He’s a Model Marine for Statue

Detective Donald Hossack of Kalispell, Mont., has more than a passing interest in the Vietnam statue unveiled Sunday at Veterans Memorial Plaza in San Antonio. The statue, “Hill 881 South,” by artist Austin Deuel, shows a Marine radioman kneeling next to a wounded soldier during the battle for Hill 881 near Khe Sanh on April 30, 1967. Hossack, who served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968, believes he is the Marine depicted in the sculpture. “I feel an identity with that bronze statue,” said Hossack, 39, who explained that the soldier later died of his injuries. “I was the only radioman that survived that hill. But he (Deuel) didn’t know me.” Hossack said he had contacted Deuel, a Marine combat artist in Vietnam, and told him details of the battle after he had seen a magazine photograph of a similar battle sculpture Deuel had done.

--There was no mistaking the star attraction at the Lenoir-Rhyne College Homecoming in Hickory, N.C. The years may have rearranged some of his features, but who could ever forget George Robert Phillips (Spanky) McFarland, whose pranks in the “Our Gang” comedies of the 1930s and early 1940s entertained generations of Americans. Critics over the years have charged that the “Our Gang” films had racial overtones. But McFarland disagrees, saying producer Hal Roach was a progressive film maker. “In 1931, there were no integrated neighborhoods in America,” said McFarland, 58, reportedly the last survivor of the serial. “But on ‘Our Gang,’ we had blacks in our neighborhood.” Although Spanky no longer wears his baggy pants and two-toned beanie--they were stolen a year ago--he said he still enjoys traveling around the country telling “Our Gang” stories. “I don’t think they will ever get old,” he said.

--Maria Aresti, 73, of Cagliari, Sardinia, thought she had made a simple request of the Bank of Sardinia. All she wanted to do was to open a $7,000 savings account for her three Mexican chihuahuas. The woman is known around town as la mamma dei cani (dog mommy) because she can usually be seen carrying her well-cared-for canines around in a wooden cart, and, on cold days, bundling them up in sweaters, caps and tiny overcoats. But the problem at the bank, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, stemmed from the fact that the dogs had no last names. A hastily arranged conference finally led bank officials to the solution that saved the day for Maria. They decided to open the account under the names Snoopy, Mafalda and Giuseppina, but with Maria’s last name--of course.