STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

Before he joined the Army, he had never had much of a job. He worked in onion fields and as a flagman for crop dusters. He waited until he was 18 to enlist after he was graduated from high school. And, with the earnings he had saved, he bought his father a fishing rod and his grandmother’s diamond reset in his mother’s ring. He was a star athlete in high school, winning the Coaches Awards and made the All Desert League football team.

At 19 he was one of the Army’s youngest warrant officers, which rank between sergeant and lieutenant. He piloted a gun ship in Cambodia and was killed July 4 – a month after he was transferred back to Vietnam.

“I am sitting here now looking at some of the pictures he painted,” his father said. “He was a good student. He liked sports, he liked people.”

WO-1 Officer Mark Jernigan was the middle child of Gerald and Georgia Ann Jernigan. Now only one son, Charles Lee, 18, a Marine recruit in San Diego, survives.

Gerald Jernigan attempted to explain why he will not ask for an exemption from combat for Charles. The army refuses to send the sole surviving son of a family that has lost one son in an act of war unless the soldier signs a waiver of the military code.

“It’s a matter of his own pride, his own honor. I would not interfere. It’s up to him,” Jernigan explained. “Mark and I were here in the Valley in 1966. Georgiana and the other children were in Texas waiting until we could get a phone here.

“Georgiana was alone back there when we lost Sue. She was 17 years old. We never knew why it happened. She had a reaction to a drug the doctor prescribed and she was gone,” he said. “I suppose it is as kind of fatalism I picked up in the Orient. God gave her to us for 17 years. If we lose Charles, too, it is something we would accept,” Jernigan said.

“We are not crying for Mark because he’s dead but because we will be so lonely without him … because we will miss seeing him do the things he did. I don’t feel bitter about the war. … It’s not a war; it’s a battlefield in a war that began in 1917. I feel bitter because Mark might have lived if he had the support of the people at home.”

40 years ago

“It is not to be believed,” said Otto Berosini after a near stranger wrote a check for $4,251.14 Thursday to rescue his wild animal act from the state Fish and Game Department.

“Call it my Libran nature,” said Mrs. Connor Cole who wrote the check adding $600 to her earlier offer to give Berosini, his wife, Gladys, and daughter, Brigitte,7, more time to pick up the animals in Los Angeles.

“People keep asking me why?” said Mrs. Cole. “But it was not me … it was my dear husband, Connor, who sent me to Calexico Wednesday night to save the animals.

“Connor and I have always been like that. Once when we went to buy a Chihuahua puppy in Texas, we found the kennel was without heat in the middle of a Texas blue northern.

“The puppies were cold so we took a hundred Chihuahuas home with us until the blizzard was over,” she continued. “Once your newspaper called, Conner and I the county’s happiest couple. That is true.

“When Connor bleeds, I bleed. When Connor had his stroke, I had a stroke,” she continued.

“I have always been like this,” she said. “When some people see a man lying in the street, they assume he is drunk. I assume he has had a heart attack. I have a instinct, and I am always right.”

But Mrs. Cole was touched by the word “love” in the story about the Berosinis who had lost their animals and their livelihood when the fish and game confiscated their wild animals act near Calexico in May.

30 years ago

A Salton City man died in Pioneers Memorial Hospital Tuesday night after the car he was driving struck a bridge rail on Highway 86, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The 76-year-old man, whose identity is being withheld pending notification of next of kin, was northbound on 86 north of Salton City when his car apparently drifted off the pavement. He lost control of the car when he tried to return to the speedway according to the report filed by Officer Jacques Rodriguez.

The man was not wearing a seatbelt at the time, according to the report. Rodriguez’ report states the man was alert when the CHP arrived shortly after 7 p.m. He was pronounced dead about 10 p.m. in the Pioneers hospital emergency room.

20 years ago

Matt Bowers, a 16-yearold Niland resident, may one day look back on last weekend as his great beginning.

Early Friday morning Matt was named one of nine winners of the concerto competition at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Camp.

The arts camp, staged every summer, draws the best and brightest students of the arts from all over the nation. The camp focuses on a variety of subjects such as theater, dance, creative writing and music. Music students must audition for the camp by sending audio taped of their work.

Distinguished alumni of the camp include CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, “Cathy” comic strip creator Cathy Guisewite and actress Sara Gilbert of “Roseanne” fame.

Matt, who also attended the camp last year, was selected as a winner from more than 100 students competing in the concerto competition

“It was probably the most draining experience I have ever been through” Matt said by telephone from Michigan. “It took about a day and a half for the shock to wear off.”

“It blew us all away. We weren’t expecting him to win,” said Larry Bowers, Matt’s father and owner of Case Towing in Niland.