Saturday, October 04, 2003

From: "robertoreg2003"
Date: Sat Oct 4, 2003 8:55 pm
Subject: Subject Headings in Chukker History





Got da box so here are the titles to the cards:
Alves, Walter
Banned from the Chukker(the classic is Claudia Chermuk trying to buy
a draft for 37 cents)
Barred from the Chukker
"Allman Joys"- 1965-1967
Ariff, Basil
Artists and Art
Artifacts (looks like most of the artifacts have disappeared)
Big Ben Adkins and the Nomads
Bill Connell
Beer (sample: Quarter Beer-Tues. and Thurs. 1972- outlawed by State
ABC in 1985)
"Blues Magoos"
Butts, Jimmy
Barlow
Bartenders
Beverages- January '82- moved bar to rear- bar moved to plumbing in
to serve liquor.
Blue Laws
Check on Bill McMinn
Cort Pickett
Crazy Shit That Has Happened at the Chukker(according to me the
craziest is Weston biting and sucking
a boil off Michael McGovern's toe)
Chefs(Bruce Hopper photographed the corpse in the coffin of the
father of the big old black lady who cooked for Chukker Bill)
Chukker Nation (proclaimed in August '69 by John Little while
watching telecast of the Woodstock Music Festival in
the Chukker)
Chukker Room in Hell (Trice Keene,Bob Weston,Stephen Rogers,Tom
Kuhns,Brian Hendrix,Joe Cary, Mike Tucker, Mike
Williams, Robert Register, John Thigpen, Val
Holloway,Lloyd Riley, Tommy Stevenson,John Thorn
Ron Shirley,Dick Ellenburg("I already have first
row seats saved." said Dick while he was alive),
Bill Gipson)
Chukker definition from the dictionary
"Candy Men"
Censorship
Chukker Bill
Cornbread
Deceased patrons (over 50 on this list)
Drugs(someone always played "For What It's Worth" on the jukebox
when a narc walked in)
Dona
Eddie Hinton
Ernie Halford
Ellenberg, Dick
Entertainment
First Time In the Chukker (The Classic:"I was so young I was amazed
to be served alcohol")
"Feather"
Fantasies (The Classic:"All you guys want to see is two girls get it
on. It's UNIVERSAL!!!!)
"The Five Minutes"- '62 or '63
Fat City (game preserve)
"Gents"
Graffitti (The Classic: BEAT ME, WHIP ME, MAKE ME WRITE BAD CHECKS!")
Hogdoo
Hendrix, Jimmy (Phil Phillips has a Hendrix guitar pick)
Hogie (Guy Huthnance, Jr.)
"Hourglass"
Hagler, Marshall
Hart, Bill
Hinton, Eddie
Janitors(The Classic: Ed Hanselman)
"John Ed" Watford (The Classic: Took a dump on the bar to win a bet)
"K-Otics"
Kooness, Oolee
Kizziah, Mickey
Little Bit
Lesbians(The Classic: Engraving on sports trophy for a Chukker
softball team:"Nobody Could Beat Those Dykes"
"Misfits"
"The Magnificent Seven"
Music (The Classic: Don Maples, "the Possum Man", hit Jimmy Turner
with a beer bottle because Jimmy played the jukebox and
Maples wanted to hear his tape deck-Maples barred by
Callahan)
Myths (The Classic: Mice nests in the pinball machines fuck up your
game.)
May of 1970
Mary Kay
Menu (copies from the late sixties are owned by Bruce Hopper and Jo
Hayward)
"Nighthawks"
Nineteen Fifty-Six, July-Chukker opens (Oasis opens at same time)
Owners
"The Omen and Their Love"
Orange Julius
The Old Dutch
Pat's (Earl's first bar- changed to Jackie's)
"Pieces of Eight"
Personal Testimony (December 21, 1987- Dart Hayward suggests a
contest for "Best Personal History of the
Chukker")
Poets (Rhett Maddox moved to New Orleans and gave readings at the
Maple Leaf Bar on Oak St.)
Pets (Chuck the Cat died violently and you could feed cashews
to the mouse who lived in the cash register)
Queers (The Classic: The VD control officer asks Enoch for the names
of everyone "he'd had intercourse with lately" and Enoch
lists everyone he had talked to at the Chukker and Egan's.)
"Rocking Gibralters"
"Rubber Band"
Riley, Lloyd
Ronnie Brown
The Red Rooster
Residents (Bob Weston)
The Roof
Robert Register (Loves Pussy. Very narrow minded on cornbread!)
Ramona Landers ('55 or '56 - '88)
"Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs"
"SouthCamp"
"Sail Cat"
"Swinging Medallions"
The Silver Dollar
Scotty Fitzgerald (Waverly asks,"Could you procure a marijuana
cigarette for Scotty?)
The Spectrum and The Dickery
Starvin' Marvin Henry
Sports Teams
Swindle, Sharon (First visit to Chukker- 1972. Had her first orgasm
in the summer of 1972)
"This Side Up" - with an arrow pointing down
Tab (LARGEST TAB: $1700 FOR A SUMMER. Brian paid it with '66 GMC
pickup.)
Turner, Jim - "Today Was Surreal, Wasn't It?"
Thigpen, Johnny
Tiger Jack Garrett ("under Confederate gray skies")
University of Alabama
Voodoo
Weston
Wallace, George


That's all folks!
best,
rr

Daughter of executed Bay of Pigs pilot sues Cuba

By Catherine Wilson
Associated Press Writer
Posted October 2 2003, 4:48 PM EDT

MIAMI -- The daughter of a CIA pilot shot down and executed during the Bay of Pigs invasion filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Cuban government under an anti-terrorism law.

Alabama National Guard pilot Thomas ``Pete'' Ray became a pawn in the cold war when Cuba put his body in cold storage and kept it there for 18 years while the United States officially denied he was authorized to be in Cuba.











Ray's body was returned in 1979, but it took until 1998 before the CIA openly acknowledged his role in the failed attempt to oust President Fidel Castro in 1961.

``We didn't know if he was dead or alive. It was like our whole family was held hostage to this,'' Ray's daughter Janet Weininger said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit at a Bay of Pigs memorial in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood.

A call for comment to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington was not immediately returned.

Ray trained six dozen pilots for the invasion flights from Nicaragua to Cuba. His B-26 was shot down less than 48 hours after the first landing.

An autopsy performed at the University of Alabama Birmingham concluded Ray died of a contact gunshot wound to the right temple.

His frozen body was displayed at a Cuban morgue in a glass case ``as an exhibit, as a reward,'' Weininger said. ``They would at times spit in his face.''

Starting at age 15, she wrote more than 200 letters to Castro asking about her father. The wrongful death lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages under federal laws against summary executions by state sponsors of terrorism.

The suit names the Cuban government, Cuban army, Castro and his brother Raul Castro as defendants.

In recent lawsuits against Cuba, the Cuban government has not defended itself and lost by default. Damage awards can be collected by the seizure of Cuban assets in the United States, such as a plane flown by defectors to Key West last year.

Friday, October 03, 2003

by Janet Ray Weininger
16360 SW 87th Place
Miami, FL 33157
Phone: 305-255-5994
E-Mail: wingsvalor@aol.com
www.wingsofvalor.org

FROM THE DAUGHTER OF AN AMERICAN WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR CUBA'S FREEDOM

April 20, 2003

In the struggle for the freedom of Cuba, one of the most formidable objectives that must be accomplished is to reach those who are indifferent, uninterested and/or possessed of a misguided view of the Castro dictatorship concerning the plight of the Cuban people and their state of bondage. To reach this audience in America, a book should be written to Americans, but for Cubans. Americans are like women; they don't want to be told what to think by the use of forceful adjectives. They want a story about triumph over adversity. If it is an honorable patriotic story about their own, it awakens a pride that makes them strive to emulate their heroes. This is how we honor those who have gone before us and continue their struggle for Cuba's liberation. Cuba-Americans have told and will tell this story far more elegant that I will even be blessed to tell, but to reach middle America the story must come from an American with Cuba within her heart.

Today is Easter, a day to commemorate Christ's resurrection, but for those of us that live the loss of Cuba's freedom yesterday, April 19th, dawned with a shadow especially due to the recent violation of human rights. During the predawn hours 42 years ago, Americans and Cubans joined as brothers as they climbed into B-26 cockpits on a mission in support of the Brigade 2506 ground forces, a mission to liberate Cuba. For four Americans it would be their last flight, the ultimate sacrifice. While they lived on in the hearts of those who knew of their valor, their fate disappeared off the radar screen; I know for I am the daughter of a man of honor. This day commemorates the day I embarked on an 18-year mission to learn the fate of my father, Thomas "Pete" Ray and the struggle for Cuba's freedom was resurrected in my heart.

On the surface, an emotional story would be told of an American willing to give his life for love of freedom, the love between a father and daughter and the mission to learn his fate challenged by family and the governments of the United States and Cuba, but unfolding would be the history of Playa Girón, Cuba's continuing strife for liberation against the repressive dictatorship of Castro, and the bond that grew between an American daughter and the Cuban people. Americans grasp the meaning of the American flag covering the casket as Taps are sounded, and they will know why the U.S. Military honor guard next rested the Cuban flag on the coffin of an American. Pete Ray was a man who made decision of conscience and honor, loved God, county, family and freedom. As his coffin was slowly lowered in the ground, cradled in my arms was the Cuban flag. It was the flag that held my tears for a man who had taught me how horrendous was the lost freedom of Cuba.

When Pete's Ray B-26 was downed, he was able to escape the aircraft and engage in an intense gun battle where he suffered multiple gunshot wounds that would not be considered fatal by themselves or in combination according the results of the 1979 autopsy report. Defenseless, his life was terminated by an execution-style gunshot wound to the head. This was only the beginning of the derogation that would be endured by the exhibition of his remains for propaganda and nefarious reasons. While Castro guarded his trophy, he must have relished in sadistical gratification as he read media accounts and ignored my pleas in the form of over two hundred letters and cables sent to him. Americans understand death in combat, but they do not understand the abhorrent act of torture inflicted on my family. Nor will they understand the death of those brigade members suffocated in a tractor-trailer truck. These acts can only be viewed as a crime against humanity.

Our typical southern family descended into a surreal world. Legal drugs dulled the once vivacious mother I had known; she became a woman that only could tread water as the emotional demons ravaged her life. My father and grandfathers, the rocks of our family, had departed within a few years. My beloved dog, Chase who had attempted to lick the tears that flowed when mother broke the news about my father, was also gone. The media declared my father not as a man of honor, but as a mercenary who flew only for the money as the government cover story took hold. My family kept quiet never reaching out to learn the truth or to fight for Pete Ray, for they succumbed to pressure brought about from the government. It was a picture in Life Magazine of a man who stood so gallantly behind iron bars that beckoned me with his to reach inside my heart for the valor required to survive. Years later, this man who had saved my life came into my life, he was Pepe San Ramón, commander of Brigade 2506. He would be one of many Cubans, like those brave men who flew for the freedom of Cuban, who would take my hand as I walked through a storm, giving far more than I could give for an eternity for they endured with a far deeper wound.

During the last 42 years, I have been honored to know those that bear the same scars from the loss of Cuba's freedom, Cubans and Americans. Many of them have shared with me a part of their life that would only be shared with those who had lived the betrayal. One was a pilot from U.S. Essex who had flown his A-4 jet over the beaches in an attempt to assist the evacuation of the Brigade. They would come out of hiding, but could not see the concentration of Castro's troops that awaited them. The Essex was radioed requesting permission to alert the Brigade by firing around the troops, but Black Walnut, the White House, denied the request. The pilot stated, "we became the Judases leading the Brigade to their dead." Their stories tell a compelling part of history that has never been told. Another was a widow of a Brigade member that I would place into her hands the last photograph of her husband, as he lay lifeless on the beaches of Girón. This young widow never remarried; she embraced her faith and found the inner strength to continue the struggle for Cuba's freedom along with her daughter. I had lived the devastating emotions flowing through her mind as she held the photograph. When I viewed the effects of the atrocious state my father had been kept, I knew for the first time he was dead. It will haunt me until the day I die.

Many years later, I would join the families of two pilots, who flew along side my father in an attempt to liberate their country, in bringing their loved ones home from a B-26 crash in Nicaragua. This time it would be difference, for in 1998 the U.S. Government joined with us to bring them home with honor and dignity. From this experience, I made the decision to turn tragedy into a pathway of blessings by founding Wings of Valor. This is true monument to those who have gone before us, and the Cuban people who have given me the opportunity to share their lives and struggles. I want to share with you my final words written to my father and tucked into the military uniform he was buried in. "I want you to know that I will always need you. I want you to know that I will always love you. If you had to do it all over again, I would want you just to do it the way you did it."

If you feel a book would contribute to the struggle of Cuba freedom, I am hopeful that you will offer your guidance and assistance.
Sincerely,

Janet Ray Weininger

[ Thu Aug 07, 05:05:05 PM | robert register | edit ]
Got another outstanding email from Tony de la Cova today. What a guy!!!! He always cuts through the crap and gets right down to BIDNESS.

Robert,
I have been "up to my armpits in alligators" doing research at Harvard. Found a lot of great information on Cuban business owners in the U.S. during 1850-90. This is material that has never been researched before. On the weekends my wife and I drive off to New York City (four hours away) on Friday evening and return to Boston on Sunday evening. As a result, I haven't had time to stop by the arboretum or do other things I had planned.
Thomas "Pete" Ray the Alabama National Guard pilot killed during the Bay of Pigs invasion was in fact murdered by Castro's troops. His daughter, Janet Ray Weininger, told me that when her father's remains were returned to the U.S. in 1977, after being kept for 16 years in a morgue freezer in Havana, the FBI performed an autopsy. It revealed that he had died of a close contact bullet wound to his left temple, which still had powder burns. After Ray crash landed he was still strapped to his seat when a Castro soldier ran up to the plane and murdered him. I am sure that Castro would have preferred to have displayed the captured American before the TV cameras. Janet is president of Wings of Valor and has her own web site at http://www.wingsofvalor.org/
I read about former Florida Governor Richard Keith Call on your web site. His nephew was George W. Call (1825-1863), the U.S. District Attorney in Jacksonville, Florida, who prosecuted the filibuster steamer Pampero for violation of the Revenue Act after it dropped off Gen. Narciso Lopez with an expedition in Cuba in August 1851. You can read about it in my article "Cuban Filibustering in Jacksonville in 1851" at http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/articles/NEFlorida-96.pdf
Ironically, when the Lopez filibusters returned from Cuba after the first expedition in May 1850, they found that "Ex.-Gov. Call tendered an invitation to the whole party, at St. Marks, to visit the capital of Florida, which they did." (Richardson Hardy, History and Adventures of the Cuba Expedition, page 54)
In 1859, George W. Call became the first Venerable Master of Amelia Island Lodge No. 47 (where I was raised). Call went on to become a Confederate cavalry colonel from Florida and was killed in battle in Virginia in 1863. His brother, Wilkinson Call, was a Florida Democratic senator who on Dec. 11, 1889 introduced a resolution before the U.S. Congress proposing that Cuba would buy its independence from Spain with an indemnity guaranteed by the United States. The resolution was eventually shelved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
I was just informed today by the University of South Carolina Press that my book, Cuban Confederate Colonel: The Life of Ambrosio Jose Gonzales has just come out. It is being advertised on their web site at http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/
Saludos,
Tony

[ Thu Aug 07, 05:38:12 PM | robert register | edit ]
This is so wild! Tony Delacova sends me this information about Pete Ray's daughter. I look up her website, find an article about recovering Bay of Pigs veterans bodies from Nicaragua and find Lino Gutierrez in the article! Lino was ambassador to Nicaragua when Janet Ray Weininger put together the team that excavated the bodies of two Cuban exile pilots of a B-26 that crashed on a Nicaraguan mountaintop after the Bay of Pigs invasion. I knew Lino when he was a student at the University of Alabama. The reason I got to know him so well is because I taught Biology at Druid High School in Tuscaloosa with his mother, our Spanish teacher.
If this story doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you don't have an idea about the horrors of communism.

Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2003

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY
Cuban government shot down, executed my dad, daughter says
The child of a Bay of Pigs pilot files suit against Fidel Castro and the island nation under an anti-terrorism act.
BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@herald.com




SEEKING DAMAGES: Janet Ray Weininger, right, talks about her lawsuit on Thursday at the Bay of Pigs memorial in Little Havana. With her is her daughter, Christina Weininger. TIM CHAPMAN/HERALD STAFF


CIA pilot Thomas ''Pete'' Ray believed he was fighting communism and helping Cuban exiles overthrow Fidel Castro when he signed up for the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Ray, 30, was shot down, captured and eventually killed by a bullet to the right temple -- a bullet fired at close range, not in the randomness of battle -- an autopsy done years later revealed.

Ray's death is the crux of the wrongful death lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court Thursday by his daughter, who says her father was executed by the Cuban government, maybe on the order of Fidel Castro or his brother, Raul.

''They killed my father, I have no doubt of it,'' said Janet Ray Weininger, 49, of Southwest Miami-Dade, who stood by the Bay of Pigs memorial in Little Havana as she announced her plans to seek both punitive and compensatory damages in a suit that cites her father's motivation for participating in the invasion.

Ray Weininger joins a handful of relatives of victims of Castro's regime who have sued Cuba under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which allows victims of designated terrorist states to sue for damages.

Millions have been sought and won, the money coming from frozen Cuban assets or diverted from telephone payments for the island.

For Ray's daughter, who was 6 when he died, the lawsuit is the latest action in a three-decade battle. At age 15, Ray Weininger wrote the first of some 2,000 letters to Castro asking for the return of her father's remains, which Cuba kept for years as an odd trophy, frozen in a morgue. Cuba relented in 1979. He is buried in his native Alabama.

Ray had been recruited by the CIA from the Alabama National Air Guard to help Cuban exiles in the mission. Thursday, some of them spoke on his behalf.

''I'm here to say that he was there and he was a hero,'' said Mario Zuniga, 78, a Bay of Pigs pilot.

Oscar Martinez Roij, 75, the pilots' air controller that day -- April 19, 1961 -- said he remembers hearing Ray's plane had been hit.

``There was no transmission from him, but I heard from another pilot who saw Ray's plane that he was going to crash-land.''

From witness reports, the family has pieced together what happened. Ray and his co-pilot crash-landed and ran. They came under fire and were shot several times. Ray's autopsy showed other bullet wounds. Ray was captured and taken to a medical facility.

''While the Cuban doctors were treating Ray, Fidel Castro's Army carried out orders of Fidel and Raul Castro and summarily executed Pete Ray with a single shot to his right temple,'' the lawsuit alleges.

Other similar lawsuits have been successful.

In April, the family of Howard F. Anderson, an American businessman executed more than four decades ago by Castro's forces, won a $67 million judgment against the Cuban government.

In 2001, a Miami-Dade Circuit judge ordered the Cuban government to pay $27 million to Ana Margarita Martinez, the jilted Miami wife of a Cuban spy, declaring that Cuba orchestrated his sham marriage so he could infiltrate the Miami exile community.

In the most famous and most successful case, a Miami federal judge ordered Cuba to pay $187 million to relatives of three Brothers to the Rescue fliers shot down by Castro's Air Force over the Florida Straits in 1996.

The relatives collected half of that award.

Thursday, October 02, 2003

From :
WingsValor@aol.com

To :
robertoreg2003@yahoo.com

Subject :
Re: Break A Leg

Date :
Thu, 2 Oct 2003 00:26:42 EDT

I will let you know how it goes. Tomorrow morning the Miami Herald and the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel will have a short story, but the main story will be in Friday.
Janet

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Man, I wanna tell ya, to talk to Janet Ray and hear her tell you that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT came to her family and said that her Daddy had gone to work for a bunch of rich Cubans as as a mercenery and got killed, so tough luck- just kills my soul cause I remember everbody in my neighborhood in Dothan talking about how we had lost men at Bay of Pigs and NOBODY WAS TALKING ABOUT IT !!!! Now that's a Hell of a burden but think about what poor Janet has been through with her own government lying about the death of her Daddy!!!!
WE CAN FORGIVE BUT WE WILL NEVER FORGET!!!!


From :
G Winslow

To :
"!winslow, g"

Subject :
[Fwd: CIA Pilot's Daughter Sues Castro For Terrorism]

Date :
Tue, 30 Sep 2003 21:58:39 -0400

Here is another law suit against Castro. These lawsuits usually spell out some unknown facts which might be of interest to Cuba researchers. The other one filed recently was for the death of Bobby Fuller http://cuban-exile.com/doc_226-250/doc0245.htm, but the alleged facts in the complaint conflict with Rolando Masferrer's account written closer to the time of the event http://cuban-exile.com/doc_101-125/doc0118.htm. Anyway this should go unchallenged by Cuba.

Gordon

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: CIA Pilot's Daughter Sues Castro For Terrorism
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 21:33:18 EDT
From: WingsValor@aol.com
To: gwinslow@earthlink.net



"CIA PILOT'S DAUGHTER SUES CASTRO FOR TERRORISM"

Advance Media Advisory and Invitation To Attend
(Will advise if time or place changes.)



Miami - On October 2, 2003, at noon, Janet Ray Weininger, the daughter of murdered CIA pilot Thomas "Pete" Willard Ray will announce a lawsuit against Fidel Castro and the Republic of Cuba. The announcement will take place at the Bay of Pigs memorial at SW 13th Street and Calle Ocho in Miami.

In April 1961, then six-year-old Janet Ray saw her daddy for the last time. Thomas "Pete" Willard Ray was a CIA pilot who was flying air support during the Bay of Pigs action, and was shot down, captured, and executed by the Cuban government. His body was kept in Havana and desecrated for eighteen years until Janet Ray Weininger through heroic efforts got her father's remains back to the United States. Captain Ray was decorated by the CIA for his ultimate sacrifice. Through this monumental lawsuit, Janet Ray Weininger will seek justice for her martyred father, and American hero.

Attorneys Leon Patricios and Spencer Eig represent Janet Ray Weininger. For more information, see www.wingsofvalor.org or contact Spencer Eig at (305) 672-2770 or Leon Patricios at (305) 444-5565.

Janet Ray Weininger
Phone (305) 255-5994 Cellular (305) 610-6464
PO Box 56-2801, Miami, FL 33256-2801
E-mail: wingsvalor@aol.com www.wingsofvalor.org

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Donna D'Errico was born on the 30th of March 1968, in Dothan, Alabama. Before making it to the bathing suit clad Baywatch beaches, Donna considered pursuing a career as an accountant, having excelled in math throughout high school.
This blonde beauty made a switch in career paths and moved to Hollywood, hoping to become an actress. She got more than she bargained for, with magazine covers and several television roles. Before succeeding in Hollywood, Donna was a Las Vegas limo driver, a stripper (for a short period of time) and hit the big league as a Play boy Playmate in September of 1995.

Before landing the role of Donna Marco on the most syndicated show in the world in 1996, Donna D'Errico had several guest appearances on the following television shows: Married With Children, High Tide and Unhappily Ever After

http://www.0hyummmm.com/donnad/biocontact.htm
DOTHAN GIRL MAKES IT BIG! (in more ways than one)

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/3010/alabama.html