Suzanne Rice

Jul 02 2026

Happy 250th Birthday, America

Growing up in the 1950’s in a small town in Southern Illinois, I was surrounded by my father’s friends, all of whom served in the military in WWII. It was a very patriotic place with speeches on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and summer concerts by the High School band with all kinds of patriotic music. My father’s best childhood friend became the town’s most admired lawyer, and it was often Jim Wham who gave the rousing speeches when we all gathered at our Carnegie Library near the bandshell that was home of the summer concerts. As a child, I thought of Jim as eloquent as Abraham Lincoln – a twentieth century statesman.

My hometown has three distinctions. The first was the tragic mine explosion that occurred on Good Friday in 1947. It was the worst mine explosion ever in the USA. 111 of the men working there died on that terrible day; one of them was my grandfather who started working in the mine at 13. In the years since then, he had risen to be a foreman. He died along with his men on that day. The tragedy touched the whole town – among the victims were brothers, cousins and friends. I never met my grandfather; I was born nine months after the explosion. Soon after hearing about the explosion, Woody Guthrie memorialized the tragedy in three songs, “Waiting at the Gate”, “The Dying Miner” and “Talking Centralia” Some miners left messages to their families on which he based his songs.

The next distinction was that the whole town loved high school basketball. Throughout the decades, the team members were the stars in town, and everyone knew their names. For many years the team was led by a well-loved coach who taught the town’s young men teamwork, good values and the thirst to work hard to win. So much so that our team, the Orphans, became the winningest high school team across the whole United States. They won several state championships and got close several times throughout the whole of the 20^th century. Recently, the Orphan mascot was voted the most unusual mascot across the entire U.S.

**Centralia Orphan Basketball Mascot, Now, 120 years of Superb Basketball**

Lastly, we were surprised to find in 1960 that the US Census proclaimed that Centralia, Illinois was the Center of Population for the USA.

**New York Times announcing the Center of Population in US, 1960**

(Coincidently, just as I was writing about the three distinctions of my hometown, I received a series of texts from my younger brother who just happened to find some interesting information. I want to share the fourth distinction that was news to us both – way before our time! It seems that Centralia, founded in 1853, was the site of the Illinois State Fair in 1858. Both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas stopped by the fair as they traveled between campaign stops. But it wasn’t the famous Senate candidates at the Fair that got the attention. Centralia Attracts Abraham Lincoln and Hot Air Balloons in 1858 — The Greater Centralia Chamber of Commerce )

As a child, I never thought of my earlier ancestors or when they might have come to the USA. That is until one of my mother’s brothers (there were six brothers and four sisters raised just outside town on a farm during the Depression.) did some genealogy work and shared it with me. If I ever had thought of those ancestors, I assumed that they were new immigrants like the many European folks in town, mostly those with Italian and German names. Didn’t really think about it – they were just my friends; never wondered where they came from or how long they had been here.

You can imagine my surprise when my uncle sent our family tree. He found ancestors that had been brave and adventurous like all of our ancestors since most of us are descended from immigrants. I was amazed to find out that on every side of my family tree there were people who braved great odds to come to the New World. One part of the family arrived on the Ark and were among the first Catholics to leave England to settle the new Maryland colony. They arrived in the new world on March 25, 1634. The colonists made friends with the Piscataway and Yoacamato Indians who gave some of their land to establish the first Maryland village they called St. Mary’s. March 25 is still celebrated in the State of Maryland as Maryland Day. Generations later, the same family braved the wilderness to settle the Kentucky frontier and set up the first of Kentucky’s distilleries – have you heard of Old Granddad’s? He is my granddad! (News to me!)

My uncle discovered that some ancestors arrived in New Amsterdam (later New York) in 1651 settling in Breucklijn (later Brooklyn) from Holland. Somehow or other, they eventually braved the difficult conditions moving to New Jersey and then continued West to southern Illinois. One ancestor in the North Carolina colony was forced west after his plantation was burned by the British in the War of 1812. He became the first schoolmaster in Marion County, Illinois – that was a long, arduous journey of 700 miles for him and his large family.

Like your family, whether they arrived recently or centuries ago, the U.S.A gave them and us opportunities we would have never had anywhere else. For that I am grateful and appreciate the hard struggles they suffered to give us the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Let us protect it and honor their legacy forever. God bless America.

Jul 02 2026

An American Patriot’s Journey

On the 250^th Anniversary of our founding, I have some reflections on my American journey:

My Ancestors:

1626 – my 7^th Great-grandmother was born in Jamestown, VA. My wife’s ancestors go back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Our ancestors ‘got on the boat’- a journey that took courage and vision.

Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter – 1629

1780 – my 3^rd Great-Grandfather fought at the Siege of Charleston, was taken prisoner, released only to find upon return home his home had been burned by Loyalists – a not uncommon occurrence. He re-enlisted to fight on.

1830s – 2^nd Great Grandfather arrives in Charleston from Ireland.
1898 – Silver Springs, SC renamed as Neeses, SC in honor of my Great Grandfather, Mayor, because he funded the railway expansion in the town.
1920s – my grandfather built and staffed a large hospital in West Virginia coal country, and it was named after him – I was born in that hospital.

Journey notes:

1969 to today – we have lived literally from ‘sea to shining sea’ here in the USA; twice each in England and Germany and, of course, Vietnam. Visited 26 countries and lived in eleven states. On these occasions, we contrasted our lives in the US vs the lives of the descendants of those who stayed home and didn’t ‘get on the boat’! They inherited a life of birthright opportunity versus our hard work and merit opportunity; group think (all houses the same color!) versus rugged individualism; work ‘just to have a job to retire as soon as possible’ mentality vs our ‘entrepreneurship, change the world, go to the moon’ ethos. We saw the stark contrast in 1976, when in rural England, we visited a Canadian teacher who had to get her power through a coin box device in her cottage much like a parking meter. If she wanted hot water for a bath, she had to put in more coins. Where there is no vision, the people perish (or suffer).

**Piddletrintide, England – Where’s the “Juice”?**

9^th of November 1989 – at the Army War College, I watched with my seminar mates as the Berlin Wall came down on TV monitors tuned to CNN. As President Reagan had told his incoming Secretary of State, his strategy for the Cold War: We win; they lose. I was privileged to serve with Americans who made that happen.
1993 – We were fortunate to tour Poland with one of my brigade chaplains who was born and grew up in Poland. When visiting his family, we saw first-hand what the Communists had created for their citizens – blockhouse concrete apartments aka Orwells’ 1984,small; the parents’ bedroom doubled as the living room; they waited nine years to get a home phone.
1993 – for our anniversary that year we stayed in the former holiday villa for the Czech communist party in Karlovy Vary. Drank their vodka!

1997 – my wife’s co-worker whose parents were boat refugees from RVN; when learning that I had fought in Vietnam, stated—‘your husband was one of the freedom fighters’!
In 2012 – visited the American Cemetery at Normandy, France. As we were leaving, several buses of French school children arrived. Upon exiting their buses, they proceeded to the American graves to lay flowers on the markers of our fallen. They are grateful still.

**French School Children at Normandy – 2012**

2016 – when traveling with a group organized by our former Polish priest, we visited Nettuno Cemetery which is the resting place for Americans who died in the Italian campaign – particularly Anzio landing. A fellow priest traveling with our group, a French paratrooper famous for skydiving in his cassock, wept openly over the graves.

2016 – on a trip to Washington DC, we visited the Korean War Memorial; solemn, yes, but at the very end of the memorial was a tour bus of Koreans who were laying wreaths at the site to express their thanks to the sacrifice of those American soldiers decades before. They haven’t forgotten, either.

**Korean War Memorial with Floral Tribute**

1995, 2012, 2018 – we visited battle sites in France, Belgium and Netherlands where our immediate ancestors had fought: my godfather was shot down over Bremen and remained a POW until the end of the war; my uncle was wounded in Normandy; my father was a bomber mechanic; Sallie’s a bomber pilot. Two of her great uncles fought in WWI. One fought in Korea. We were reminded of their sacrifice and legacy which we were then living.

2018 – on a short visit to Venice, Italy while enjoying our hotel view of the Grand Canal, a Frenchman dining next to us, upon learning a bit of our history, said to us as he was leaving, “Thank you for saving us, twice.”
2018 – we visited the WWII Museum in New Orleans and came away humbled but also reinforced our knowledge of what Americans can do.

From 1947 to the present – we have lived the “American Dream”. We noticed that all over the world it was known what was meant by the ‘American Dream’: Opportunity, Freedom to Invent yourself as you chose, to truly engage in the pursuit of happiness, a country where ‘stuff’ just worked! And we also noted that there was no such British or German or French or Russian Dream. Only the American Dream—all because our ancestors ‘got on the boat’ with a vision and made our Dream a reality.

Jun 22 2026

My Family’s Place in American History – 2026

As with all of us, one of our ancestors came to this country to look for a better life. In my case, my grandfather came from Italy. Ciriaco Iannarone came, looked around, and convinced his 6 brothers to come to the US. That was in 1903 and he was 23 years old. They formed a construction company and settled in northern New Jersey. One brother became a Catholic priest. Anglicized to Charles Jannarone, (Ciriaco actually means Lord, and Italians have no J in their alphabet but write their script capital I like an English J), he married another Italian immigrant, Concetta Caruso, who came as a 10-year-old in 1900. Both had been born in Ariano-Irpino, and lived in the tiny village of Medellin, in a very poor section of the country. Married in Newark, NJ, in 1909, they settled in nearby Nutley. They had three children by the time of the Spanish Flu in 1918, which took my grandfather’s life. He had been in this country for only fifteen years.

**Italian Immigrants Crossing the Atlantic**

Widowed Concetta, called Connie, moved in with her three kids to her brother-in-law’s Rafaele (Ralph) and his wife’s house around the corner. She worked as a seamstress and ran a dry goods store out of the house. Her first son, Joseph, was dropped by a mid-wife at birth and was never able to work.

**Ciriaco and Concetta Jannarone and Son, Joseph**

My dad, John Jannarone, first worked as a waterboy for the construction company. Esther married another Italian much later on.

My dad was valedictorian of his high school class, Student Council President, and played football, basketball and baseball. He applied four times to West Point. But classes were smaller then, and the family had no money or political pull, so he was rebuffed by his local Congressman. But that man was powerful, and on the fourth try he told a new Congressman from Delaware to nominate my dad, even though he wasn’t in his district. He did. That man served only one term.

My dad graduated from West Point first in his class in General Order of Merit. He was a Company Commander, Chairman of the Cadet Honor Committee, and Battalion Commander of the Catholic Squad. He was asked by West Point to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, but he was interested in civil engineering. He was number one on the list of officers that General Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Bomb project, asked the Army G-1 to have assigned to his headquarters when the war was over. After that assignment, he taught physics at West Point, got a master’s degree in civil engineering, and ultimately went back to West Point as a full professor and ultimately the Dean of the Academic Board.

Cadet John Jannarone

As a third generation American, I was taught the value of hard work, perseverance, thrift, honesty, and fear of the Lord. My parents had weathered the Great Depression, dad paid much of his mother’s and brother’s bills and now were getting the thanks of the country for their selfless service, but not much pay. All three of my father’s sons served in the military. Jack, a USMA graduate, served more than twenty years in the Air Force. I served five years active and twenty-eight more in the reserves. Dick served over six years in the Army, and decades in foreign military sales of US aircraft. Dick and my sister, Dotty were high school valedictorians. (Who, What or Where? – 1972 – The Days Forward) My sister, Nancy, saved a young girl from drowning in Delafield Pond at West Point and is in the College Swimming Coaches all of Fame. (To see a photo of this special family go to: Combat Related Special Compensation – 2021 – The Days Forward)

I was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers upon graduation from West Point and served in Vietnam with the Engineer Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division. I ultimately served in the Army Reserve, assigned to an Engineer District and later at a Division. Those have only a few officers and are mostly civilian workers. Later, I was also one of those civilian workers, working on military construction projects at West Point.

I was also attached to the Military Academy Liaison Officer program. Formed because a recent class at West Point was not filled, and largely unpaid, reservists were tasked with generating interest in applying and guiding candidates through the admissions process. I’m happy to say that the area where I was assigned, around Rochester, NY, generated at least four, and sometimes as many as nine admitted candidates each year. Most graduated, and I think one reason was that I made sure they understood what they were getting themselves into as a cadet.

After I retired, I taught religious education for the local parish for nine years before I moved from the West Point area to Pennsylvania. I have been a lector since cadet days, and I am also now an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, bringing Eucharist to shut-ins at the Retirement Community where I live.

I’m happy that my grandfather decided to come to America, and that his son and grandchildren made good use of the opportunities available.

Jun 19 2026

Fortress West Point

In February 2026, the West Point Press published my book, Key of America: Fortress West Point and the Highlands Department in the American Revolution, completing my long writing journey. This article has been adapted from the “Epilogue” of that book. During the Bicentennial of the United States, the Department of History at the United States Military Academy (USMA) assigned three officers the task of writing a study “to verify, illuminate, and broaden the base of information required to write a concise history of fortification construction” as a follow-on to The River and the Rock (1969). Since the Department of History first printed the manuscript, “Highland Fortress,” in 1979, instructors in the Department of History have used it as a resource to help them explain to cadets the significance of West Point’s fortifications to the winning of the American Revolution.

Since I first used the “Highland Fortress,” I had nurtured the idea that this remarkable story should be available to a wider audience of those interested in the American Revolution, the Hudson Highlands, and West Point. I proposed such a project for my academic sabbatical, and it was approved by the West Point leadership. Years have passed since my sabbatical, but I can now say that I have repaid my debt to the Academy for that time as the project is now finished. You can order a free copy on the West Point Press’s website, https://press.westpoint.edu/books/key-of-america/. Final work on the book coincided with another project after retirement from Marist College (University now) to preserve the American Revolutionary batteries, forts, and redoubts of Fortress West Point for the Semiquincentennial (250^th anniversary) of the War for Independence.

Some of you may remember the American Revolutionary themed “Sound and Light Show” on our first 4^th of July in Beast featuring Fort Putnam and other sites illuminated by search lights. Some may have even taken dates up to the ruins of Fort Putnam or to Chain Battery on Flirtation Walk, not realizing that you had passed Water (Green) Battery. My future wife Lois and I loved the views from the navigational light on Gee’s Point (the west point) never realizing that we were near the site of Lanthorn Battery. Because most readers of The Days Forward have an appreciation of the history of their West Point alma mater, I think that a review of the construction of the various military works and what we are doing to preserve those works will give you insights some 250 years later into the meaning of West Point as Fortress West Point from the perspective of the American Revolution.

**Lois Slusser (Johnson) near Lanthorn Battery, 1968**

Called by General George Washington “the key of America,” Fortress West Point was the anchor in the Highlands Department of the Continental Army designed to defend the Hudson River at its west point from a British joint operation. Its dependencies in the Department stretched from the Fishkill Supply Depot on the north to “the Lines” on the Croton River in the Neutral Grounds to the south.

In 2011, four friends, including my wife Lois and me (USMA ’69), formed the Friends of the American Revolution (FAR) at West Point with the mission of preserving West Point’s fortifications for posterity. The other two friends had recently moved into quarters in the Lusk Housing Area, and I had been urging them to look at the two nearby forts, Meigs and Wyllys. It took working with my wife Lois to rescue Thaddeus Kościuszko’s Garden from neglect to energize them about things American Revolutionary. Since 2013, FAR, under the direction of its presidents, have worked closely with four superintendents and eight commanders of the U.S. Army Garrison, West Point, to gain support for the project and to produce results on two forts, two redoubts, and three batteries.

Against the backdrop of educating cadets at USMA, the Semiquincentennial, the 250th Anniversary of the War for Independence, provides new opportunities to tell the story of Fortress West Point in the Highlands Department and its contributions to victory. The West Point Class of 1969 already made a significant contribution with a $250,000 gift that in November 2025 completed phase 1 of the stonework of Redoubt #4. This followed the Class of 1970’s $500,000 donations for Fort Meigs, Fort Clinton, and Water, Lanthorn, and Chain Batteries. The Class of 2009 put up $300,000 for Redoubt # 2.

(Courtesy of Jane Wooley, Dry Stone Conservancy, Inc.)

So, here is what the Fortress West Point initiative is all about. The fortifications in the Highlands Department evolved over time and in distinct phases. Fort Constitution on present-day Constitution Island was the main effort from 1775 to 1776 with Romans’s Blockhouse and Romans’s, Marine, Hill Cliff, and Gravel Hill batteries. Forts Clinton and Montgomery with a chain across the Hudson occupied manpower and resources from 1776-1777. Fortress West Point finally lived up to the early vision of June 1775 for Constitution Island and the west point starting in January 1778 and continuing until 1784. At its peak, the Fortress consisted of three concentric defensive rings with the chain at their center. The outermost ring contained the outlying redoubts: #1, #2, #3, #4, and North, and Middle (South) on the eastern shore. Closer were Forts Meigs, Wyllys, Webb, Putnam, Sherburne’s Redoubt, and Redoubts #5, #6, and #7. The final ring contained Fort Clinton, the four water batteries on the west bank, and Marine and Greaton’s batteries on the Island. The British would have had to penetrate each ring successively to make their approach to lay siege to Fort Clinton and to gain control of the Great Chain, which would have required naval support. The cost would have been great, particularly in time and resources.

***Hudson Highlands: Fortress West Point: The Defense at West Point, 1780***

Courtesy of the United States Military Academy Digital History Center (Department of History)

At the time of the 125th anniversary of the American Revolution and later in 1909, several years after USMA’s Centennial, a Board of Officers recommended work on key fortifications, which led the Detachment of Engineers to commit one noncommissioned officer for 229 days “[t]rimming trees, clearing out brush, rebuilding fallen walls and old parapets and preparing stones or boulders for inscriptions” on almost all of the sites. The work on the various parapets and the inscriptions on the designated boulders was substantial enough that the engineers concluded “that these various historic works are now in condition to withstand ordinary wear and tear for many years to come.” In fact, they believed that the work done at Fort Putnam—“this historic and important fortification”—in particular, would “maintain it for another one hundred years.”

The Bicentennial of the American Revolution in 1975 provided the next major opportunity to reclaim West Point’s legacy. Fort Putnam was the primary project, with a “partial restoration” that included construction of sections of the parapet, restoration of casemates, construction of the McLean Museum Building, and installation of fourteen replica cannons. For the remaining western fortifications, Fort Clinton and Redoubt #4 received upgrades to support infrastructure. All others, including those on Constitution Island, were cleared of brush and marked with memorial plaques. Infrastructure was installed on Constitution Island, and Redoubt #7 was designated for repair. Beyond these, the project “Preservation of Redoubts and Forts on West Bank” was never completed.

The breakthrough for FAR came on 20 April 2018, when the West Point Superintendent approved the Strategic Plan on behalf of USMA and directed the “West Point Fortifications” be placed on the list of Academy “Funding Needs,” saying, “We are the stewards, and it is our ethical responsibility.” Six years later, in the spring of 2024, the present Superintendent, with the help of the leadership of the Association of Graduates (AOG), once again placed the Fortress West Point project in the superintendent’s Unrestricted Endowment & Fund.

**Stonemasons from Dry Stone Conservancy (DSC) Reworking the Interior of Redoubt #2, November 2025**. (Photo courtesy of DSC)

**Redoubt #2 completed by DSC, November 2025** (Photo courtesy of DSC)

Under the direction of its Executive Committee, FAR produced strategic and engineering plans for the garrison to provide a blueprint for the preservation of twenty-one American Revolutionary fortification sites. Under the supervision of the West Point AOG and with funding from the West Point class of 1970 and other donors, the stone foundations at Fort Meigs in the Lusk Housing Area were restored in 2018, followed by Fort Clinton and the Water (Green), Lanthorn, and Chain batteries in 2024. Phase 1 of the preservation of Redoubt #4 was funded in May 2025 by the West Point Class of 1969 and Redoubt #2 in the fall of 2025, funded by the West Point Class of 2009. FAR is committed to implementing West Point’s and FAR’s Strategic Plan to preserve the remaining fortifications. We just need funding to continue. Please alert AOG to any corporate or foundation donors that might want to leave a 250^th anniversary legacy.

FAR’s leadership has worked with appropriate USMA professors to recruit cadets willing to do their senior capstone projects on subjects related to Fortress West Point. Cadet history and computer science majors researched African American troops in the 6th Connecticut, who helped

construct Fort Meigs and designed an augmented reality simulation of Fort Wyllys. Two other teams of cadets designed and built the viewing platforms at Fort Meigs in 2019 and at Kościuszko’s Garden in 2023 as their senior capstone projects in Civil Engineering.

The Semiquincentennial, the 250th Anniversary of the War for Independence, provides new opportunities to tell the story of Fortress West Point in the Highlands Department and its contributions to victory. The work of FAR, combined with the Department of History’s Digital History Center, will provide a living laboratory for cadets in the required core course “The Army of the Republic: Leading Citizen Soldiers” (HI101) and follow-on courses to understand West Point’s Revolutionary heritage and the construction of its mutually supporting batteries, forts, and redoubts. Starting in 2011, the Friends of the American Revolution at West Point accepted as a challenge the Board of Officers’ conclusion about its work on Fort Putnam in 1911 to preserve all of West Point’s existing fortifications from the American Revolution “for another one hundred years.”[i]

[i][i]. For all footnotes, see “Epilogue,” Key of America: Fortress West Point and the Highlands Department in the American Revolution (West Point: The West Point Press, 2026), https://press.westpoint.edu/books/key-of-america/.

Jun 18 2026

Happy Birthday America – 1974

Independence Day in 1974, at Camp Casey South Korea, was not one of your normal celebration days. The Second Infantry Division commander and his staff planned a big 4th of July. I was the commander of a combat engineer company, Company A of the 2nd Engineer Battalion, and although we were quartered in a separate military compound, it was clear that the Commanding General wanted everyone in his division to be at the celebration. I joined my company at Casey, drank a Budweiser, ugh, and after making sure everyone was behaving, I headed back to my BOQ (Bachelor Officer Quarters) room at Camp Castle, about a mile north on Military Supply Route (MSR) 3.

At 0300 hours the next morning alarms went off in the battalion headquarters. I walked along the BOQ wondering what the hell was happening. It didn’t take long before Kim, our BOQ custodian, came running in to tell us we were going to war! The North Koreans under Kim Il Sung, the same guy who had invaded South Korea back in June 1950, were bombarding the port of Pusan from a North Korean warship. Next word arrived from battalion headquarters that I was to evacuate the compound with my company combat-loaded and encamp at a predesignated position in the Korean hill’s west northeast of our position. My NCOs were good and the company was loading up and moving all our equipment out of our motor park and forming up into a column of trucks heading away from our permanent encampment. I took the time to head back to my BOQ room and pile things into my duffel bag, including family photos.

**Camp Castle Near the DMZ and Pusan (Busan) at the Southeast Coast**

By that afternoon it became obvious the North Koreans weren’t invading over the DMZ, which was only about fifteen miles north of us. Orders came down to return to Camp Castle and settle down. The South Koreans sank the North Korean warship that had been shelling Pusan, and things became relatively quiet. The attack on Pusan didn’t make it into newspapers back in America. A few months later, it was discovered that the North Koreans had dug fifty-two tunnels under the DMZ – the Navy captain who had first explored them was killed by a booby trap. Some of the tunnels were large enough to drive trucks through them. My company was tasked with maintaining the American combat outpost line along the border with North Korea and an infantry sergeant dragged me down into a trench when I had tried to sneak a view of Pork Chop Hill across the border. This was a time when we in the Second Infantry Division were getting combat pay since the North Koreans just north of us were still shooting like it was the Korean War (twenty years ended by Armistice in 1953). Later in 1976, MAJ Art Boniface, USMA 1966 and my old table commandant when we were cadets, was savagely killed at Panmunjom while he was trimming a tree in the demilitarized zone.

This was Army life as American soldiers protected the frontiers of freedom in the Cold War.