She’s an Old War Hawk With Eyes on More Action

In the “War Room,” of her Garden Grove home, Patches Musgrove talked about her experiences as a nurse and the first woman sworn into the Coast Guard during World War II.

“I was reaching across a desk for a telephone when this officer touched me,” the 70-year-old Musgrove recalled. “So I grabbed the phone and rapped him with it,” she said. That lead to a misconduct hearing before a panel of officers.

“They kept asking me to tell my story, but I kept telling them I didn’t know how to use a nice word to explain it,” she said. “Finally, I told them: the officer goosed me.” The charge was dismissed.

Musgrove is still telling it like it is, especially in a two-volume, self-published account of her 6 1/2 years as a war correspondent in Vietnam, where she said she worked for 70 newspapers and earned praise for being “a tough old war hawk.”

She was 50 years old at the time.

“I’d really like to see a movie made from the book (Vietnam: Front Row Center),” she said. “And I’d like Meryl Streep to play me. Some guy suggested Jane Fonda (should) get the part, and I almost rapped him.”

She blamed the current screenwriters’ strike for holding up negotiations.

Musgrove’s war room holds her collection of mementos from World War II and Vietnam. It includes 347 plaques and more than 400 shoulder patches from various fighting units.

“That’s why I legally changed my name to Patches,” said the former Helen Musgrove.

During World War II, she was called G.I. Jill when she broadcast music to servicemen from a radio station in Australia, America’s answer to Tokyo Rose.

“My life has always been exciting,” said Musgrove, “and it’s very hard for me to slow down,” referring to two recent heart surgeries. “I just can’t work very much.”

But she is not forgotten. President Reagan sent her a get-well message.

Musgrove said she wants to get out among young people and promote democracy and freedom, preferably by speaking in schools.

“I’d love to tell them what the war was really like in Vietnam,” she said. “When you live in Southeast Asia you learn to love America all that much more.”

She flies an American Flag every day in front of her house.

More importantly, she wants to work for a newspaper to report what is happening in Nicaragua and Honduras.

“I did that kind of reporting before, just in another country. I know I can handle it. I have all the equipment,” she said, pointing to the helmets, boots and uniforms she saved from Vietnam.

Etta Farley, who just turned 102 and mostly cares for herself in her Brea home, told well-wishing friends that she had her eighth child when she was 38. At the time, she said, acquaintances had predicted she would be gone by the time her last child had grown up.

Etta still is around, but she said those acquaintances all are gone.

The Boy Scouts countywide and nationally are going to grow mightily in the next few months, according to Scout spokesman Ben Parks, who helped shape a recent satellite broadcast to 300 locations across the country.

He said 57 new troops will be forming in Orange County, part of 8,000 expected to be formed nationally by community groups.

“We expect the excitement generated here . . . will spur on the growth of scouting in Orange County,” Parks said.

The county has 438 troops with 8,861 members.

Dave Chapple, 40, of Irvine retired from a successful professional football career with the Los Angeles Rams in 1975. He led the league in punting in 1972 and was named to the All-Pro first team.

Between seasons, he was a wildlife artist, a pursuit he has since taken up full-time.

And he’s a winner again. Chapple was just notified that his painting of a pair of mallards in flight was selected for Utah’s 1988 duck stamp from a field of 56 entrants.

“I’ve been painting since I’ve been a child,” said Chapple, who stands to make a lot of money from the sale of a limited number of signed copy prints of his Utah stamp entry.

He previously won art competitions for North Dakota’s trout stamp, California’s turkey stamp and Kentucky’s duck stamp.