Kilroy

This came in from Internet Trivia. Nobody but us chronologically gifted Americans know a damm thing about Kilroy.This is probably about as close to the truth as anything we'll ever know. -Ed

He is engraved in stone in the National War Memorial in

Washington,DC- back in a small alcove where very few people

have seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories.

For you younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American

history. Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy.

No one knew why he was so well known-but everybody seemed to get into it.

So who was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program,"Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy'was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' inking-sized letters next to the check,; eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence; that became part of the Kilroy message.

Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.

His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.

Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and
every where on the long hauls to Berlin and
 Tokyo. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first."As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been"wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, and even scrawled on the dust on the moon .

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams

routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops ( thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however,they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!

In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin,and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide,

"Who is Kilroy?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax,Massachusetts.

And The Tradition Continues...

EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden's House!!!

-From the Internet. All I did was add the pictures.  -Ed

Now They Tell Me

As young whippersnappers just starting out in the workplace, much of our time was spent thinking about "getting ahead" and being a success.

Well now I learn that what we really should have been doing was.............DOODLING.

At least that's what Suni Brown, author of the "DOODLE REVOLUTION" thinks.

 In her now famous TED talk, she proposes that doodling is deep thinking in disguise and that it is a simple, accessible tool for problem-solving in general. In fact, Brown believes doodling spontaneous marks actually helps you think.

Long dismissed as a waste of time, doodling is getting new respect.

Recent research in neuroscience, psychology and design shows that doodling can help people stay focused, grasp new concepts and retain information. A blank page also can serve as an extended playing field for the brain, allowing people to revise and improve on creative thoughts and ideas.

Doodles are spontaneous marks that can take many forms, from abstract patterns or designs to images of objects, landscapes, people or faces. Some people doodle by retracing words or letters, but doodling doesn't include note-taking.

"It's a thinking tool," says Sunni Brown, an Austin, Texas, author of a new book, "The Doodle Revolution." It can affect how we process information and solve problems, she says.

Here Are the "DOODLES" President Kenedy drew during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Another by JFK

Clinton

LBJ

Frankly, in my opinion both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama had at least ONE thing in common. They both must have been aware that their doodles were being saved by historians so there were no longer Circles and squares and swiggly lines. Somewhere in the huge Washington bureaucracy  I bet there is at least one person whose only job is drawing Presidential Doodles.

When I find him, I'll give you his name.

Anyway, I personally tested Suni Browns theory of DOODLING as "Mental Floss" and sure enough...I tried it and immediately started thinking more clearly!

I suddenly realized that her doodle theory is a bunch of hogwash, and is about as effective as tying your shoes or taking out the garbage.

Only, with those 2 things, you at least accomplish something.

-Ed

Miss Me?

Sorry I've been away for a few weeks. I have been "down and out" with SHINGLES.

I hope to heck you never get that disease. Anyone who has ever had Chicken Pox is at risk.

Here is the internet defination:

After you have chickenpox, the virus that caused it, called varicella, remains in your body. It's always inside you, lying dormant (or asleep) in your nerve cells. At some point later in life, your immune system may weaken, allowing the virus to resurface as Shingles. You may be feeling great, but if you've had chickenpox, the Shingles virus is already inside you. And your risk for Shingles increases as you get older.

Well, I certainly qualitied.and I suspect most of you do too, although I hope you don't get it. Lordy, Lordy, it is awfully painful! It has kept me out of commission for almost a month, and it still hasn't gone away completely.  It's only slightly improved.

Try to catch it early!  It often mimics "a heart attack."  That's the way it started with me. I wasted time getting EKG's and stuff...so look  carefully for red spotches ...they can even appear on your face. The sooner you start treatment, the less severe it will be!

PASSING SCENE

I can't count the number of times over my lifetime that I said to myself,
"Oh, if only I had a camera with me to take a picture of that!"

Well, now, just about all of us have one (in our mobile phones) but, more often than not, I forget about it.

So, on my 3 by 5 cards that I write down every thing I want to remember, I have added a reminder to myself that I HAVE ONE...and can take snapshots of things that, I once could only say "I wish I had a picture of that."

Mostly little things....anything that I find interesting in my day to day existence.

For example:

and,

Now, why I find the PNC Bank poster amusing is, to me she looks a lot like Amelia Earhart.

And, you know how she wound up. Perhaps I missed the point they were trying to make, but  since i  consider myself "Mr. Average"  I figure, if it went "over my head," it probably was missed by others as well.

Amelia Earhart


Just think of the pictures we could have taken during our years at Central!

On second thought, I'm glad we didn't have them back then!

Feel free to send me any snapshots that you take during your exciting daily peregrination thrrough our "Golden Years."

-Ed

Email to:  shephard@gmail.com