thedrifter
02-25-09, 06:00 AM
IWO JIMA VET LAID TO REST
Parke Potter helped fashion pole for first flag raised on Mount Suribachi
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Sixty-four years and one day after Parke Potter helped his fellow Marines fashion a pole out of a pipe they had dug from a rubble pile to fly the first U.S. flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, Marines entombed his ashes Tuesday at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.
Potter, who was one of the few Iwo Jima veterans living in Las Vegas, died Thursday of complications from blockage in his lower abdomen. He was 83.
Despite his efforts to defeat deeply entrenched Japanese soldiers in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, Potter was always humble about his actions and didn't dwell on the historical significance of his role on Feb. 23, 1945, the day that the first and later a second, larger flag were raised, said his wife, Louella.
"He was a wonderful, wonderful person," she said, adding that she was attracted to him before they were married 46 years ago "because of his intelligence."
"He was a smart man. I never went with a dumbbell," she said as the last mourners filed by the urn containing his ashes during a morning service at the Masonic Memorial Temple in Las Vegas.
Parke M. Potter was born Sept. 7, 1925, in Dearborn, Mich., and considered the southern Michigan community of Petersburg his hometown. He joined the Marines as a teenager and was 19 when he was shipped to the South Pacific and landed with the first wave of Marines on Iwo Jima's Green Beach.
As an infantryman who packed a Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, he was in a battalion of the 5th Division's 28th Marines, the regiment that raised the flags on Mount Suribachi.
In a 2006 interview, Potter told the Review-Journal that "the life of a BAR man in combat was about 10 minutes, and I lasted 30 days."
"On the beach the bullets were about like the mosquitoes in Minnesota," he said, recalling how he and five other Marines found a convenient hole in which to take cover. Soon after they jumped in, however, they realized it had been used as a latrine by the Japanese. Despite the putrid conditions, that place of refuge was a godsend because bullets were whizzing through the air above them nonstop.
"If you could hear a 'pop,' that was a close one," he said.
In that interview at the Las Vegas Leatherneck Club, he recalled the flag raisings and how he "helped dig up some of the scrap pipe for the first flagpole."
According to historic accounts of the flag raisings, the pole weighed more than 100 pounds and was from one of the pipes the Japanese had used to run water through the mountain.
At the cemetery's chapel Tuesday, another Iwo Jima Marine veteran, Chet Foulke, 86, who was a demolition specialist at the base of the mountain, recalled how he "looked up and saw the flag blowing in the wind. It was such a small flag you almost couldn't see it."
That's why the first flag was brought down and the second, larger flag was hoisted later, as depicted in the iconic Pulitzer Prize photograph by Joe Rosenthal.
About 27,000 people were killed during the battle from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945. Most of them, 20,000, were Japanese soldiers hiding in tunnels and burrowed in pillboxes on the 8-square-mile, pork chop-shaped island.
Potter was among the more than 19,000 U.S. military personnel who were wounded.
Although he didn't talk often about the wounds that made him a Purple Heart medal recipient, he once told Phil Cufari, the local Marine Corps League's past commander, that he had fought hand to hand against the Japanese and suffered a knife wound.
"He talked about how long it took to get medical attention," said Cufari, who was at Potter's funeral and served as a Marine from 1959 to 1963.
"I have no doubt in my mind why they called them the greatest generation," he said.
At Tuesday's memorial services, Potter was remembered by Marine Corps League Commandant Jack O'Rourke and chaplain Jim Frizzle as a mason, shriner and friend who, in Frizzle's words, would go out with his comrades to Hooters on Thursday nights.
"The people at Hooters really loved Parke. ... Parke was a wonderful, wonderful person," he said, stopping momentarily to fight back tears.
Kirk Stowers, a neighbor, told a story about how he looked out one day a few years ago and saw the 80-year-old Potter "two-thirds of the way up in a tree with a saw, pruning the tree."
"It really spoke to his candor and spirit," Stowers said, attesting to Potter's way of doing things. "It wasn't his stubbornness. It was his sense of spirit."
Potter lived in Las Vegas for 28 years after moving from the Los Angeles area with Louella. He was a member of the Marine Corps League and belonged the Las Vegas Leatherneck Club and Masonic lodges in Las Vegas and Sandy Valley.
A small aircraft owner who made flying a hobby, he retired from a career in the Federal Aviation Administration in 1980.
"I have many fond memories of him flying and hunting deer in Idaho," Louella Potter said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
Ellie
Parke Potter helped fashion pole for first flag raised on Mount Suribachi
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Sixty-four years and one day after Parke Potter helped his fellow Marines fashion a pole out of a pipe they had dug from a rubble pile to fly the first U.S. flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, Marines entombed his ashes Tuesday at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City.
Potter, who was one of the few Iwo Jima veterans living in Las Vegas, died Thursday of complications from blockage in his lower abdomen. He was 83.
Despite his efforts to defeat deeply entrenched Japanese soldiers in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, Potter was always humble about his actions and didn't dwell on the historical significance of his role on Feb. 23, 1945, the day that the first and later a second, larger flag were raised, said his wife, Louella.
"He was a wonderful, wonderful person," she said, adding that she was attracted to him before they were married 46 years ago "because of his intelligence."
"He was a smart man. I never went with a dumbbell," she said as the last mourners filed by the urn containing his ashes during a morning service at the Masonic Memorial Temple in Las Vegas.
Parke M. Potter was born Sept. 7, 1925, in Dearborn, Mich., and considered the southern Michigan community of Petersburg his hometown. He joined the Marines as a teenager and was 19 when he was shipped to the South Pacific and landed with the first wave of Marines on Iwo Jima's Green Beach.
As an infantryman who packed a Browning Automatic Rifle, or BAR, he was in a battalion of the 5th Division's 28th Marines, the regiment that raised the flags on Mount Suribachi.
In a 2006 interview, Potter told the Review-Journal that "the life of a BAR man in combat was about 10 minutes, and I lasted 30 days."
"On the beach the bullets were about like the mosquitoes in Minnesota," he said, recalling how he and five other Marines found a convenient hole in which to take cover. Soon after they jumped in, however, they realized it had been used as a latrine by the Japanese. Despite the putrid conditions, that place of refuge was a godsend because bullets were whizzing through the air above them nonstop.
"If you could hear a 'pop,' that was a close one," he said.
In that interview at the Las Vegas Leatherneck Club, he recalled the flag raisings and how he "helped dig up some of the scrap pipe for the first flagpole."
According to historic accounts of the flag raisings, the pole weighed more than 100 pounds and was from one of the pipes the Japanese had used to run water through the mountain.
At the cemetery's chapel Tuesday, another Iwo Jima Marine veteran, Chet Foulke, 86, who was a demolition specialist at the base of the mountain, recalled how he "looked up and saw the flag blowing in the wind. It was such a small flag you almost couldn't see it."
That's why the first flag was brought down and the second, larger flag was hoisted later, as depicted in the iconic Pulitzer Prize photograph by Joe Rosenthal.
About 27,000 people were killed during the battle from Feb. 19 to March 26, 1945. Most of them, 20,000, were Japanese soldiers hiding in tunnels and burrowed in pillboxes on the 8-square-mile, pork chop-shaped island.
Potter was among the more than 19,000 U.S. military personnel who were wounded.
Although he didn't talk often about the wounds that made him a Purple Heart medal recipient, he once told Phil Cufari, the local Marine Corps League's past commander, that he had fought hand to hand against the Japanese and suffered a knife wound.
"He talked about how long it took to get medical attention," said Cufari, who was at Potter's funeral and served as a Marine from 1959 to 1963.
"I have no doubt in my mind why they called them the greatest generation," he said.
At Tuesday's memorial services, Potter was remembered by Marine Corps League Commandant Jack O'Rourke and chaplain Jim Frizzle as a mason, shriner and friend who, in Frizzle's words, would go out with his comrades to Hooters on Thursday nights.
"The people at Hooters really loved Parke. ... Parke was a wonderful, wonderful person," he said, stopping momentarily to fight back tears.
Kirk Stowers, a neighbor, told a story about how he looked out one day a few years ago and saw the 80-year-old Potter "two-thirds of the way up in a tree with a saw, pruning the tree."
"It really spoke to his candor and spirit," Stowers said, attesting to Potter's way of doing things. "It wasn't his stubbornness. It was his sense of spirit."
Potter lived in Las Vegas for 28 years after moving from the Los Angeles area with Louella. He was a member of the Marine Corps League and belonged the Las Vegas Leatherneck Club and Masonic lodges in Las Vegas and Sandy Valley.
A small aircraft owner who made flying a hobby, he retired from a career in the Federal Aviation Administration in 1980.
"I have many fond memories of him flying and hunting deer in Idaho," Louella Potter said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
Ellie