by Hap Rocketto
I live in the pastoral seaside village of Westerly, Rhode Island. But for an odd meander in the bed of the Pawcatuck River the town, which is the westerly most community in the Ocean State and thereby its name, might be Easterly, Connecticut.
One of the town’s claims to fame is the fact that the local newspaper, The Westerly Sun was the nation’s only Sunday afternoon newspaper from the early 1900s until the early 2000s. This was because Sun’s first publisher, George H. Utter, was a Seventh-day Baptist, who observed the Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunrise Sunday. Because of his strict adherence to his religious principle the Sun was the first paper in the United States to break the news of Pearl Harbor and the only paper to cover the Japanese attack in its regular edition.
Years later my daughter Leah got her start in her chosen profession of journalism as a high school intern at the Sun. Her editor, Dave Smith, saw that she learned the basics of her trade and was pleased enough with her that he would employ here as a stringer as she worked her way through the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Her last assignment was to cover the press conference at which the discovery of the remains of Commodore Perry’s ship Revenge, was discovered off of Westerly’s Watch Hill.
With that in mind I thought is interesting how one major news event can push another important incident into oblivion.
For example, the Red Sox moved to Fenway Park from the old Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds in 1912. The first game was played April 20, 1912, with Boston Mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald throwing out the first pitch. A century later his great granddaughter Carolyn Kennedy would toss out the first pitch in the centennial celebration game.
As most Sox fans will joyfully recount the Olde Towne Team won in extra innings by a score of 7-6, defeating the New York Highlanders who would be renamed the Yankees the next season. The newspaper coverage of the opening of, in John Updike’s turn of phrase, the “lyric little bandbox of a ballpark”, was driven to the back pages by continuing coverage of the sinking of the RMS Titanic just a few days earlier.
Thirty two years later, on June 6, 1944, Allied forces breached The Atlantic Wall and when anyone mentions “D Day,” this is the “D Day” they remember. It matters not that “D Day” simply indicates the day a military operation begins. Staff members, who may not know the actual date of the operation they are planning, use the term as the starting point with D minus a given number and D plus a given number to indicate days before or after the operation’s start. The term “D-Day” is nothing more than a standard military term that has been used for many different operations.
Because the liberation of France marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany it overshadowed, perhaps rightly so, many other D Days.
The invasion of Europe was a historical event of such a magnitude that another event of great historical significance passed without the coverage it deserved. On June 4, 1944, just two days earlier, the unseemly race between the United States and British forces to liberate Rome came to an end. Canadian troops were assigned the honor of capturing Rome. The Germans withdrew northward, declaring the abandoned Rome an open city, meaning that the Canadians would enter the city unopposed.
However, they were denied the honor of liberating the first Axis capital to fall to the allies. United States General Mark Clark disobeyed orders to seek and destroy the German Tenth Army and ordered his troops to enter Rome instead. The US forces took possession of Rome on 4 June 1944 but the Germans escaped and caused a good deal of trouble later on for Clark. Perhaps it was divine retribution that Clark’s grandstanding was all for naught in light of the Normandy landings.
Move now to the summer of 2012. Having pledged I would shoot the NRA Three Position Championship at Camp Perry until I won the Senior Championship I entered onto a plan to do just that. Throughout the spring and summer I fine tuned equipment, tested ammunition, and honed my shooting skills.
Perry was not a smooth or consistent performance. I started off by dropping a point behind the leaders prone, shot a miss in standing to slip eight points further behind, and just about held my own kneeling. At the end of the first day I was third, 17 points off the lead.
The second day opened with howling gusty winds roaring in from Canada. Being short and squat has its advantage in the wind. I managed to close the gap and pulled a bit ahead after standing. It would come down to kneeling and I bested the leader by one to put me in the lead. I had redeemed my pledge.
The grand news of my victory was sent to the Westerly Sun and a report written to proclaim my victory to my community. It was ready for the printing when word arrived from London that Elizabeth Beisel, a college student from the next town over, had won an Olympic silver medal in the 400-meter individual medley swim event. Photos of the crowd rooting for her at the local watering hole got more coverage then the United States NRA Three Position Smallbore Rifle Senior Champion.
Leah, the journalist, noted my fall from fame and remarked, “The 24 hour news cycle is harsh mistress.”
