Remembrances

After 11 Years Behind The Host Mic, Neal Conan Signs Off

4:37pm June 27, 2013

NPR's Neal Conan reflects on his 11 years of hosting Talk of the Nation and thanks some of the influential contributors to the show along the way. After 36 years at NPR, Conan signs off.

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Bobby "Blue" Bland performs on stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, in 1989.

Music & Culture

Remembering The Multidimensional Music Of Bobby 'Blue' Bland

6:10pm June 24, 2013

Bland's music is the kind that can school anyone about the incomprehensible depths of love, the importance of dignity and the promise of the kind of good life that really might be within reach.

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Actor James Gandolfini speaks at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards in January 2013. He died on June 19.

Arts

Gandolfini Through The Eyes Of Those He Worked With

2:19pm June 20, 2013

The actor who brought mob boss Tony Soprano to life on the HBO drama The Sopranos died Wednesday at age 51. Fresh Air listens back to interviews with his co-stars Edie Falco and Jeff Daniels and Sopranos director David Chase, to hear their thoughts on Gandolfini's prodigious talent.

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Actor James Gandolfini Dies Suddenly While On Vacation

7:25am June 20, 2013

by Karen Grigsby Bates

The 51-year-old actor died on Wednesday in Rome. Reports attribute his death to a heart attack. Gandolfini had been a character actor for years before he was given a chance to read for Tony Soprano in a new series about a New Jersey mob boss HBO was producing in the late 90s.

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Yoram Kaniuk speaks in 2008 at the AFI Fest premiere of Adam Resurrected, based on a novel he wrote.

Books
Arts

Israeli Writer Yoram Kaniuk, 83, On Pain And Peace

3:34pm June 13, 2013

Author and journalist Yoram Kaniuk died June 8 at age 83. He joined Fresh Air's Terry Gross in August 1988 to talk about fighting in the Israeli underground and his belief that, for Israelis and Palestinians, "the only way is to live somehow together."

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The Time Esther Williams Taught Scott Simon To Swim

5:39am June 09, 2013

Hollywood Icon Esther Williams died this week. Besides being a movie star and a champion swimmer, she also offered Weekend Edition Saturday Scott Simon some swimming tips when they met back in 1999. He has this remembrance.

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Manning in 1945. She and dozens of other nurses were freed by U.S. forces earlier that year.

Army Nurse Mildred Manning: An 'Angel' POW With A Job To Do

9:23pm May 31, 2013

by NPR Staff

Along with six dozen fellow U.S. Army nurses, Manning was captured while treating soldiers in the Philippines in 1942. The nurses, held prisoner for 33 months, were known as the "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor."

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Herman Boudreau served in the U.S. Army in World War II, then rose to the rank of command sergeant major in the Maine Army National Guard.

Public Servant Herman Boudreau, Heroic Under Enemy Fire

5:51pm May 30, 2013

by NPR Staff

While serving in the Army in World War II, Herman Boudreau fought the Japanese resistance during more than two years in the South Pacific. He went on to serve in the Maine National Guard and the Maine State Police, as chief of police in Freeport and as an auxiliary police officer in Brunswick.

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George Porter, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, at his home in Sacramento, Calif., in 2007. Porter joined the armed forces in 1942 and served as a crew chief, squadron inspector and flight engineer with the Army Air Forces and the Air Force.

National

For Tuskegee Airman George Porter, Failure Was Not An Option

7:18pm May 29, 2013

by NPR Staff

George Porter was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black fighter pilots, and those who supported them, in American history. A mechanic during the war, Porter found ways with his colleagues to keep their planes airborne even as they were denied the tools needed to do their jobs.

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After serving in World War II, Tad Nagaki returned to Nebraska to farm corn, beans and sugar beets.

After Long Wait For Combat, Tad Nagaki Became POW Liberator

8:43am May 29, 2013

by NPR Staff

A U.S. parachute team dropped into a POW camp in China to liberate the captives after Japan surrendered in 1945. Tad Nagaki was with that team. Prior to the assignment, Nagaki had spent two years requesting combat duty, only to be denied repeatedly because of his Japanese-American ethnicity.

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