Veteran Gets a Last Look at War

A Vietnam veteran dying of lung cancer told his friends that he wanted to see the movie “Platoon” but was unable to leave his bed to go to the theater. So the friends of Roy Rhodes of Terra Alta, W.Va., brought the mountain to Mohammed, contacting the movie’s director, Oliver Stone, who sent a videotape of the film. The 38-year-old Rhodes, twice decorated for bravery in Vietnam, then gathered with friends and family members to relive “the highlight of my life.” Rhodes, whose 4-year-old son died last year of leukemia, recently was honored by the local volunteer Fire Department for 17 years of service. “For someone like him who has gone the extra mile, we want to do all we can to fulfill his wishes,” said Stephen Fletcher, a veteran and counselor who has worked with Rhodes for two years.

--It’s never too late for love, at least not for an 85-year-old woman who married a 26-year-old Afrikaner in South Africa. The couple met when the groom, Lucas Botha, was introduced to Belfast-born Annie Best by his aunt while on a vacation in Durban. “The minute I saw her, I wanted her for my wife,” Botha told the Sunday Times of Johannesburg. Best, who worked as a nurse in Durban before retiring in 1949, was married for 50 years and has two children, 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. “He’s the image of my late hubby--that’s why I was attracted to him,” Best said of her new spouse.

--Sitting them in the corner did not do it. Neither did forcing them to stay after school. But when a junior high school in Pontiac, Mich., started requiring misbehaving students to bring their parents to school with them, the mischief stopped. The novel punishment requires the parent to sit next to the child in class for the day. “If a parent has to get a day off work and sit with their kid, just think how they’ll feel,” said Jefferson Junior High School Principal Jimmie Randolph. “I’m putting the pressure where it ought to be.” The punishment is mostly used for such discipline problems as a student who chronically misses turning in homework rather than drug- or alcohol-related problems.

--After months of research, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, guardians of the memory of the Alamo, have added the name of Damacio Jimenes to the list of the fallen heroes at the famed battle that marked Texas’ fight for independence from Mexico. Jimenes, whose name joins those of Jim Bowie, William Barrett Travis and Davy Crockett, becomes the 189th person on the list of defenders who held off Mexican soldiers in a 13-day siege at the tiny mission.