Most Recent Update: November 11, 2009*
May God protect the United States of America
from deceitful politicians and gullible voters.
*Updates are generally made on three locations on this page: Latest News, Newest Additions, and What's Next.
Be sure to check all three places when you see that an update has been made.
This website was created by Lynnita Brown, founder, Korean War Educator. Lynnita, who holds Korean
War veterans in the highest regard, is solely responsible for the monitoring and posting of all of the
contributed and self-generated text that appears on the Korean War Educator. Technical changes to the
website are courtesy of Webmaster Jim Doppelhammer, who also has a strong appreciation for our nation's
veterans.
Thank you to all veterans for
protecting our freedom.
- Lynnita
Page Index:
Recent Updates:
- November 11 - See Latest News
- November 06 - See Latest News
- November 05 - See Newest Addition
- November 01 - See Latest News
- October 4 - See Newest Addition
- October 4 - See Newest Addition
- September 6 - See Latest News
- August 30 - See Newest Addition
- August 17 - See Newest Addition
- August 16 - See Latest News
- August 16 - See Newest Addition
- July 13 - See Newest Addition
- July 6 - See Latest News
- July 6 - See Newest Addition
- July 2 - See Latest News
- June 15 - See Newest Addition
- May 17 - See Latest News
Back to Page Index
Latest News:
[The following news and commentary is posted with the most recent news at top, followed by older news.
Latest News is written by Lynnita Brown.]
Today is Veterans Day 2009. To all of you veterans out there, let me say two things: (1) Thank
you. (2) I love you. - Lynnita [Posted 11/11/09]
---
Long-time KWE supporter Art Lajeunesse of New York renewed his membership in the KWE this month. We
also received a $50.00 new five-year membership from Byron Lee of California. In addition, member Gene
Dixon donated $30 to the KWE's general operating fund. Many thanks to all three of them for their
continued support of the Korean War Educator. [Posted 11/06/09]
---
Some of our repeat visitors are probably wondering where I have been for the past month. (It's been
that long since the KWE was updated.) I want you all to know what's been happening in my busy life these
days. I remain ever faithful to the KWE. I am also ever faithful to the Douglas County Museum here
in my hometown of Tuscola, Illinois. The museum is publishing a 648-page book that goes to press in just a
couple of days. I am the project coordinator, text editor, and proofreader. Today is my 59th
birthday. I celebrated by finishing all the editing work. The light at the end of the tunnel was
wonderful to behold!! I will now be spending the coming week catching up on correspondence and work that took a
back seat to the museum's first tremendous publishing effort. [Posted 11/01/09]
All of you UNCREG vets out there, here's a question for you. A member of UNCREG's Observers Section
Chinese Team had the letters DAC in front of his name. Does anyone out there know what that designation
means? E-mail Lynnita. [Posted 11/01/09]
We welcome new life member Harold J. "Syd" Sydnam of the Great State of Washington to the KWE membership
roster. Syd served with B-1-5, 2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad as a fire team and squad Leader in the USMC in
Korea, 1951. You can read Syd's memoir on the KWE's Memoirs
page. [Posted 9/06/09]
The KWE has two new life members. One is C.L. "Bud" Nelson of Florida, a Korean War Marine who served
in Korea November 1951-52 in the 1st Platoon, Baker Company, 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion. The other is
Doug Glenn of Florissant, Missouri. Doug is the son of Korean War veteran Carl Junior Glenn. We
welcome them both with appreciation for their support.
In addition to these two new life members, member Joe Roberts of Massachusetts renewed his membership through
2011. Joe served in the 1st Platoon of "C" Company, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division in Korea
1952-53. His memoir can be found on the KWE. Joe is a faithful supporter of the Korean War Educator.
The KWE also has two new two-year members: Larry Faren of Illinois and Karen Schmitt of Florida. Karen
gave a $5.00 above the two-year membership fee. She tells us, "Each generation in my family has always had
one family member in the military from my 92 year old Grandmother all the way to my niece's daughter."
Karen's son is at Ft. Carson, Colorado at the moment, but due to be deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan in the coming
months. She told us, "He was told he would be away for 12 to 15 months. Now it's going to be more
like 15 months to 2 years. He leaves in March. A Mom always thinks, 'Not my son...when she knows it
is her son." Our very best to the Schmitt family in the trying months ahead. Karen's father was
William Louis Tolar, who served in the US Marine Corps and received a Silver Star in Korea. He died this
past April, but left his Korean War memoirs behind. [Posted 8/16/09]
---
Are you or your veteran's group being solicited to donate money to an organization based in Illinois that
claims to be building a national museum for Korean War veterans? If you are, I advise you to
immediately contact authorities in Illinois for a copy of an "Illinois Charitable Organization Annual
Report" for that organization's last two years (2005 and 2006) of operation in order to make an informed
decision about the organization's fiscal responsibility. Write Attorney General Lisa Madigan, State of
Illinois Charitable Trust Bureau, 100 W. Randolph, 11th Floor, Chicago, IL 60601 and ask for both annual
reports. A very, very small copying fee is charged, but it will be money well spent. (The cost for
both reports will be under $8.00.)
The Korean War Educator strongly (very, very, very strongly) urges all Korean War veterans and/or members of
their families who are thinking of donating either money or artifacts to soliciting organizations to obtain
these informative reports prior to making an irreversible donation that you might later regret.
Once you scrutinize the reports and "do the math" to see how donors' money is actually being spent, you could be
disappointed. Be a generous giver to non-profits because most of them really do need your financial
support to see them through these hard times. However, always do your giving with eyes wide open. -
[Posted 4/17/08]
---
Are you a US Marine who was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina between 1957 and 1987? If you
are, you were likely exposed to well water that was contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals. You are
being sought by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. To learn more about this, go to the
growing Health Issues page on the Korean War
Educator. [Posted 3/28/09]
---
Do you have a short story about Korea? Send it our way! We have recently opened a short story
section on the KWE's Memoirs page. Lynnita's e-mail address is
lynnita@koreanwar-educator.org. Her U.S. mail is
Lynnita Brown, 111 E. Houghton St., Tuscola, IL 61953. Be sure to include a picture of yourself to go
along with the story. Sending more than one picture is okay, too. [Posted 2/16/08]
Back to Page Index
Newest Additions to the KWE
- The Silver Star citations for MSgt. Edgar Thompson Jr. and Sgt. John G. Kendrick are now posted on the
Silver Star Citations - T and
Silver Star Citations - K pages, respectively,
of the KWE. [Posted 11/05/09]
- The names of 41 post-war casualties were added to
Korean War Educator: Topics - DMZ: Deaths After Jan. 31, 1955. They include 10 men killed in an
airplane crash near K-13 on 4 January 1954 and 31 crew members of a Navy plane shot down 15 April 1969.
[Posted 10/04/09]
- A new Topics page has opened on the Korean War Educator. Entitled
Amerasian News, it is a page on which topics of interest to the
Amerasian communities throughout the USA and the world may be posted. Read about the "Journey to the
Motherland" program on this new page. [Posted 10/04/09]
- The names of a large number (well over 100) of USMC Korean War Silver Star recipients have been added to
the KWE's Silver Star Recipients page during the last several days. A
good number of them came from Jane Blakeney's research. Blakeney wrote, Heroes of the Marine Corps:
1861-1955. In addition, the Silver Star citation for 2nd Infantry Division veteran John D. Ruthardt
was added to the Citations - R page today,
courtesy of his son-in-law. [Posted 8/30/09]
- The short memoir of Native American Marco Begay is now visible
on the Korean War Educator. Marco is now deceased. He served in Korea in Korea from August 24,
1950 to October 4, 1951 in C Company, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division. He was wounded and
he received a Silver Star. [Posted 8/17/09]
- The memoir of Robert Hanson of San Diego, CA is now live on
the KWE. Bob served in Headquarters Battery, 625th Field Artillery Battalion, 40th Infantry Division in
Korea January 1952-May 1952. Bob is also the author of the book, "The Boys of Fifty: the 625th Field
Artillery Battalion." [Posted 8/16/09]
- A new page to receive the text of Korean War-related local, state and national
legislation was added to the KWE today. [Posted 8/16/09]
- Sherman Canney was one of the victims of a Globemaster crash in Japan in 1953. Thanks to his family,
he is now being remembered on the KWE website. Text about Sherman has been added to the KWE's
Airplane Crash page. This Globemaster crash was,
indeed, tragic, and it is the hope of the KWE that its victims will never be forgotten. [Posted 8/16/09]
- The history of the 955 Field Artillery Battalion
is now added to the KWE, courtesy of former artillerymen Tom Cacciola of New Jersey and Edwin Cherwow of
Syosset, New York. You can find the history on the same topics page as the newly-added history of the
630th Engineers, which was submitted by Floyd
King of New Jersey. [Posted 8/16/09]
- Information about the crash of a C-124 with 155 persons aboard has been added to the
Airplane Crash topics page of the KWE. The plane
went down in the Han River on February 22, 1957. We are currently seeking more information about this
crash, including the manifest and further accident details. [Posted 7/05/09]
Back to Page Index
What's Next!
--
The members of the Northeast New York Chapter of the KWVA have decided to honor the late Ken Page and
Rensselaer County Korean War dead by publishing Ken's book Rensselaer County Heroes, Korean War 1950-1953:
The Forgotten Remembers on the KWE. Work on this project is still underway behind the scenes on a KWE
template.
--
Coming soon: the memoirs of Ozzie Stack, Marian Tesheneck Wagman, Glenn Stotts, Roland Kohen,
Joshua Duncan, William Stedman, and Dr. Birney Dibble. These particular memoirs are "in the works" and a few are
approaching completion. Some are just awaiting pictures, while others await more text, proofreading, and
final approval from the veteran or their families.
--
Officials of the Korean War Veterans Association, Inc. telephoned the KWE's largest funding source to date to
request that it not support the Korean War Educator. (Korean War veterans everywhere should be outraged at
the KWVA's maltreatment of the KWE.) As a result, that funding source is no longer available to the KWE.
Until the Korean War Educator receives another grant, your financial support is needed to help keep the Korean
War Educator going. Please join as a member, because your dues money is what keeps this site going. You are
always welcome to e-mail me at lynnita@koreanwar-educator.org
or call me (217-253-4620 at home, 217-253-2535 at the Douglas County Museum Monday and Tuesday, or 217-253-5171
Thursday-Saturday at my store) Illinois time if you have comments, concerns, questions, or suggestions.
--
As always, Korean War veterans and their families throughout the world are invited to participate in the
educating of the general public about the Korean War by sending information, memoirs, photos, and more to the
Korean War Educator. - Lynnita Jean Brown
Back to Page Index
A Team Effort
The Korean War Educator is a team effort between Lynnita Brown of Tuscola, Illinois, as well as Korean War
veterans and their families worldwide. Lynnita is directly involved with the daily updates visitors see on
the KWE, while webmaster Jim Doppelhammer handles the technical aspects and makes improvements to the Korean War
Educator website. Jim is teaching Lynnita (the KWE founder, CEO, and site text editor) the ropes of
working with FrontPage, assisting her as she learns how to add photographs and make hyperlinks to text. If
you find a technical glitch anywhere on the site, be sure to contact Jim at
webmaster@koreanwar-educator.org. If you find text
errors on the site, be sure to contact Lynnita at
lynnita@koreanwar-educator.org. We'll see what we can do to fix them. If our KWE visitors see
typographical and/or grammatical mistakes, Lynnita encourages those who discover them to contact her.
There is no such thing as an error "too small" to be corrected.
Lynnita can be reached by phone at 217-253-5171 (her store) from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. Thursday through
Saturday (and generally on Wednesdays May-December, too). Her home phone number in Illinois is
217-253-4620 (she rises early and stays up late). On days other than Wednesday through Saturday, the best
place to reach Lynnita is at her home number in the evening. If she is not home, your call will be picked
up by an answering machine or her husband, Dale. Please feel free to leave a message. She will call
you back--probably the same day or evening. Her e-mail address is
lynnita@koreanwar-educator.org.
Back to Page Index
KWE Progress Report
Site Statistics:
- The Korean War Educator had 810,676 visitors in the year 2008. As the site continues to grow, so
will the number of visitors. As an example of the KWE's fantastic growth rate, just think. In the
year 2004 the KWE had only 24,152 visitors! The majority of visitors to the KWE website were from the
United States, with visitors from the United Kingdom second and visitors from China third.
- As of January 7, 2008, the KWE had 141,459 page views per month and an average of 2,000 visitors per day.
The KWE website contains 5,645 files (748,966 KB). It has 3,364 photographs. There are 21,404
hyperlinks.
- Due to a change of web hosts, we only have January and February and the December statistics from 2007,
showing approximately 27,500 visitors per month in January/February and 30,000 visitors in December.
- From 1/1/06-12/31/06, the KWE had 183,640 unique visitors (again, many came back to view the site over and
over again, but they were only counted once) who viewed 1,132,528 of its pages.
- From 1/1/05-12/31/05, the KWE had 222,072 unique visitors (many came back to view the site over and over
again, but they were only counted once) who viewed 775,446 of its pages.
The Korean War Educator started to offer memberships at the end of September 2003. For the very first time,
the Korean War Educator was able to use the General Membership dues ($10.00 annually) to establish a general
operating fund that has enabled Lynnita to pay for her monthly internet connection, as well as incidentals such
as reams of copy paper, ink cartridges, postage, etc., without taking it from her own pocket. Not only that, the
Korean War Educator established an Endowment Fund to keep the Foundation going long after those of us living
today have passed on. With an initial deposit of $50.00 (one half of the cost of Life Membership dues going into
the Endowment) that special reserve fund has now jumped to $2,135.53, thanks to the most recent donations to it
from the KWE's new life members Tom Cearlock and Carl Galey of Illinois. Our goal is to build up the
principal in the account so that the annual interest will pay for each year's web hosting fees. You can
find the roster of Korean War Educator members on the KWE’s "Support" section at the top of all main pages. We
are hoping that many more of our visitors will come aboard to help this great Korean War website become even
greater. All funds go to support the Korean War Educator Foundation. No salary money is expended.
Most of the KWE's limited funds are expended for internet/website expenses and printer ink.
It would be great if some of our regular visitors would support this important website by sponsoring a year
of hosting (or more). Contact Lynnita at
lynnita@koreanwar-educator.org about this possibility if you think you would like to sponsor a year's worth
of KWE. The list of website sponsors to date is listed on the
Support page of the KWE..
Back to Page Index
In Remembrance of Julian
  It is
with great sorrow that I inform Korean War veterans and our other site visitors about the death of Julian "Buck"
Blagg, original webmaster of the Korean War Educator website and a fine Marine. He died of lung cancer at 6:00
a.m., Sunday, June 1, 2003, at the age of 66. Julian was my dear friend, and I miss him. He helped me give the
world the Korean War Educator.
- Lynnita Brown, Founder, KWE |
