Yarmouth Police Capture "Navy Seal"

Police rescue seal pup from highway, name him after U.S. Navy Seal

The Associated Press
Published Saturday, December 30, 2017 

YARMOUTH, Mass. -- A baby seal that wandered far from the ocean has been returned to the sea with the help of some police officers on Cape Cod.

A seal pup rescued by police in Yarmouth, Mass., on Friday Dec. 29, 2017. (Yarmouth Police Dept./Facebook)

Yarmouth Police say the seal pup was found waddling on Route 6A in Yarmouth Port late Friday.

Police and Amazing Animal Ambassadors were able to put the seal in a cage and hold onto it until wildlife officials arrived.

Police said on Facebook Saturday that the pup was given a clean bill of health and has been released back to the ocean.

Authorities say they have nicknamed the seal "Houston" after Kevin A. Houston, a U.S. Navy Seal from Cape Cod who was killed in Afghanistan.

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Vietnam Veteran Went Back To Find Buddy, Found Forgiveness

Veteran returns to Vietnam in search for soldier left behind

Cape Cod Times
Adam Lucente
August 15, 2017

Michael Cunningham says loss has weighed on him for 49 years.

HARWICH — An expended M16 round, bomb fragments and helicopter scraps sit in Michael Cunningham’s Harwich home. They constitute small pieces of his memories fighting in Vietnam — memories that are with him today.

Cunningham, 67, served as a rifleman in the Army’s 1st Battalion, 46th Regiment, 198th Light Infantry Brigade in 1968 during the Vietnam War. On July 29 of that year, his unit was on a mission in the Que Son Valley when a helicopter arrived with supplies. Wanting to be “first in the chow line,” he went up the hill so he could unload the helicopter and get some hot food.

What happened next would haunt him for decades.

“The enemy planted a 500-pound bomb on the hill,” said Cunningham, and the bomb exploded. “It brought down the chopper and buried alive a whole bunch of guys.”

Three men were killed and a dozen wounded in the explosion, according to Cunningham. But 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Jerry Auxier, of West Virginia, was unaccounted for.

“We looked all night long. The colonel ordered that we had to leave someone behind. It’s not the most pleasant thing,” he said. “It’s been on my mind the past 49 years.”

Two men among the witnesses were in the militia responsible for the bomb, including the man who detonated it. Cunningham walked right up to them. He gave the man who set off the bomb his 198th Light Infantry Brigade hat. The man put it on and gave Cunningham his hat. 

“They thought I was gonna punch the guy, but it was the total opposite. He was taken advantage of just like me,” Cunningham said. “There were no hard feelings. And I could see in his eyes he felt the same.”read more here

Video: Friends, family mourn former soldier lost to suicide

Video: Friends, family mourn former soldier lost to suicide
Cape Cod Times
By Cynthia Mccormick
June 20, 2013

BOURNE — Family and friends laid Christian Estrada to rest on a day as sunny as the grin that the 24-year-old Iraq War veteran flashed in family photos.

"He had a smile from ear to ear," childhood friend Daniel McCann said Wednesday at Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne, where Estrada is being interred.

"His laugh was amazing," said Trisha Ryder, of Dennis, who knew Estrada as far back as their days at Ezra H. Baker Elementary School. She turned and wept.

A diagnosis of service-related post-traumatic stress disorder chipped away at Estrada's natural cheer.

Honorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 2010, Estrada died June 5 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound while in his apartment in Killeen, Texas.
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Cape community pulls together to pay for fallen veteran's funeral

Cape community pulls together to pay for fallen veteran's funeral

Cape community pulls together to pay for fallen veteran's funeral
Cape Cod Online
By Cynthia Mccormick
June 17, 2013

The town of Barnstable, a nonprofit veterans fund, a South Yarmouth funeral home and community members have stepped up to help a Cape family pay for the funeral of a 24-year-old Iraq War veteran.

Edward F. Merigan, director of Barnstable District Veterans Services, petitioned the Massachusetts secretary of veterans services to allow the town of Barnstable to contribute $2,000 toward funeral expenses for U.S. Army Spc. Christian Estrada.

The former soldier, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, died June 5 in his apartment in Killeen, Texas, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, his family said.

A Massachusetts law providing for the burial of indigent veterans who die alone allows the veteran’s town of residency to pay up to $2,000 for the funeral, Merigan said.

The family is allowed to contribute another $1,000, keeping the cost of the funeral to $3,000, he said. Merigan said any additional expenses are absorbed by the funeral home providing the service.
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PTSD hits soldier's family hard after suicide

PTSD hits soldier's family hard on the Cape
Cape Cod Times
By Cynthia Mccormick
June 16, 2013

To fellow players at the Battlefield Game store in Killeen, Texas, 24-year-old Christian Estrada was a good-natured and enthusiastic presence.

The solidly built Iraq War veteran could appear gruff at first, but his face practically cracked open when he grinned.

Estrada responded to teasing about his poor dice-throwing skills with good-natured retorts, and regularly helped out at the new store, which is building a clientele devoted to tabletop miniature war games.

"He was a very good man," Battlefield Games employee Carlos Wong said. "He had such a memorable smile. He was definitely a hard worker. He had a lot of patience."

Estrada spent hours using a fine-tipped paintbrush to bring color to his own tabletop army, the Legion of Everblight.

His family says it was Estrada's real- time war experiences that ultimately undid him.

Honorably discharged from the U.S. Army post in nearby Fort Hood in 2010 for a disability his family says was post-traumatic stress disorder, Estrada shot himself dead in his Killeen apartment June 5.

His sister, Tatiana Garcia, of South Dennis, calls Estrada a casualty of war.
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Reporter lost job over writing stories instead of reporting

It is one thing to write an essay but it is another thing to lie in a newspaper about a story they are supposed to be actually reporting on. A reporter out of Cape Cod has lost her job because all of a sudden the editors discovered dozens of stories written were not true. Some of these involved veterans.

An apology to our readers
By PETER MEYER, Publisher
and PAUL PRONOVOST, Editor
December 04, 2012

There is an implied contract between a newspaper and its readers. The paper prints the truth. Readers believe that it's true.

It's not always so simple, of course. There are nuances in how a story is presented, what words are used to describe the action. Papers have personalities, and no two are exactly alike, but at the end of the day, facts are facts. And a good newspaper holds nothing more sacred than its role to tell the truth. Always. As fully and as fairly as possible.

This is our guiding principle, so it is with heavy heart that we tell you the Cape Cod Times has broken that trust. An internal review has found that one of our reporters wrote dozens of stories that included one or more sources who do not exist.

The reporter was Karen Jeffrey, 59, a writer for the Cape Cod Times since 1981. In an audit of her work, Times editors have been unable to find 69 people in 34 stories since 1998, when we began archiving stories electronically.

On Tuesday, Jeffrey admitted to fabricating people in some of these articles and giving some others false names. She no longer works for the Cape Cod Times.

We were able to verify sourcing in many stories written by Jeffrey, mostly police and court news, political stories, and recently a series on returning war veterans. The stories with suspect sourcing were typically lighter fare – a story on young voters, a story on getting ready for a hurricane, a story on the Red Sox home opener – where some or all of the people quoted cannot be located.

In 2011, for example, a story on the Fourth of July parade in Cotuit featured Johnson Coggins, 88, “the patriarch of the family” and a longtime Cotuit summer resident. No one by that name can be found using public-records searches and there is no Coggins in the town of Barnstable's assessor's database. We were unable to locate five other people featured in that story.
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linked from Jim Romenesko

Cape Guard unit returns from Iraq

Cathy Darling waits for daughter Lily to step off the plane.

Cape Guard unit returns from Iraq
By K.C. MYERS
kcmyers@capecodonline.com
May 14, 2011
OTIS AIR BASE — The family members, carrying balloons, banners and babies, surged forward with a cheer that sounded more like a roar when they saw the airplane taxi toward them.

Minutes later, troops emerged from the transport aircraft and the tarmac was filled with long embraces and children hugging camo-clad legs. Babies stared at fathers they've barely ever met. And mothers and fathers clutched their now-grown boys and girls after a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

"I'm overwhelmed at the moment," said Damon Solomon, a sergeant in the 3rd Battalion, 126th Aviation Regiment.

His father, mother, grandmother, aunts, nieces, two sons and daughter swarmed around the 30-year-old Plymouth man when he got off the plane.

"To see so many people, it's surreal," Solomon said.

About 160 members of the 3rd Battalion, 126th Aviation Regiment of the Massachusetts National Guard traveled home from Kuwait on Friday.
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Cape Guard unit returns from Iraq

"Shame on you" and "May God forgive you." Yarmouth MA

Ruling may force hundreds out of Cape Cod motels
Panel suspends owner's license

By David Abel
Globe Staff / May 20, 2008
YARMOUTH - At the back of the motel room where Kerri Blackwell, her husband, and four young daughters have lived for more than a year, behind the mounds of laundry, the cans sorted for recycling, and the crib where the 10-month-old baby sleeps, the family has posted a handwritten sign.

It says: "Blackwell's Palace."

"It's not much, but it's the best we could find," said Kerri Blackwell, 37, who works at a nearby Dunkin' Donuts shop and says she cannot find a more affordable apartment in the area. "There should be a better place for us to live, but we can't afford the first month, last month, and security deposit to get in. Or the utilities. The rents we've seen are up to 2,000 a month."

The Blackwells don't want to leave the Cavalier Motel, but they may have no choice. Yesterday, the Board of Health in Yarmouth, citing a year-old law that prohibits motel owners from renting units beyond 30 consecutive days to customers without a permanent address, voted to suspend the motel's license, potentially forcing the Blackwells and 250 other low-income people from the Cavalier and two other motels in town.

Board officials have rejected pleas from community members, some of whom shouted from the audience yesterday, "Shame on you" and "May God forgive you." They said they had no choice and were just following laws passed by the town's selectmen, some of whom defended the board's vote after the meeting.

"We're not pushing anyone out to the curb; we're just not going to issue motel licenses to those who aren't acting as motels," said Suzanne McAuliffe, chairwoman of Yarmouth's Board of Selectmen. "The living conditions of some of the people in these motels are horrendous. We want them to live in adequate places. This is about shutting down dangerous, substandard, health-hazard-inducing housing."
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