Trivia sometimes matters a lot. This is one of those times. Does it matter that the plaintiff in Cherry vs.
Reno answers to the description in the following paragraph, found in this article in the American Reporter?
Cherry is a thin, bent, wiry old man with thick, matted mess of of grey hair, a dusty
presence and a worn, blue raincoat. He has weathered skin and large, carved features--big ears, a prominent
nose, a long bony chin, and a bright smile that sparkles in his blue eyes. "Among other things," he
pronounced to his audience of one, "I'm a connoisseur of pornography." Randall Boe,
an attorney for the American Reporter, entered the courtroom and Cherry jumped up to hand him some papers.
Boe thanked him in stride and approached his table.
Perhaps, because when we take a look at another Fred Cherry's photo on the Silver Star Founding Partners Page,
where we're introduced to a very different man, a war hero ...
Fred Cherry is a retired U.S. Air Force Fighter Pilot who served in Korea and Vietnam. During a
mission on October 22nd, 1965 his plane was shot down over North Vietnam. Colonel Cherry ejected from his F-105
and was captured. He spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi ... Some of Fred Cherry’s awards include
the Silver Star, the Air Force Cross, the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, two Distinguished Flying Crosses,
two Bronze Stars, Two Purple Hearts, the Air Force Commendation, the Meritorious Service Award, and two President
Unit Citations. Colonel Cherry also received the Award for Outstanding Service to the Military Community from the
Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. Colonel Cherry’s life is the subject of the book, Two Souls Indivisible: The Friendship That
Saved Two POWs in Vietnam, by James S. Hirsch.
... who suffered greatly as he took a stand on
principle, one that few men would take. Could one call such determination as this anything but noble?
High on that list are Fred Cherry, an Air Force F-104 fighter-bomber pilot and the highest ranking
black POW, and Porter Halyburton, a white Navy F-4 Phantom jet navigator from North Carolina.
Cherry, who was severely wounded when he was shot down near Hanoi in October 1965, was tortured
unmercifully as his captors tried, without success, to coerce him into signing antiwar statements urging black
servicemen to give up the fight.
The trivia about the appearance is important because it establishes, beyond any reasonable man's doubt, that the
Fred Cherry at that consulting firm is not the Fred Cherry in the account you're about to read. To the unreasonable
men, I'd point out that the guy who was trying to get prostitution legalized is said to
died
in 2003, while we can see the war hero at a POW reunion in 2005, so unless the guy I'm writing about managed to come back from the dead,
and get one heck of a tan upon his resurrection, I think that we can agree that he and the war hero probably aren't
the same man.
Yes, I linked to a Google search - the best source for date of departure for the first Fred Cherry (of whom I'll be
writing in the pages to come, the one who isn't a war hero) was to be found on the homepage of an International
Sex Workers' Organization, and FreeWebspace might not like to see me link there, but I'm sure you can find the
page at iswface.org/swhback.html, if you look for it.
Does this all matter? It sure does, because as I debunk some of the rumor mongering that has allegedly outlived
he who spread
the rumors, the last thing that I'd want to do is create any rumors myself, at any innocent third party's expense,
and certainly least of all at the expense of that good man in Virginia. Now that any possible misunderstanding
on that point has been laid to rest, let us continue on to the far less inspiring
story ahead.
Aside: If this site seems to have been running slowly, perhaps because the load
on the Freewebspace server is unusually high at the moment, you could also view the copies
of this site to be found at Webring
Webspace and T15.org. These sites
interlink, so don't worry about being able to get back to your ring or even to
this site. It's all taken care of.
The Webring.com SSNB is available in all three locations, so there should be
no serious question about Webring navigability, that has been left unanswered.
