Milestones: December 15, 2023

December 15, 2023 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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ONLY A DECLARATION — THE OFFICIAL END OF THE AMERICAN-LED IRAQ WAR WAS DECLARED DURING A CEREMONY ON DEC. 15, 2011, BUT HISTORY PROVED IT WAS ONLY FOR THE ANNALS. This milestone, which had been a priority of U.S. President Barack Obama, seemed hollow, and by the time he left office the United States military was again operating in Iraq. The Iraq war, which stemmed from Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush’s declaration of the “War on Terror,” which he made five days after 9/11, began with a U.S.-led military invasion on the night of March 20, 2003. Named Operation Iraqi Freedom, the campaign was a success in that it toppled the regime of that nation’s dictator, Saddam Hussein. However, the military operation failed to uncover any purported manufacturing of “weapons of mass destruction.”

Instead, reports broke about allegations of atrocities and human rights abuses that American forces committed. President Obama made his opposition to the war part of his 2008 Presidential campaign.

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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF — AS THE 118TH CONGRESS APPROVES AN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY AGAINST CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN, the same scenario was playing out 25 years ago, on December 15, 1998, when the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary released a 265-page report recommending the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for high crimes and misdemeanors. The proceedings that followed were the culmination of several scandals involving the Democratic President Bill Clinton, and his wife, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who were accused of several irregular deals, fundraising violations and cronyisms. Complicating matters were the president’s extramarital affairs and sexual harassment lawsuits. And then there was White House intern Monica Lewinsky, with whom the press had a field day over her affair with the president. Claiming executive privilege, he was accused of lying about the affairs.

Although the Republican-led House of Representatives, the sole body with the power to impeach, did so against Clinton, he was acquitted in the Senate, ironically also with a GOP majority. A two-thirds vote is required to convict, but fell short when only 50 senators voted to convict on the second article of impeachment. In the first article, 55 senators voted to acquit.

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A LIFE’S MISSION — THE MOVIE “SCHINDLER’S LIST,” unfolding the true story of a German industrialist who saves the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories, was released 30 years ago, on December 15, 1993. Liam Neeson starred in the title role of Oskar Schindler, along with Ben Kingsley, who played the industrialist’s right-hand manager, Itzhak Stern, and Ralph Fiennes, who played a Nazi captain. The idea for the movie about Schindler dated back another 30 years, to 1963, when Poldek Pfefferberg, one of the Schindlerjuden, (those whom Schindler saved) turned the telling of Schindler’s story into a life mission. A book review of “Schindler’s Ark” caught director Spielberg’s attention. The movie won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and, for Spielberg, Best Director.

“Schindler’s List” was filmed on location in Krakow, Poland. The city of Krakow later purchased Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory in 2007 and established a museum there about the German occupation.

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PERISHED OVER THE ENGLISH CHANNEL — BELOVED WARTIME BAND LEADER GLENN MILLER (born as Alton Glenn Miller) on December 15, 1944. went missing in action in a flight across the English Channel, and then was declared dead. Miller, who had joined the U.S. Army in 1942 for the war effort, was already an accomplished and successful band musician who had founded the eponymous civilian band and took a significant pay decrease to serve his country. Because of poor eyesight, he was deemed “unlikely” to see combat but was more interested in offering military band service. He was in the process of moving his military band unit from England to France, and, expressing frustration with canceled flights, booked a charter to France. As Miller was not authorized to board “casual flights,” he kept his plans secret. Thus, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force did not realize he was aboard the plane that disappeared, nor did SHAEF even know for three days that the plane was missing, amid the Battle of the Bulge.

SHAEF announced Miller’s disappearance and death on Christmas Eve, 1944, and the Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra appeared as scheduled on Christmas Day, with Jerry Gray conducting. The unit continued to broadcast and appear all over Europe through V-E Day and until August 1945.

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WORLD’S FIRST EYE BANK — DR. R. TOWNLEY PATON LED A GROUP OF DOCTORS ON DEC. 15, 1944, laying the groundwork for what became the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration. Established in New York City as the world’s first eye bank, according to the organization’s history, Dr. Paton spearheaded the project. Dr. Paton, who had trained with the famous William Holland Wilmer, M.D. at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, then established his own practice in New York and affiliated with Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. He and a small group of doctors “devised a plan to systematically obtain, preserve and redistribute eye tissue to doctors who were performing cornea transplant operations.”

Of course, this novel idea needed marketing, and Mrs. Aida Breckinridge, a public relations powerhouse who had already successfully helped establish the Wilmer Eye Institute in 1929 and who was the leader of several social causes, including President Hoover’s Child Health Association, used her influence, raised funds and became the Eye Bank’s first executive director. Ethel Barrymore was among the first council members, and several former First Ladies, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, also joined the Council.

See previous milestones, here.