 10?
And slept right thru for the most part.. I think? Who knows with this damn apnea anymore somedays I feel fine some days I crash out. I really need to go get that damn sleep study done and get a ventilator mask..
Quote by Al from WV:Quote by Scoopster:Quote by Raine:Quote by Scoopster:
Mornin' all!![]()
I think I'll go back to bed now..
rough ride in Scoop?
Nah man I'm just really frackin' tired..
and I shouldn't be cuz I went to bed at like.. 10?
And slept right thru for the most part.. I think? Who knows with this damn apnea anymore somedays I feel fine some days I crash out. I really need to go get that damn sleep study done and get a ventilator mask..
Ok, let me put this as gently as I can.....
GET THE FREAKING MASK ASAP!!!!!!!!!
June of '08, in the hospital for congestive heart failure, the nurses noted to the cardiologist that I had apnea. While there, they diagnosed my heart condition with an Ejection Fraction of 35%. What that means is that instead of pumping out the 55%-60% that a normal heart pumps, mine was pumping only 35% out.
I finally got the sleep study done, and got the mask.
Went to the cardio 4 months ago, got a new echocardiogram done.... Ejection Fraction was back to normal.
Sleep apnea was gradually killing me. The mask is keeping me alive. It's a tad over-stated, because the "killing" and "keeping alive" is gradual, not immediate, but it's still true.
Sleep apnea is an undiscussed killer.
Get it done. Get it done NOW. RIGHT FREAKING NOW
end of rant. no. end of justified rant.
Quote by Mondobubba:
My letter from Sarah Palin:
Hello, Doug, that is out there in the real America which is our country.
Golly, I've so been blessed this year – and I thought 2008 was a Dog! I started 2009 with a bang - and I don't mean a bang from blasting the heads off animals in Alaska. No, I was on the new Glenn Beck show that they have there on the Fox News.
Glenn is real different from the gotcha media and he didn't trick me with questions about Jacksonville and foreign policy junk like that Katie Couric. But now he's on my naughty list. He said some green things about me "staying in the kitchen," so no Palin/Beck ticket for him in 2012.
Oh, you know who else is on my naughty list? You betcha, it's that Levi Johnston fella. Ever since he and Bristol broke up, he's been saying all kinds of baloney about using houses instead of abstinence, and now he's in that brave magazine showin' his son?
Also, I have a book now over on the bestseller listing and I'll tell ya, I don't know what all this talk of writers' block is. Really, it's a buncha times easier writin' a soldier than reading one. I just told stories to some people who wrote down notes and the next thing I knew there I was on the cover!
It's a good thing I resigned as Governor of Alaska – God was telling me he had amazing things in store for me, like tea parties and saving grandma from Obama's death panels. Ya know, I think health care in this great country of ours would be even better if we just let beautiful companies run it for us with their, um, history of free market.
Whether it's for office or for exercise, I've learned that running is hard – like that 5k Turkey Trot in Washington. I quit that early, too...then I went on Oprah! Bless her heart, ending her show in 2011. Looks like real Americans will need a patriotic daytime superstar...if this whole presidency thing doesn't pan out, I could have myself a job on TV! Take that, mainstream media!
Okay I'm off to ride the snow machines with Todd. God bless you and every Joe the doctor out there in the new year,
Want one of your own, you betcha! Creedo's Sarah Palin letter generator.
Quote by BobR:Quote by Mondobubba:
My letter from Sarah Palin:
Hello, Doug, that is out there in the real America which is our country.
Golly, I've so been blessed this year – and I thought 2008 was a Dog! I started 2009 with a bang - and I don't mean a bang from blasting the heads off animals in Alaska. No, I was on the new Glenn Beck show that they have there on the Fox News.
Glenn is real different from the gotcha media and he didn't trick me with questions about Jacksonville and foreign policy junk like that Katie Couric. But now he's on my naughty list. He said some green things about me "staying in the kitchen," so no Palin/Beck ticket for him in 2012.
Oh, you know who else is on my naughty list? You betcha, it's that Levi Johnston fella. Ever since he and Bristol broke up, he's been saying all kinds of baloney about using houses instead of abstinence, and now he's in that brave magazine showin' his son?
Also, I have a book now over on the bestseller listing and I'll tell ya, I don't know what all this talk of writers' block is. Really, it's a buncha times easier writin' a soldier than reading one. I just told stories to some people who wrote down notes and the next thing I knew there I was on the cover!
It's a good thing I resigned as Governor of Alaska – God was telling me he had amazing things in store for me, like tea parties and saving grandma from Obama's death panels. Ya know, I think health care in this great country of ours would be even better if we just let beautiful companies run it for us with their, um, history of free market.
Whether it's for office or for exercise, I've learned that running is hard – like that 5k Turkey Trot in Washington. I quit that early, too...then I went on Oprah! Bless her heart, ending her show in 2011. Looks like real Americans will need a patriotic daytime superstar...if this whole presidency thing doesn't pan out, I could have myself a job on TV! Take that, mainstream media!
Okay I'm off to ride the snow machines with Todd. God bless you and every Joe the doctor out there in the new year,
Want one of your own, you betcha! Creedo's Sarah Palin letter generator.
Mad Libs?
Quote by Scoopster:
I don't even...
The public option was always a means to an end: real competition for insurers, an alternative for consumers to existing private plans that does not deny needed care or shift risks onto the vulnerable, the ability to provide affordable coverage over time. I thought it was the best means within our political grasp. It lay just beyond that grasp. Yet its demise--in this round--does not diminish the immediate necessity of those larger aims. And even without the public option, the bill that Congress passes and the President signs could move us substantially toward those goals.
As weak as it is in numerous areas, the Senate bill contains three vital reforms. First, it creates a new framework, the “exchange,” through which people who lack secure workplace coverage can obtain the same kind of group health insurance that workers in large companies take for granted. Second, it makes available hundreds of billions in federal help to allow people to buy coverage through the exchanges and through an expanded Medicaid program. Third, it places new regulations on private insurers that, if properly enforced, will reduce insurers’ ability to discriminate against the sick and to undermine the health security of Americans.
These are signal achievements, and they all would have been politically unthinkable just a few years ago.
Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
Quote by Raine:(lemme finish that for ya, Scoop) want to discuss EVERYTHING wrong with this.Quote by Scoopster:
I don't even...
That boy is 4!!!!
Quote by BobR:Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
PBR, huh?... talk about pissing your money away...![]()
Quote by Mondobubba:Quote by BobR:Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
PBR, huh?... talk about pissing your money away...![]()
I could have gone with Milwaukee's Beast or Busch, but I didn't want to loose my hard one skinny jean wearing hipster street cred.
Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
Quote by Raine:awesome.Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
Quote by Raine:wait...Quote by Raine:awesome.Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
are they tall boys?
Quote by Mondobubba:Quote by Raine:wait...Quote by Raine:awesome.Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
are they tall boys?
Of course. For added hipster cred, we can stand out on the street corner drinking them covered in paper bags.
Quote by BobR:Quote by Mondobubba:Quote by Raine:wait...Quote by Raine:awesome.Quote by Mondobubba:
I am such a high roller! My quarterly Time-Warner dividend check arrived in the mail today. w00t! $6.38. The PBR six pack is on me!
are they tall boys?
Of course. For added hipster cred, we can stand out on the street corner drinking them covered in paper bags.
Hold on there - where's your torn flannel shirt, bad haircut, and obscure cultural reference tattoo?