Ed McMahon Dead at 86

[Rangerguru]

Legendary game show host, actor and comedian Ed McMahon is dead at the age of 86.

From Wikipedia:

Early years

McMahon was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Eleanor (née Russell) and Edward Leon McMahon, who was a fund-raiser and entertainer. [4] He was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts. He attended The Catholic University of America, majoring in speech and drama. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. He was a member of Phi Kappa Theta fraternity.
McMahon began his career as a bingo caller in Maine when he was 15. Prior to this, he worked as a carnival barker for three years in Mexico, Maine, and he put himself through college as a pitchman for vegetable slicers on the Atlantic City boardwalk.
His first broadcasting job was at WLLH-AM in Lowell, Massachusetts, and he began his television career in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at WCAU-TV. In the 1950s, he emceed the game shows Missing Links, Snap Judgment, Concentration and Who Dunnit?,
[edit]Military service
During World War II, McMahon was a United States Marines fighter pilot and he also served as a flight instructor and test pilot. He was a decorated pilot and was discharged in 1946, remaining in the reserves.[5]
After college, McMahon returned to active Marine duty. He was sent to Korea in February 1953. He flew unarmed O-1E Bird Dogs on 85 tactical air control and artillery spotting missions. He remained in the Marine reserves, retiring with the rank of Colonel in 1966 and was then commissioned as a Brigadier General in the California Air National Guard.
Several of his ancestors, including the Marquis d'Equilly, also had long and distinguished military careers. Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta was a Marshal of armies in France, serving under Napoleon III, and later President. McMahon once asserted to Johnny Carson that mayonnaise was originally named MacMahonnaise in honor of this ancestor, referring to him as the Comte de MacMahon.[6] In his autobiography, McMahon said that it was his father who told him of this relationship and he went on to suggest that he was not certain of the truth of the story.[7]
[edit]Entertainment career

[edit]The Tonight Show
McMahon and Johnny Carson first worked together as announcer and host on the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? (1957-1962). McMahon and Carson left to join The Tonight Show in 1962.
For more than 30 years, McMahon introduced the Tonight Show with a drawn-out "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" His booming voice and constant laughter alongside the "King of Late Night" earned Ed the nickname the Human Laugh Track and "Toymaker to the King".
As part of the introductory patter to The Tonight Show, McMahon would state his name out loud, pronouncing it as Ed "Mc MAH yon", but neither long-time cohort Johnny Carson nor anyone else who interviewed him ever seemed to pick up on that subtlety, usually referring to him as Ed "Mc MAN".
The extroverted McMahon served as a counter to the notoriously shy Carson. Nonetheless, McMahon once told an interviewer that after his many decades as an emcee, he would still get "butterflies" in his stomach every time he would walk onto a stage, and would use that nervousness as a source of energy.

[Jim]

Sorry to see him go. Over the past few years, he had fallen on bad times and was in danger of having his house foreclosed. We will miss him.

[K.Ingraham]

"...and to St Peter he will tell: Another Marine reporting Sir..."

[Hurricane]

Semper Fi' Marine. The skies of heaven just added another ace to it's manifest.

[rgrokelley]

Someone sent this to me.

Colonel Ed has died

Things you may not have known.

He wanted to be a Marine fighter pilot. The US was building up their military force, but they were not at war yet and the Navy required all its potential Navy and Marine pilots to have two years of college. So Ed started classes at Boston College.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked the Army and the Navy both dropped the college requirement and Ed applied to the Marines. His primary flight training was in Dallas and then he went to Pensacola, Florida. He was carrier qualified, which means he knew how to perform a controlled crash of his single engine fighter, onto the rolling deck of a Navy floating runway. It took Ed almost two years to get through all the Navy flight training. His problem was he was a very good pilot and the Marines needed flight instructors.

He had a great command presence and public speaking ability, which landed him in the classroom, training new Marine pilots. His orders to the Pacific fleet and the chance to fly combat missions off a carrier came in the spring of 1945, on the same day the Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Of course his orders where changed. He never went to sea and he was out of the Marines in 1946. Ed stayed in the USMC as a reserve officer. He became a successful personality in the new TV medium, after the war. His Marine command presence helped. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He never got to fly his fighter aircraft, but he saw his share of raw combat.

He flew the Cessna O-1E Bird Dog, which is a single engine slow-moving unarmed plane. He functioned as an artillery spotter for the Marine batteries on the ground and as a forward controller for the Navy & Marine fighter / bombers who flew in on fast moving jet engines, bombed the area and were gone in seconds.
Captain Ed was still circling the enemy looking for more targets, all the time taking North Korean and Chinese ground fire. He stayed with the Marines as a reserve officer and retired in 1966 as a Colonel. The world knows Col Ed as Ed McMahon of the Johnny Carson, Tonight Show.

One night I was watching the show when the subject of Colonel McMahon earning a number of Navy Air Medals came up. Carson, a former Navy officer, understood the significance of these medals, but McMahon shrugged it off, saying that if you flew enough combat missions they just sort of gave them to you. McMahon flew 85 combat missions over North Korea; he earned every one of those Air Medals.

The casualty rate, for flying forward air controllers in Korea sometimes exceeded 50% of a squadron's manpower. McMahon was lucky to have gotten home from that war. Once a Marine, always a Marine. When the public was spitting (taking their personal safety into their own hands) at Marines on the streets of Southern California during Vietnam, Colonel McMahon was taking Marines off the streets and into his posh Beverley Hills home.

I spoke to a retired Marine aircrew member the day Colonel McMahon died and he personally remembered seeing McMahon at numerous Marine Air Bases in California in the 1960s.

He was known for going to the Navy hospitals and visiting the wounded Marines and Sailors from this country's conflicts, even in the last years of his life. Colonel McMahon presented awards and decorations to fellow Marines and attended many a Marine ceremony and the annual Marine Corps Birthday Ball.

He stayed true to his Corps as a board member of the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund and as the honorary chairman of the National Marine Corps Aviation Museum. After retiring from the Marine Reserve, one night on the Johnny Carson show, members of the California Air National Guard came on stage.

Colonel McMahon was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Air Guard in front of millions of Americans who watched it happen live. You will not see anything like that on TV anymore. The three core values of a United States Marine are; honor, courage and commitment.

This is what a Marine is taught from the first day of training and this is what that Marine believes. That was Colonel Edward P. McMahon Jr. USMCR Retired. Before he was a national figure he was a true combat hero and a patriot the nation needed then and this country needs now. Your war is over. Thank you Colonel McMahon. Semper Fi sir.

[RANGER513]

Rest In Peace, Sir.

< HAND SALUTE >

[Jenny Lynn]

Rest In Peace, Sir.

< HAND SALUTE >

Not to distract from Ed McMahon's sacrifices but my thoughts got me thinking ah what different type of hand salutes are there