D Day

Franklin W. Littleton Jr., a retired career Air Force officer and a businessman who was a big-band and Dixieland music aficionado, died April 20 of complications from dementia at Nichols Eldercare, an Edgewood assisted-living facility. The Bel Air resident was 91. The son of a contractor and a homemaker, Franklin Walter Littleton Jr. was born in Baltimore and raised on Clearspring Road in Forest Park. He was a 1939 graduate of Polytechnic Institute and studied law at the University of Baltimore at night while working at Montgomery Ward and the Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River.

Franklin W. Littleton Jr., a retired career Air Force officer and a businessman who was a big-band and Dixieland music aficionado, died April 20 of complications from dementia at Nichols Eldercare, an Edgewood assisted-living facility. The Bel Air resident was 91. The son of a contractor and a homemaker, Franklin Walter Littleton Jr. was born in Baltimore and raised on Clearspring Road in Forest Park. He was a 1939 graduate of Polytechnic Institute and studied law at the University of Baltimore at night while working at Montgomery Ward and the Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River.

It is Decision Day. Starting at 7 o'clock this morning, voters get to decide the fate of dozens of political races and issues that will affect their daily lives. Only on election day do citizens have such power in their hands.Don't squander this chance to make a difference. Whatever your daily schedule, find the time to go to the polls and participate in this great democratic process. Your vote truly could determine who governs your county, writes your laws and runs your state over the next four years.

Charles H. "Harry" Heinlein, a young Army machine-gunner who survived the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and returned 60 years later, died Saturday of pneumonia at Stella Maris Hospice. The longtime Violetville resident was 90. Mr. Heinlein was a 22-year-old private from Baltimore attached to the famed 29th Division when he landed on Omaha Beach at 7:40 a.m. June 6, 1944, as part of what Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower called the "Great Crusade" that would eventually liberate Europe's millions from the domination of Adolf Hitler.

WASHINGTON - There's been some good political news out of Iraq in recent days. The newly installed - and now U.N.-blessed - Iraqi government is made up of some really decent people. There is hope. But it will not be realized if the sort of incident that happened last weekend keeps being repeated. Two American and two Polish employees of Blackwater USA, a security contractor, were killed in an ambush on the main road from Baghdad airport to downtown. Remember a year ago when Saddam Hussein's spokesman, the wacky "Baghdad Bob," claimed that U.S. forces didn't control the airport?

The 29th Division Association of the Maryland National Guard will conduct a memorial service Friday to commemorate the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, and a crab feast from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Normandy Room, 3919 E. Lombard St., Baltimore.Information is available from association historian Bernard Nowakowski, 410-276-0426.Pub Date: 6/04/97

On Dec. 7, 2001, 60 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the year-old National D-Day Museum in New Orleans will open its first major expansion. The addition, called the "D-Day Invasions in the Pacific," is a 5,000-square-foot gallery of photos, videos, artifacts, maps and stories about the fighting in and along the Pacific, including Pearl Harbor, so recently called back into our memories. Three days of events will mark the opening, including a parade led by veterans of the Pacific campaign.

When veterans of the Maryland-Virginia 29th Division stand on Normandy's Omaha Beach in a few weeks remembering their landing there on June 6, 1944, D-day, a tangible piece of the division legend may be on hand -- their commanding general's jeep.From Omaha Beach to the link-up with the Russian Army at the Elbe River in 1945, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Gerhardt, the 29th's Pattonesque commander, traveled in the jeep, which he called "Vixen Tor" for a hill near the division's training area at Tavistock in southwestern England.

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- Southern England is mobilizing again for D-Day, this time for the invasion of 50th-anniversary tourists.From Dorset to Hampshire to Sussex, guides are being trained, tours booked, itineraries mapped, museums spruced up, parades planned, monuments polished, profits projected. About150 separate events are listed in the "official" D-Day guide.President Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II are expected to come with full panoply of ceremony, and so are the heads of 11 other countries and up to a half-million more prosaic visitors.

Arthur L. Flinner, a retired accountant and World War II Army captain who fought at D-Day and later established a military museum in Pikesville, died Thursday of complications after surgery at St. Agnes Health- Care. He was 89 and lived at Charlestown Retirement Community for the past four years. He had resided earlier in the Armagh Village section of Baltimore County. An accountant with Federal Express Money Orders in Glen Burnie and at his son's Craig Flinner Gallery in the Mount Vernon section of downtown Baltimore for the past 20 years, he was born in Cambridge, Mass.

James F. Barlow, a retired masonry contractor who drove a weapon carrier at Omaha Beach during the World War II Allied invasion, died Sept. 1 at St. Agnes Medical Center after suffering a fractured hip at his Academy Heights home. He was 87. Mr. Barlow was co-grand marshal of this year's Catonsville July 4th parade and was the commander of two veterans posts. He also led the parade in 1994 for the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Born in Baltimore and raised near Union Square, he attended 14 Holy Martyrs School and was a 1942 graduate of St. Martin's High School, where he was the center on the school's basketball team.

George Francis Kerchner, a highly decorated Army Ranger who on D-Day successfully led an attack on enemy gun positions that earned him the Distinguished Service Cross, died Friday at his home in Midlothian, Va., of complications from a fall. He was 93. The son of a drug company manager and a homemaker, he was born in Baltimore and raised on North Lyndhurst Avenue. He attended Polytechnic Institute until the 11th grade, when he left school to help support his family. He worked as a soda jerk for Arundel Ice Cream Co., which had been established by an uncle, and later as a security guard for the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Stanley A. "Jimmy" Makowski, founder of National Press of Baltimore and a decorated World War II veteran, died June 21 of heart failure at his Perry Hall home. He was 93. Mr. Makowski, one of eight children, was born and raised in Canton. He was a graduate of Polytechnic Institute. Drafted in 1941, he was assigned to the 28th Infantry Division and landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944. After being wounded in the legs during the D-Day invasion, he was reassigned to division headquarters, where he was a supply clerk, and later an electrical technician in charge of a power plant and a demolition expert, said a son, Stephen Makowski of Perry Hall.

John Polyniak, a World War II veteran who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day and later was severely wounded during the battle for St. Lo, died June 7 of heart failure at the Encore at Turf Valley assisted-living facility in Ellicott City. Mr. Polyniak's death at 92 came 67 years and a day after he stormed ashore in France with his comrades of Company C, 116th Infantry, of the 29th Division, in the first frenetic predawn moments of the D-Day invasion. "This was a big day in my life," he wrote in an unpublished account of the invasion.

This June marks the 67th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, and the beginning of the end of World War II. The last great D-Day commemorations were held two years ago, as there likely won't be many veterans alive for the 70th. But Normandy's inhabitants haven't forgotten what the British, Canadian and American troops and their families sacrificed all those years ago. When I was on the small main square of a town in Normandy, an elderly Frenchman approached me and sang a few bars of "The Star-Spangled Banner.

Pimlico Race Course D Day has a winning day at $50K Shine Again Stakes Samuel F. Cronk 's D Day ran by the pace-setters and drew away to a handy score in the opening weekend feature Saturday at Pimlico Race Course , the $50,000 Shine Again Stakes for fillies and mares. Craftily ridden by Jeremy Rose , the 6-year-old launched her bid around the far turn in the 1/16-mile test, coming off the rail to swing widest into the stretch before blowing past speedsters Lily Quatorze and Trez to win in hand by 43/4 lengths.

I know you've seen enough Normandy specials to make it seem like old news, but today really is D-Day -- the 50th anniversary, that is. CNN will have coverage of live semicentennial events throughout the day, and PBS has a special tonight. As for alternatives, there aren't many.* "The Kennedys of Massachusetts" (9-11 p.m., WJLA, Channel 7) -- Part 2 of 3. If you're looking for scenes of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in this 1990 miniseries, don't bother. In the entire six hours, her character was little more than a cameo.

WASHINGTON -- World War II veterans in Maryland who are heading to Normandy, France, in June to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion may apply for special identification badges for U.S.-sponsored events, the Pentagon announced this week.The badges, which will be available free of charge beginning next month, will give veterans priority for available space at ceremonies scheduled to be held in Normandy June 5 and 6. While they will also help veterans and their families get through security, the badges will not serve as tickets or reservations for the events, according to the announcement.

Marvin A. Geyer, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspector who landed on Omaha Beach with the 29th Division on D-Day, died Sunday of heart failure at his Arbutus home. He was 91. Mr. Geyer was born in Baltimore and raised in Morrell Park. After graduation in 1937 from City College, he went to work at the Esskay meatpacking plant in East Baltimore. An accident at the plant severely burned his feet. While cleaning out a tank car transporting lard that had to be heated to be removed, Mr. Geyer jumped down into the car to force out the lard that had settled on the bottom.