Dolly Marshall, left, and Clarice Lafreniere.

The highest civilian honor in the United States has been awarded
to two of Oregon’s own.

Clarice Lafreniere and Dolly Marshall were granted a Congressional
Gold Medal. It was part of a ceremony honoring hundreds of Rosie
the Riveters.

Lafreniere learned about the Pearl Harbor attack over the radio,
the same day that she gave birth to her daughter. Two years
later she was working as a welder and burner at the Kaiser
shipyard on Swan Island in Portland.

Marshall was was in high school when she worked as a plane
spotter in New Jersey.
(by KATU Staff)

Rosie The Riveter by Norman Rockwell (1943) 

ROSS SIMPSON

Merle Haggard received many honors and awards for
his music, including a Kennedy Center Honor (2010);
a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2006); a BMI
Icon Award (2006) and induction into the Nashville
Songwriters Hall of Fame (1977), Country Music Hall
of Fame (1994) and Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame
(1997). He died on April 6, 2016—his 79th birthday—
at his ranch in Shasta County, California, having
recently suffered from double pneumonia.

 
    SANDY KOZEL

On March 19, 2003, the United States, along with coalition
forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on
Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s
capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a
televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition
forces are in the early stages of military operations to
disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world
from grave danger.”

President Bush and his advisors built much of their case
for war on the specious claim that Iraq, under dictator
Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of
building weapons of mass destruction.

Hostilities began about 90 minutes after the U.S.-imposed
deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war
passed.

On March 13, 1942, the Quartermaster Corps (QMC) of the United
States Army began training dogs for the newly established War
Dog Program, or “K-9 Corps.”

Well over a million dogs served on both sides during World War
I, carrying messages along the complex network of trenches and providing some measure of psychological comfort to the soldiers.