Thursday, June 5, 2014
Knights fall to Redskins, Page 6 50 Cents Volume 116 Issue 22
Ernie Pyle became history’s greatest war correspondent.
A Pure Miracle Editor’s note: D-Day is an appropriate time to recall the sacrifi ces made by those serving and who have served in our Armed Forces. To mark the 70th anniversary, the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Indiana, and Scripps Howard Foundation allowed the reprint of three columns written by Ernie Pyle immediately after the Normandy invasion. It’s a reminder to all of the ultimate sacrifice made by so many Americans to maintain the freedoms we enjoy. NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 – Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore. By the time we got here the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of shoreline. Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over these bitter sands. That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach. That plus an intense, grim determination of work-weary men to get this chaotic beach organized SEE MIRACLE, Page 4
Scarberry is Teacher of the Year By Amanda White For The Cabell Standard When Cabell County Public Schools’ Curriculum Specialist Sandra Duncan announced Heather Scarberry as the Cabell County Teacher of the Year, she was speechless. “I was very shocked,” she said later. “I just felt that there was so many other candidates there who would have gotten teacher of the year and not myself.” Her humility as genuine as her love of teaching, Heather had even told her family to “not bother” coming. Each candidate was selected by
their school and sent to the central office, who then picked the winner and nominee for West Virginia Teacher of the Year. Scarberry was the nominee for Ona Elementary where she has spent her 16th year in education teaching fourth grade. According to Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jeff Smith, Scarberry was chosen for her ability to maintain an interactive learning environment, an environment that rivals the soon to be starting expeditionary school. Scarberry goes against the grain of what’s expected to ensure her students are absorbing and enjoying their educational experience, he said. SEE TEACHER, Page 12
Superintendent William A. Smith (right) and Assistant Superintendent Jeff Smith (left) congratulate Heather Scarberry as the Cabell County Teacher of the Year.
Huntington dedicates emergency response boat By Jim Ross For The Cabell Standard Maurice Hartz said the ceremony to dedicate a new emergency response boat for the Huntington Fire Department helped bring closure to an event that happened when he was 19 months old. Hartz, a retired firefighter for the city, is the son of Leonard Hartz, one of two Huntington firefighters who died May 22, 1948, while attempting to rescue three boys from drowning in the Ohio River at Huntington. Hartz christened the new boat, named the Hartz-Booth Memorial Vessel, with the traditional breaking of a bottle of champagne during a ceremony at Harris Riverfront Park on May 22. The new boat is a 36-foot-long, $569,100 tool for firefighting, disaster response and terrorism response on the Greenup pool of the Ohio River. The red-and-white vessel operates under the call sign of Marine Co. 1. Funding for the boat came from the FEMA Port Security Grant Program. The grant was the largest under the program to an agency along the Ohio River in fiscal year 2013. Although the boat is owned and operated by the Huntington Fire Department, it is responsible for the part of the Ohio between the Greenup and Robert C. Byrd locks and dams - a
The Huntington Fire Department dedicated a new boat named Hartz-Booth Memorial Vessel in memory of the two Huntington Fire Fighters who died May 22, 1948. distance of about 61.8 miles. Huntington is at the midpoint of the Greenup pool. Marine Co. 1 replaces a converted recreational craft the fire department had been using for rescue operations. FEMA provided the money for the boat to enhance the Port of Huntington’s regional maritime security overall and to strengthen the region’s chemi-
cal, biological, radical, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) response and rescue capabilities in the protection of river pools, bridges, industry, locks and dams, commercial river traffic, and transportation routes during disasters, whether natural or man-made. SEE BOAT, Page 3