A TALE FOR THE TIMES

I reestablished contact with an old school friend from sixty-odd years ago, Bob Abernethy. Bob and I went to the Hill School in Pottstown PA together. He later went on to Princeton and got his B.A. and M.A., after which he joined N.B.C. where, at various times, he was correspondent in L.A., London and Moscow. He retired in the nineties and then started a new career as Executive Editor and Host of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on P.B.S. where he conducted in-depth interviews with a variety of religious leaders of many faiths as well as philosophers and teachers. A really interesting guy with diverse interests and talents.

In our correspondence Bob brought up the name of his old prep school and college roommate, Peter Clapper, about whom he recently wrote a bittersweet article for the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Pete's father was a well-known columnist, Raymond Clapper, who was killed in World War II when the navy fighter-bomber carrying him broke formation in order to give him a better view of the bombed airfield and collided with another plane in the air.

I,of course, knew Pete as a classmate at Hill: he was a likeable, redheaded bright kid who was editor of the school paper. He was small but tough and took crap off no one. As a senior in prep school, he enlisted in the Marines and was called up after graduation, only to be released in a few months because the war was over.

Then came Korea in June of 1950. Pete had graduated from Princeton by then, joined the Marine Reserves and went back in the Marines, Then the real story begins. Rather than recount it, I refer you to go to the Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW) website and the issue of March 7, 2012 with an article by Bob Abernethy entitled "The Long Hard War of Lt. Peter R. Clapper". Go to http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2012/03/07/pages/1528/

It is worth your time and will ring bells with you, particularly with the returning veterans of Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan,as well as Korea and WWII.

Lest we forget...