[HARDCORE]

After reading the comments on Greggory (PAPPY) Boyington online at Patriotsfiles, I felt it essential that I add my two cents worth to clear the air!!

First off, Gregory Pappy Boyington was a lot of things in life, but no one can detract from the man himself!

No real man is just a celluloid hero. He has his good side and his bad side. Hell, a prime example of this analogy is Commander (r) Randy Duke Cunningham, the ex-congressman who was born 8 December 1941, in Los Angeles. One of only two aces (Navy) in Vietnam, he was awarded the Navy Cross, was a top gun, and yet slid into disrepute due to his shortcomings in later years!

These gross errors in judgment, however, still can not take away from what he accomplished before his slide from grace. The man was a genuine war hero (5 air victories in Vietnam in his F-4 Phantom), regardless of those who now seek to erase all of his good in favor of the bad, and granted, bad there was! How do I know - because I did a little writing for Cunningham in his initial run for congress against Jim Bates!

As for Boyington, granted this superb pilot liked his booze, the occasional brawl, and his women as well - SO WHAT? He made many honest attempts at drying out, and although I had no contact with him in his last few years, save for the month prior to his death from prostate cancer at the Nancy Hines Hospice in Fresno, I understand that he was getting his act back together.

He is credited with 28 kills, and not 26 I believe in the Pacific and with the Flying Tigers! Twenty-six kills (I believe ?) was Joe Foss' total.

Joe Foss, a friend of the Boyingtons, later became governor of one of the Dakotas and was a real gentleman himself. Guys like these are a lost breed. "The kind that always seems to be there in our time of need!"

I knew Pappy when we had side by side offices in Fresno, California back after 1977. I handled a VMF 214 belt buckle for him that depicted an F4U Corsair (Vought) in a dive. The top of the buckle read "PAPPY BOYINGTON", the bottom "Black Sheep #1."

Boyington was born on December 4, 1912 in Coeur D' Alene, Idaho. He died on January 11, 1988 in Fresno, California of Prostate Cancer - he was 73 years old!

In a 1972 interview Pappy said it better than anyone else ever could: He said, and I quote: "I gave it hell while it lasted-----that's the history of my life. That everything good, bad or indifferent has to come to a screeching halt!"

If I had the means and authority to do so, I would dearly love to post the news clippings from the paper about his death, as well as his death announcement from the Chapel of Light (before being transported to Arlington), and my old contract with him. I would happily put them all on line for their historical/patriotic value.

"Pappy now belongs to us all and to the history of World War II, along with men like Murphy, Ehlers and Page, etc. "He was quite a guy, and I personally believe (in my opinion) that there is a little Boyington in us all!

If Dave can get with me, I will try to send him copies to reproduce on this site. They are standard publicity shots for the most part.

"The man (Boyington) was not perfect, far from it in fact, but then none of us are - You take the good with the bad!!" He was, however, without a doubt, a genuine American hero, faults and all!

If there is a bottom line to Boyington's life, in my opinion it would read like this:

"I lived my life as a man, I may not have been always right, and I was not always wrong, but I was always a man!"

"Miss ya Pappy!"

VERITAS