Columns

The case surrounding the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock still draws intense interest even 60 years after the demonstrations and legal cases have long since faded away. While the protests and surrounding the high school riveted the attention of the general public, the legal action behind the scenes was shaping the events. Days of hearings were held in numerous courts at the state and federal level. Some of the most important court decisions that ended the case were from a federal judge based in Fargo, North Dakota, Judge Ronald Norwood Davies.

Calhoun County Museum wishes to recognize Hampton resident Cecil W. “Mutt” Hartley for his WWII service. Most people know Mr. Hartley as a retired Firefighter from the Pine Bluff Arsenal, husband of Beth Talbot and father of Vickie, Susan, Bill, and Tom. But before that he was a Coxswain in the US Navy. Mutt attended Rison High School and enlisted in the Navy in 1943. He served in the Pacific Theater of operations as a Coxswain (Pilot) on a small landing craft used to transfer invading troops and equipment from a ship to the beach. His boat was one of the similar boats designed and built by Andrew Higgins of New Orleans. The Landing Craft Medium (LCM) was a twin 250 hp diesel, 50 ft long boat capable of carrying a tank or 100 troops. The accompanying photo shows a manual for the operation of this craft from the Naval History and Heritage Command Website. The LCM had a crew of four with the Coxswain being in command as well as Pilot. It took considerable skill and courage to navigate a flat bottom plywood boat in heavy waves and under fire from the most exposed position on the vessel. Had I served then I would much rather have been one of the Marines hunkered down behind the steel ramp, clutching an M1 rifle and praying like a TV evangelist. If that pilot and crew didn’t get it right the chances of survival went down for those who discharged. At that point in the total theater naval invasion effort, for a few hours the situation is in the hands of young men probably still in their twenties. Mutt was 20 years old. According to the book “The Men and Women of WWII” Cecil W. Hartley was awarded five battle stars indicating he participated in the last five major landings in WWII South Pacific. Landing crafts re-supplied land forces and evacuated wounded following completion of landing the force. The large attack transport mother ships had to contend with Japanese suicide aircraft while supporting their landing boats in Leyte and Okinawa operations. A month after Japans surrender the support ships at Okinawa had to suddenly abandon their landing craft and put out to sea to escape Typhoon Louise. Some remaining Navy craft in Buckner Bay suffered heavy damage. Among all Mutt’s other harrowing amphibious wartime experiences that storm left a lifelong impression. After the war Dwight D. Eisenhower once called the afore mentioned Andrew Higgins “the man who won the war for us.” That statement indicates just how critical the General felt those heroic little boats were to the war effort.

Dorothea Dix had built a global reputation as a reformer for mental health institutions in the 1840s and 1850s. She had already changed medicine by insisting that the most vulnerable in society were treated with dignity. When the Civil War started, her influence would spread even further as she moved to change the nursing profession.