Published February 07. 2021 10:18AM
Carol Sommer
Hiram “Harry” Bingham IV spent from 1937 to 1941 in France in the U.S. diplomatic corps, issuing visas. Many of his clients were refugees seeking safety in America from Nazi persecution. Some of them were famous, some weren’t, but they all had one thing in common: they were fleeing death. His work, much of it in defiance of government orders, was so stressful that, although he was a young man, the experience turned his hair completely white.
One of Harry’s emotional assets in this ordeal may have been his family background, a long line of accomplished people whose collective life stories could comprise an American history textbook.
Ben Franklin’s “Liberty Snake,” first printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754.
Published January 12. 2021 8:00AM
John Steward, Special to The Times
Squeezed between the revolutionary hotbeds of New York and Boston, New London and Groton in the 1700s may have been small ports, but we played on the big stage, helping to bring the segregated colonies together in unity, strengthening the country in preparation for war.
After Parliament enacted the reviled Stamp Act in 1765, the wild Sons of Liberty held two December meetings in a New London tavern, the first actions in organizing all the colonies in the buildup to revolution. We were already up in arms over the Sugar Act and the Currency Act, and now we were becoming national players, dangerously hosting and abetting anarchy.