Memorial Day 2020 - trivia challenge

Can you guess the actual dates of each of the major wars since the Civil War?

A.  Civil War
B.  Spanish American War
C.  WWI
D.  WWII
E.  Korean War
F.  Vietnam War
G.  Iraq War
H.  Afghanistan War


1.  June 25, 1950 – July 27, 1953

2.  April 21, 1898 – August 13, 1898

3.  November 1, 1955 – April 30, 1975

4.  July 28, 1914 – November 11, 1918

5.  September 1, 1939 – September 2, 1945

6.  Oct 7, 2001 - Present

7.  April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865

8.  Mar 20, 2003 – Dec 18, 2011


To play trivia:
Please send us your tally by calling  out one letter and one number such as A1 or C3 (just examples).

If you guess all correctly, we will send you two passes to an upcoming historic walking tour or speaker event ($20 value).

Please send in your guess to: TheMuseumSFV@gmail.com.


Leave us your name and email address you want us to respond to and we will notify you if you are a winner.

Thank you.

Michel Stevens -post

Memorial Day 2020 - to be remembered

The Museum SFV extends wishes to all military families and veterans of all wars on this Memorial Day 2020.

Here are some Memorial Day tidbits with an image from various wars.

When the first versions of Memorial Day were celebrated after the Civil War, the event went by the name Decoration Day, when flowers were laid on graves.

Civil War image

For more than 100 years, Memorial Day was reserved for honoring the lives of Civil War soldiers. The holiday didn’t expand to casualties of all American wars until after World War I.

WWI image

Although there has been debate on the birthplace of Memorial Day, the U.S. government has given Waterloo, New York, the official title.

WWII image


In 1868, about 5,000 people decorated graves at Arlington National Cemetery’s first Memorial Day ceremony. About the same number of people still gather there annually.

Korean War image


Until 1971, when Memorial Day became an official federal holiday, the annual commemoration stayed on May 30, no matter what day of the week.

Vietnam War

Federal guidelines say the flag should be displayed at half-staff only until noon, then go up to full-staff until sundown.

Iraq War

Congress passed a law in December of 2000 that requires Americans to pause at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day to honor the fallen soldiers.

Some of this trivia collected from Reader's Digest.


Michel Stevens -post

6-13-20 Speaker Series Event - David Coscia - author; The Southern Pacific in the SFV; Zoom presentation

The Museum SFV is very pleased to announce the return of author David Coscia with another fascinating book on the the history of the railroad in the San Fernando Valley - please join us for this special ZOOM presentation/ event. 

NOTE: With The Museum currently closed, we are moving our speaker series online - more people, members and guests will be able to enjoy our diverse and educational programming.

You will receive the Zoom meeting info the week before the event.

--- --- --- ---

in 1998, David Coscia began researching the railroad history of the San Fernando Valley. This culminated twenty years later with the publication of the book, Southern Pacific in the San Fernando Valley: 1876-1996. 

This massive tome focuses on the history of the Southern Pacific, and also has information on Amtrak, Metrolink, industrial railroads, and little known railroads such as the monorail that operated at Busch Gardens. 

Come learn about the beginnings of the railroads and the changes to the valley due their presence. We begin with small steam locomotives, graduate to giant steam locomotives, and close with more modern diesel locomotives. 

Born and raised in the community of Granada Hills, David has had a life-long love of history. In December 1993, he graduated with a B. S. in History from California State University, Northridge. 

Copies of his book will be available for purchase afterwards and David will be signing books. The retail price is $90, but copies will available for a significant discount. Please bring cash or a check, no credit cards accepted. We hope to see you there. 

RSVP: 1-818-347-9665 or email at TheMuseumSFV@gmail.com.

Saturday, June 13, 2020

Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm (presentation, 2:00-3:30 and then Q&A)

Cost: $10 per person

Free for Museum members (emails us for link)

Please pay in advance via EVENTBRITE or PayPal you can pay via check sent to The Museum SFV.

Location of Speaker Event:

ZOOM Meeting - details/dial-in/log-in to be sent in early June

Please forward this to a family member, colleague or friend. This will be a terrific presentation and event. These type of events are to educate and will also allow The Museum to raise some needed funds during these coronavirus times.

Thank you.

50th anniversary of Kent State shootings -where were you?

Tomorrow is the 50th Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970.

If you are old enough to remember that day, time and experience... please tell us about it.

Were you a college student at the time?

A parent with school-age children?

Were you in or did you have family in Vietnam at the time?


Help us educate valley residents and guests about this moment in history.


Enjoy an excerpt from an article in the OC Register via Daily News:

Kent State’s perpetual wound still painful after 50 years

Half a century after four students were killed on campus by military troops during an anti-war protest, some questions may never be answered

By Gene Harbrecht | gharbrecht@scng.com | Orange County Register

Dean R. Kahler’s first college semester was nearing an end when he went home for the weekend 50 years ago this month to celebrate his 20th birthday.

Kent State University student Dean Kahler, who was paralyzed from the waist down by a National Guardsman’s bullet on May 4, l1970, eads a candlelight procession in September of 1970. s. (© Akron Beacon Journal/TNS/ZUMAPRESS.com)

The northeast Ohio country boy had worked in the Republic Steel melt shop in Canton to help pay for school and got a late start on college. He had a high draft number, so he didn’t worry about going to Vietnam. He looked forward to four years of academics to launch his chosen career in public service.

When he returned to campus Sunday afternoon, everything had changed. Two days of anti-war demonstrations culminated in the torching of a campus military building. The governor came to town vowing to restore order and called in the Ohio National Guard. Curfews were set and armed troops patrolled the grounds.

And within 24 hours, on May 4, 1970, Kahler’s world would forever change amid a violent combustion that put a hard time stamp on the end of the1960s and delivered the war to the doorstep of America’s heartland.

That’s when guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine, including Kahler, who suffered a spinal-cord injury that permanently paralyzed him from the chest down. 

Please click HERE to read the rest of the article.


Also, enjoy the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, written by Neil Young, OHIO

Click link here:  OHIO

OHIO: an iconic song written by Neil young in response to the Ohio, Kent state shooting.. listen to this  powerful Time capsule edition and experience the crisp nostalgic sound that would have once been heard ringing throughout Streets in Vietnam protests following the release of four beautiful souls in cold blood by the ONG on Kent state campus grounds in Kent, Ohio May 4, 1970


Please add a comment below or email us.

The Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation - learn, grow, support

The Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation

Preserving and sharing Southern California railroads past and present
through public outreach, photographic collections and adventure.

The Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation is built on three elements: preservation, adventure, and education. Read about our exciting programs below.

Founded in 1999 by Josef Lesser and Ron Gustafson, the Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation (LARHF) preserves, shares, and celebrates the history of railroading throughout the Los Angeles and Southern California.

We are sorry to inform The Museum SFV followers that Josef Lesser, loving husband, father, grandfather and friend passed away peacefully in his Los  Angeles home at 9:48 am on Friday, February 28, 2020. He was 83 years old. 

The organization continues to educate via satellite exhibits across the Southland, by sharing our archive of historic photography and memorabilia, by hosting member field trips and special events, by holding Scouting classes on railroad safety, and with our book publishing series. We employ our resources and expertise to support media, researchers, authors, heritage groups, and local communities.

The Museum SFV has been asked to locate a valley location and we hope to do so in the near future.

Also, upon opening up again, the LARHF had agreed to participate in our 2020 speaker series.

To learn more, please visit the LARHF website at www.LARHF.org.

Mailing Address:
Los Angeles Railroad Heritage Foundation
825 Colorado Blvd Ste 242
Los Angeles, CA 90041-1714

GivingTuesdayNow is a global day of giving and unity - May 5, 2020

#GivingTuesdayNow is a global day of giving and unity that will take place on May 5, 2020 as an emergency response to the unprecedented need caused by COVID-19.

This new day is organized by GivingTuesday, and is being held in addition to the annually scheduled GivingTuesday event that will still take place on December 1, 2020. In partnership with GivingTuesday’s global network of leaders, partners, communities and generous individuals, this event is set to spark an increase in grassroots generosity, citizen engagement, business and philanthropy activation, and support for communities and nonprofits around the world.

People can show their generosity in a variety of ways to participate in #GivingTuesdayNow–whether it’s helping a neighbor, advocating for an issue, sharing a skill, or giving to causes, every act of generosity counts. The movement is currently focused on opportunities to give back to communities and causes in safe ways that allow for social connection and kindness even while practicing physical distancing.

#GivingTuesdayNow is an opportunity for people around the world to stand together in unity–to use their individual power of generosity to remain connected and heal.


Ideas for May 5, 2020

• Give money, goods, PPE supplies—anything you can to organizations on the front lines of this pandemic. Remember to also show your support for local nonprofits, who despite COVID-19 are continuing to provide much needed services to the community.
• Clap for your healthcare workers, thank your post officer, delivery driver, and other essential workers. Write thank you cards, post on social media, and share your appreciation for the people and organizations who are helping your community.
• Safely volunteer virtually from your home. Give your voice to help raise awareness, lend your talents to give pro bono hours to a nonprofit who needs your expertise, or take an hour to call a senior who may be alone.
• Support your local community by buying from small businesses and raising awareness for organizations that are getting hit the hardest by this pandemic. Celebrate members of your community who are giving back.
• Kindness is contagious. Buy flowers or groceries for a neighbor, offer to walk a neighbor's pets, call a friend, hang a heart or sign in your window, host a concert from your balcony.
• Help with response efforts by bringing groceries to at-risk individuals, sewing masks for nurses and doctors, donating excess food items to shelters and food banks, or giving blood.

Donate to The Museum of The San Fernando Valley

Get Involved.

Make a Difference in Your Community

Thank you.

Boris Yaro, Times photographer who took iconic image of mortally wounded RFK, dies at 81

March 12, 2020

As every adult American can recall, on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was leaving the Ambassador Hotel following his victory in that year’s California Democratic Presidential primary, was shot and killed.

A part-time Los Angeles Times photographer, working on his own time, in hopes of catching a shot for his wall, followed.

“The idea went further than I had expected,” Boris Yaro would write more than 40 years later in a reminiscence of the night he became one of the world’s celebrated photographers.

In the pandemonium of the hotel’s pantry following Kennedy’s shooting by Sirhan B. Sirhan, as the crowd parted from the fallen candidate, Yaro snapped the enduring black-and-white image of a distraught busboy trying to console a mortally wounded hero.


Yaro, who shot news photos for The Times for more than 40 years and along the way tutored the actor who played the news photographer on the TV series “Lou Grant,” died Wednesday at his home in Northridge of natural causes. He was 81.

Although Yaro’s career became defined by the Kennedy photo, he was known to colleagues as a hard-driving but dapper news hound.


In his 2010 recollection of the night of the Kennedy assassination, Yaro said he did not take photos during the shooting.
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“It was dark, and I think I was afraid,” he wrote.

When he saw Kennedy sinking to the floor, he realized, “I had better make pictures.”

Then a woman grabbed his sleeve and pleaded with him to stop.

“My response was, ‘Dammit, lady, this is history,’ ” Yaro wrote. “I pulled my coat sleeve loose from her grasp but lost some visual space because people began crowding around the fallen Kennedy.”

The photo, which is part of the permanent collections of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Museum of Modern Art in New York, did not win the Pulizer Prize, which went that year to an equally enduring shot of the execution of a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon.

Pulitzer Prize-winning former Times photographer Don Bartletti said he thought two Pulizers should have been given that year.

“When you look at Boris’ picture of Kennedy from head to foot, with the kitchen worker leaning over him, that is a completely perfect composition with all the necessary elements,” Bartletti said. “His picture is and will remain fantastic.”

Besides his two children, Yaro is survived by his wife, Jill, and a brother.


To read the rest of the article by Los Angeles Times reporter Doug Smith, click HERE.

 

NASA Commemorates 50th Anniversary of Apollo 13, ‘A Successful Failure’

NASA marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission – which has become known as “a successful failure” that saw the safe return of its crew in spite of a catastrophic explosion – the agency is sharing a variety of resources, recognizing the triumph of the mission control team and the astronauts, and looking at how those lessons learned can be applied to its lunar Artemis program.


“Our goal 50 years ago was to save our valiant crew after sending them around the Moon and return them safely to Earth,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Our goal now is to return to the Moon to stay, in a sustainable way. We are working hard to ensure that we don’t need to respond to this kind of emergency in Artemis, but to be ready to respond to any problems we don’t anticipate.”

 S70-35614 (17 April 1970) --- The crewmembers of the Apollo 13 mission, step aboard the USS Iwo Jima, prime recovery ship for the mission, following splashdown and recovery operations in the South Pacific Ocean. Exiting the helicopter which made the pick-up some four miles from the Iwo Jima are (from left) astronauts Fred W. Haise Jr., lunar module pilot; James A. Lovell Jr., commander; and John L. Swigert Jr., command module pilot. The crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft splashed down at 12:07:44 p.m. (CST), April 17, 1970.  Credits: NASA

The crew of Apollo 13 consisted of Commander James (Jim) Lovell Jr., Command Module Pilot John Swigert Jr. and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise Jr. Their Saturn V rocket launched at 2:13 p.m. EST on April 11,1970, from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The command module was named Odyssey, and the lunar module was named Aquarius.

While en route to the Moon on April 13, an oxygen tank in the Apollo service module ruptured. The lunar landing and moonwalks, which would have been executed by Lovell and Haise, were aborted as a dedicated team of flight controllers and engineering experts in the Apollo Mission Control Center devoted their efforts to developing a plan to shelter the crew in the lunar module as a “lifeboat” and retain sufficient resources to bring the spacecraft and its crew back home safely. Splashdown occurred in the Pacific Ocean at 1:07 p.m. April 17, after a flight that lasted five days, 22 hours and 54 minutes.