Yesterday's edition of the Times is filled with page after page of accolades spewing forth about the greatness and complexity of Michael Jackson.

The other day,
they had a couple of paragraphs on Ed McMahon's Hollywood career and aptly
noted he died a pauper.

Something wrong with American journalism?

COLONEL
ED HAS DIED

He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was
building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy
required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college.
So Ed started classes at BostonCollege.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy
both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines. His
primary flight training was in Dallas and then he went
to Pensacola, Florida. He was carrier qualified, which means he
knew how to perform a controlled crash of his single engine fighter, onto the
rolling deck of a Navy floating runway.

It took Ed almost two years to get through all the Navy flight
training. His problem was he was a very good pilot and the Marines needed
flight instructors. He had a great command presence and public speaking
ability, which landed him in the classroom, training new baby Marine
pilots.

His orders to the Pacific fleet and the chance to fly combat
missions off a carrier came in the spring of 1945, on the same day the Atomic
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Of course his orders where
changed. He never went to sea and he was out of the Marines in
1946.

Ed stayed in the USMC as a reserve officer. He became a
successful personality in the new TV medium, after the war. His Marine
command presence helped. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean
War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of
raw combat. He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine
slow-moving unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine
batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine
fighter / bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area and
were gone in seconds. Captain Ed was still circling the enemy looking for
more targets, all the time taking North Korean and Chinese ground
fire.

He stayed with the Marines as a reserve officer and retired in
1966 as a Colonel.
The world knows Ed as Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson, Tonight
Show. One night I was watching the show when the subject of Colonel
McMahon earning a number of Navy Air Medals came up. Carson, a former
Navy officer, understood the significance of these medals, but McMahon shrugged
it off, saying that if you flew enough combat missions they just sort of gave
them to you. McMahon flew 85 combat missions over North Korea; he
earned every one of those Air Medals. The casualty rate, for flying
forward air controllers in Korea sometimes exceeded 50% of a
squadron’s manpower. McMahon was lucky to have gotten home from that
war.

Once a Marine, always a Marine.

When the public was spitting (taking their personal safety into
their own hands) at Marines on the streets of Southern
California during Vietnam, Colonel McMahon was taking Marines off the
streets and into his posh Beverley Hills home. I spoke to
a retired Marine aircrew member the day Colonel McMahon died and he personally
remembered seeing McMahon at numerous Marine Air Bases
in California in the 1960s. He was known for going to the Navy
hospitals and visiting the wounded Marines and Sailors from this country’s conflicts,
even in the last years of his life.

Colonel McMahon presented awards and decorations to fellow Marines
and attended many a Marine ceremony and the annual Marine Corps Birthday
Ball. He stayed true to his Corps as a board member of the Marine Corps
Scholarship Fund and as the honorary chairman of the National Marine Corps
Aviation Museum. After retiring from the Marine Reserve, one night on the
Johnny Carson show, members of the California Air National Guard came on
stage.

Colonel McMahon was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Air
Guard in front of millions of Americans who watched it happen live. You
will not see anything like that on TV anymore.

The three core values of a United States Marine are; honor,
courage and commitment. This is what a Marine is taught from the first
day of training and this is what that Marine believes. That was Colonel
Edward P. McMahon Jr. USMCR Retired. Before he was a national figure he was a
true combat hero and

Your war is over. Thank you Colonel McMahon.