[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 74 (Wednesday, June 14, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5103-S5104]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  TRIBUTE TO LIEUTENANT GENERAL BLOUNT

 Mr. L. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I would like to take a moment to 
pay tribute to a Rhode Island hero.
  Mr. President, Lieutenant General John Bruce Blount was just given an 
Honorary Doctorate Degree from his alma mater, the University of Rhode 
Island. A former star athlete, a decorated war hero of two wars, Korea 
and Vietnam, and a man who helped end the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 
1950s, Rhode Islanders were happy to welcome him home.
  The Providence Journal ran this article, ``Hometown Hero Blount to be 
Honored at URI Graduation,'' about him.
  Mr. President, I ask that the text of the article be inserted in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

                     [From the Providence Journal]

          Hometown Hero Blount To Be Honored at URI Graduation

                           (By David Henley)

       Kingston--A favorite son will be returning soon.
       A decorated hero of two wars, a former star athlete who set 
     the still-standing high school basketball record for points 
     scored in a game over half a century ago and a man who helped 
     end the Army-McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, Lt. Gen. John 
     Bruce Blount will return to the University of Rhode Island in 
     a few weeks to pick up his latest recognition. Blount will be 
     one of four recipients of honorary doctorate degrees from his 
     alma mater at the school's 114th commencement May 20.
       ``I'm 50 years away from Kingston, but this is a real 
     thrill,'' Blount said Monday from his home in Columbia, S.C. 
     ``My whole family is coming in, from Carolina, Florida, 
     Detroit. I've always maintained my connections back home, and 
     I knew people were trying to do this, but I guess the planets 
     were just in the right alignment.''
       Blount, known as Bruce, is something of a local legend, 
     both at the university and at South Kingstown High school, 
     where he was a student when he scored his record-setting 66 
     points. The team then played at the St. Francis Parish Hall 
     on High Street; the games lasted only 32 minutes and there 
     were no three-point shots then.
       His military career has been written about many times. As 
     the only URI alumnus to achieve the rank of three-star 
     general, Blount's service in Korea and Vietnam earned him 
     dozens of medals and decorations, including the Silver Star, 
     the Bronze Star, the Korean Chung Mu Distinguished Service 
     Medal and a Purple Heart when he was injured in combat on 
     Korea's Old Baldy.
       Blount became nationally famous when he stood his ground 
     under questioning at the McCarthy hearings, earning praise 
     even from Sen. Joseph McCarthy himself, and later produced 
     photographic evidence discrediting the senator by proving he 
     had doctored evidence.
       But to many of his own generation, and to his elders, he is 
     probably best remembered as just a kid with a basketball 
     under one arm hitchhiking back and forth between Peace Dale 
     and Kingston.
       Blount's family first moved into South County during the 
     Depression, according to his brother Frank, a retired 
     schoolteacher living on Great Island. The boys' father, 
     Joseph Blount, an insurance salesman from Illinois who had 
     met his Rhode Island bride while both served in the Navy in 
     World War I, came to the area looking for work, which he 
     found in local restaurants. Eventually Joe Blount opened 
     Joe's Diner in Peace Dale, where Patsy's Package Store is 
     now, and a second restaurant next to the Wakefield Diner on 
     Main Street. But Loretta Blount had bigger plans for her 
     children.
       ``My mother knew she wanted her children to go to college, 
     so she moved us out of Peace Dale and out to Kingston, just 
     to be near the campus, when I was about 7,'' Bruce Blount 
     said. ``She financed the house by renting rooms out to 
     college kids. When I finally started at the university 
     myself, I was the only kid who actually was farther away from 
     campus in my frat house than I was at home.''

[[Page S5104]]

       Joe Blount contined in the restaurant business, opening the 
     original Ram's Den in the house next to the family home on 
     Upper College Road.
       ``I can remember getting up with my dad at about 4 in the 
     morning and going down and getting the fires going,'' the 
     general said. ``He'd get the baking started for the day. By 
     the time I was 10 I was making the bacon and eggs, putting 
     them up for people. Basically, I was a short-order cook.''
       By that time he also had become a favorite of the school's 
     basketball team, and particularly of its coach, Frank Keaney, 
     another local legend. In fact the whole family was more or 
     less adopted by the university community, to hear the sons 
     tell it. One day, Frank Blount remembers, Keaney came in to 
     see Joe Blount with an idea. It seems he had a team that 
     needed to work to eat, but needed flexibility for practice 
     and games; Joe hired them all as waiters, cooks and 
     dishwashers. When they were playing he tended not to have 
     that much business anyway. Loretta opened a soda shop at 
     Lippitt Hall and worked as a switchboard operator, the same 
     job she had had in the Navy. She became friends with each of 
     the university's presidents over the years, and for years it 
     was a tradition for the president to stop the commencement 
     march to walk over and shake hands with Loretta Blount.
       ``She loved that,'' Frank remembered.
       ``I started out as waterboy for the team, and later I was 
     the mascot,'' Bruce Blount said. ``I grew up knowing more 
     older men, and more athletes, than I knew of kids my own age. 
     ``Back then we didn't just walk around in sneakers, you had 
     regular street shoes, and coach wouldn't let me on the floor 
     with them on. So I would stand in the corners during 
     practice, and when the ball came to me, instead of tossing 
     them back in I would just put them up. I developed a really 
     different sort of shooting style, but I could hit from almost 
     anywhere.''
       Once he started high school, Blount found himself 
     constantly traveling between gyms, from URI's Rodman Hall to 
     St. Francis and the Old Fagan's Hall in Peace Dale, the South 
     Kingstown team's alternate gym. With his gym bag over his 
     shoulder and a basketball under his arm, Blount became a 
     familiar sight on Kingstown Road.
       ``I could get around better than anybody without a car,'' 
     he said.
       That famous basketball career could have led Blount away 
     from Kingston but didn't. Despite being recruited by schools 
     like Brown and Harvard, Blount knew he wanted to attend URI, 
     then called Rhode Island State.
       ``There was never any question,'' he said. ``I was 
     absolutely enthralled with the idea of playing for Rhode 
     Island, and Coach Keaney was an idol to me.'' On his way to 
     collecting more than 1,000 points in his college career, 
     Blount also acted as captain of both the basketball and 
     baseball teams. But he also found time to begin what would be 
     his ultimate career. As an ROTC cadet, Blount became cadet 
     colonel in his senior year and was commissioned in the 
     regular Army as a second lieutenant in the Infantry when he 
     graduated in 1950.
       Starting out as a training officer in the 4th Infantry 
     Division and the 101st Airborne, he was made platoon 
     commander in Korea the next year, then company executive 
     officer, then company commander in the 45th Infantry. He was 
     selected as aide-de-camp by Maj. Gen. C.E. Ryan, commander of 
     the Korean Military Advisory Group, and returned to the 
     states with Ryan after his injury.
       Since then he has worked his way up the ranks, spending 
     time as a staff officer at the Pentagon, in the Southern 
     Command in the Canal Zone and as commander of the 1st 
     Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam. In 1969 
     he was made secretary of the U.S. Army Infantry School in 
     Fort Benning, Ga., and in 1971 was assigned to the European 
     Command, eventually serving as community commander of the 
     American Military Community in Wurzburg, Germany.
       Finally, in 1983, he was promoted to lieutenant general and 
     made chief of staff of the NATO Allied Forces South Command, 
     consisting of units from Greece, Turkey, Italy the United 
     Kingdom and the United States.
       ``I always followed Bruce, did whatever he did, only not as 
     well,'' said little brother Frank Friday. ``When he was in 
     the NATO command, I thought that was a big deal. But I had 
     the most fun when he was on the general's staff at Dix when 
     he was stationed there. Whenever my company needed anything, 
     they would come to me and I would call up, say, the motor 
     pool and tell them I needed a Jeep. They'd ask who I was and 
     I would say, `This is Lieutenant Blount' in my best command 
     voice and get whatever it was I needed.
       ``Of course it only lasted about a month before everybody 
     figured out there were two Lieutenant Blounts on base, but we 
     would begin to laugh our heads off whenever I told him what I 
     was doing.''
       ``For the longest time in my life I was `Bruce Blount's 
     brother,' '' he said. ``And to this day I am very proud of 
     that.''

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