My Father's Dragon

by Kevin E. Walsh

My Father's Dragon

This is not that story.¹ This is a story about another dragon, who looked like this:

A Komodo Dragon on Komodo Island in Indonesia

Komodo National Park

It’s a story about two Komodo Dragons that President Sukarno of Indonesia gave to America in 1964. They were in return for a pair of trumpeter swans that the United States gave to him.²

  

President Sukarno of Indonesia and Trumpeter Swans of America

The Komodo Dragon is now the largest lizard in the world. It comes from a few islands between Flores and Sumbawa, including Komodo Island. This giant lizard can grow almost ten feet long and weigh up to 300 pounds.

Nobody knows how Komodo Dragons got so much larger than other monitor lizards. It might be the Komodo Dragon found its small, isolated islands encouraged large growth over many years. The islands had plenty of deer and wild pigs to eat, and not many people to bother the Dragons.³

A hatching Komodo Dragon

The map shows those islands, and how Indonesia is in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and the Asian continent. It also shows the city of Jakarta, where we were living (it was spelled Djakarta then), and the city of Manila in the Philippines, where we lived later.

This is what the American Embassy in Jakarta looked like in 1964. Embassies are buildings in foreign countries where Americans work for the United States government.

  

Chancery Building, built in 1958⁴

The man in the white hat is a Marine guard. In 1964 the Marine’s desk was closer to the stairway and in front of a glass wall looking out over a garden in the back.

U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia (circa 1970)⁵

Not just a garden, but a pond, garages, and a small commissary or government grocery store, too.

Chancery Building, built in 1958⁶

The Komodo Dragons were delivered to the Embassy one evening in wooden crates or boxes. They were put in the rear garden to wait for their plane ride to America.

About two hours after midnight,⁷ the Marine at the desk felt something staring at him. He turned around and saw . . .

One of the Dragons!

Looking through the glass!!

It escaped from its box!!!

It was the middle of the night, and the Embassy was closed. The Marines began to call in reinforcements. My father, John Walsh, was on call as duty officer that night. He was one of the people who went to the Embassy.

His title at the Embassy was Assistant Commercial Attaché, which meant he helped people doing business between Indonesia and America. This usually didn’t have anything to do with dragons. This is a story he wrote while he was in Djakarta:

International Commerce, March 30,1964⁸

The people at the Embassy began to look for the missing Dragon. Some armed themselves with steel bars that were used to lock file cabinets. The Dragon eventually got tired, and was found sleeping under a tree in the Embassy garden.

At sunrise, with the help of arriving Indonesian staff, ropes were slipped around the Dragon’s head and tail, and a net was thrown over it. The wooden crate was replaced with a metal one, and both Dragons eventually arrived safely at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.

An official at the Smithsonian Institution later wrote that the Dragon “was successfully caught without harm to either it or its captors.”⁹

National Zoo

 

---

and his great grandkids

¹ My Father's Dragon, Ruth Stiles Gannett, illustrations by Ruth Chrisman Gannett, Random House, 1948
² Letter from the Desk of David Challinor, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, November 1992
³ Letter from the Desk of David Challinor, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, November 1992
⁴ U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia, The United States Diplomacy Center
⁵ Embassy of the United States, Jakarta; WikiVisually
⁶ U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia, The United States Diplomacy Center
⁷ A Communicator’s Bad Dream: The Night of the Dragon, David W. Smith, Foreign Service Journal, May 1988, pg. 70
⁸ International Commerce, March 30,1964
⁹ Letter from the Desk of David Challinor, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, November 1992

Brahms' First Symphony

I'm listening to Brahm's Horn Trio on my iPhone. And thinking about a performance of Brahm's 1st Symphony I attended.

The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point was playing, and my wife, Kathy, was principal Horn. She was not a student, except as a horn student of the conductor, Pat Miles. She was a UW alumna, and the best of the horn players in the orchestra.

It's fair to say that Brahms liked horn, and used it frequently.

"Brahms loved the old, romantic sound of what he called the "Waldhorn" (or "hunting horn") because he played one as a kid. So when he set out to write his Trio, he knew it would be written for what is today referred to as the "natural horn." In fact, the title on the manuscript reads, "Trio fur Pianoforte, Violine & Waldhorn." — Brahms' French Horn Of Plenty, In Concert

"To Brahms, the horn color, especially in solo passages, always had a very special meaning and he frequently used it in very important places." — Johannes Brahms and the French horn

At the end of the piece, the conductor thrust out his arm at Kathy. She eventually stood, hunched over the horn in her hands like she wanted to hide somewhere.

The rest of the orchestra, and the audience, began a thunderous applause. The audience stood, which is typical and part of Wisconsin nice. But I looked around and saw everyone standing. Maybe this was something special.

I would hear that Brahms horn solo repeated by Kathy over time, even with an alphorn.

  

Now she's raising new generations of horn players.

  

Here's a sample from the Berliner Philharmoniker; Stefan Dohr as 1st horn, Simon Rattle conducting:

Madison Police Department: A Chronology of Deadly Force

Madison Police Department Facebook

Kevin Walsh, November 7, 2017

This series is based in part on the Madison Police Department’s Citizen Academy (now Community Academy), an annual program for the public.

The table below summarizes the Department’s use of deadly force over five years, from November 2012 to September 2017. Of the four cases in that time, I still had unanswered questions about Paul Heenan and Ashley DiPiazza that were addressed in the Academy Deadly Force session.

Madison Police Deadly Force (2012-2017)
Date	Description	Comments
Nov 9, 2012	Paul Heenan Shooting	Dispatch call for “possible breaking and entering”, weapons unknown. Heenan found struggling with homeowner outside and then attacking a single officer, who fired shots 3 minutes after the dispatch call. Heenan was killed.1
May 18, 2014	Ashley DiPiazza Shooting	Dispatch call for domestic disturbance involving a weapon. Subject was found holding a gun to her own head inside an apartment. Negotiator and two other officers were attempting to speak from the apartment doorway. Officers fired shots 49 minutes after the dispatch call. DiPiazza was killed.2
Mar 6, 2015	Tony Robinson Shooting	Dispatch call to check on a person fighting with friends, jumping into traffic, and strangling a person; no weapon.3 Disputed claim of attacking a single officer at the top of a stairway.4 Officer fired shots 8 minutes after the first dispatch call. Robinson was killed. Autopsy showed signs of psilocybin mushroom, THC, and Xanax.5
Aug 11, 2015	Paul Heenan Settlement	$2.3 million6
Jun 30, 2016	Michael Schumacher Shooting	Dispatch call for a home break in. Suspect attacked a single officer with a pitchfork. Officer fired shots 3 minutes after the dispatch call. Schumacher was killed. History of mental illness.7
Feb 22, 2017	Tony Robinson Settlement	$3.35 million8
Jul 10, 2017	MPD Procedure Revisions	Deadly Force9 and Non-Deadly Force10 procedures were revised to emphasize protection of all lives, including individuals being arrested, and resolving conflicts through communication, crisis intervention and de-escalation.
Jul 14, 2017	Ashley DiPiazza Jury Award	$7 million11, civil burden of proof was “preponderance of evidence” rather than the criminal “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Total $12.65 million and 4 killed since 2012.
Sep 15, 2017	New MPD Back-Up Procedure12	To emphasize protection of lives as above, and added waiting for assigned back-up to increase the safety of all involved.

Paul Heenan
Paul Heenan was an unarmed, intoxicated person entering the wrong home, and fighting first with his neighbor, and then a police officer. Officers are trained to approach high risk situations such as stolen vehicles, burglaries in progress, and robbery alarms with guns drawn, even if there is no current information on weapons. This is because of the “reactionary gap” or delay between seeing a gun and drawing your own.