Sam W. North, Jr., R.I.P.
December 2, 2008
My father, Sam W. North, Jr., died in his sleep this evening around 6 p.m., Pacific Standard Time. He was 91. He lived in Eugene, Oregon. His sister preceded him by over two decades. He leaves behind his wife, Peggy, and me. He had four grandchildren. One preceded him by almost two years.
He had fallen a little over a week ago, breaking his hip in three places. Somehow, he walked back to their apartment (with a walker) in the retirement home. He did not complain until late at night. My mother called the ambulance, which took him to the hospital.
He died in his sleep peacefully, after my mother had left to return to the retirement center. The nurses found him dead half an hour later.
He never talked much about his youth, other than about the family's two dogs. My father always liked dogs.
He was in R.O.T.C. at UCLA in the late 1930's. He joined the Army immediately after graduation. One of his fellow R.O.T.C. members at UCLA was Richard Jenson. He died in North Africa. He had been General Patton's assistant. His death is depicted in Patton. The movie has Patton accompanying the casket, which was on a horse-pulled wagon. George C. Scott narrates the letter sent by Patton to Jenson's parents. I have thought about that scene and that letter for almost four decades.
My father was also in North Africa. He spent the war in Cairo in the military police. He hated the assignment so much that he volunteered for the paratroopers. He hated heights, but he wanted to see action. The request was denied. The biggest action he saw, he later told me, was when some drunken soldier inside a Cairo bar fired a ship distress signal flair. It must have been something to see.
He had one great Army story. He and his buddy, "Snowy" Gustafson, were awaiting their orders in Washington, D.C. in 1942. They had been there for several weeks. Each day, one of them phoned the War Department to see if their orders had been issued. It was Snowy's turn. He called. No orders. He demanded to talk with the flunky's superior. The flunky put him through. "This is Lieutenant Gustafson," Snowy said. "Lieutenant Sam North and I have waited weeks for our orders. We hear nothing. We think it's time for us to get our orders." The voice at the other end replied, "This is Stimson. Who did you say you were?" The flunky had put the call through to the Secretary of War. Snowy said, "Didn't you hear who I am?" The voice said, "No." Snowy said "Good," and hung up.
After the war, my father had odd jobs when he came back to Southern California, including a time with Pacific Electric, which ran the trolley system seen in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Those fake trolleys sure did look like the real ones.
He tried to serve in Korea in 1950. He went back to school at Camp Gordon, in Augusta, Georgia, but they did not want majors. They wanted second lieutenants. They sent him back to California.
He joined the FBI later that year. In those days, you could get in only if you had a law degree or an accounting degree. He was able to get in because of his military police background. He had served in some capacity in the JAG (Judge Advocate General).
His most famous case was when he and three partners were able to track down the identity of Eric Starvo Galt. He was James Earl Ray. They were able to link him to the murder of Martin Luther King by means of a pair of pliers and a pair of men's shorts with a dry cleaner's tag on them, which were found at the crime scene in Memphis (which I finally visited earlier this year -- it is down the block from my church's office). The team traced the pliers to a hardware store in Van Nuys, California, and the shorts to a dry cleaners a few doors up from the hardware store. This story never got in any account of King's murder or Ray's arrest. I verified it in 1995, contacting two of the other three agents.
He retired in 1970. He and my mother moved to the Eugene area in 1972. She still lives there. She turns 91 in two weeks.
They were members of a Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation. They had been brought to faith in Christ by Rev. Milo F. Jamison, the man who made minor fame in 1933 as the first pastor to be de-frocked without a trial in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. His infraction? Orthodoxy. He had refused to bring his UCLA Bible study class under the jurisdiction of an ecumenical campus-wide religious conference, which included all religions. The Presbytery ordered him to join. He refused. Without trial or a warning, a committee of the Presbytery erased his name from membership. (Presbyterian pastors belong to a local Presbytery, not a congregation.) Three years later, the denomination de-frocked J. Gresham Machen and eight other pastors (out of 10,000) for sending money to a missions board not run by the denomination. In effect, they joined Jamison. They all formed a tiny new denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I began writing a book on this in 1962, the year my parents joined Jamison's independent Fundamentalist congregation. In 1996, I finished it: Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church. It's long.
He went back to work part-time as an investigator with MSM Security, a company that hires ex-FBI agents, which then contracts their services to the U.S. government to run background checks on prospective government employees. He worked with them for over a decade. He retired at age 80 (as I recall). He could still conduct a cogent investigation and write up his findings. When he thought he could no longer perform his duties, he submitted his resignation.
He remained a loyal UCLA fan until the end.