Who’s got happier families, Democrats or Republicans? David Leonhardt reports on a new study that says it’s Republicans:

 Among married people between the ages of 20 and 60, 67 percent of Republicans report being “very happy” with their marriages….That gap shrank when the researchers factored in demographic differences between parties….But the gap did not disappear. Even among people with the same demographic profile, Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say they are happily married. The seven-percentage-point gap that exists between Republicans and Democrats without any demographic controls shrinks to three percentage points with those controls.

 OK, so three percentage points. And since this study was done by Brad Wilcox of the right-wing Institute for Family Studies, you have to figure it’s as friendly toward Republicans as possible. But even Wilcox admits that causality might work in the opposite direction:

 The GSS data and our earlier research suggest that an elective affinity—based on region, religion, culture, and economics—has emerged in the American electorate: married people are more likely to identify as Republican and unmarried people are more likely to identify as Democratic.

 Sure. The Democratic Party is obviously more friendly toward non-married couples and the Republican Party is more dedicated to the proposition that (heterosexual) marriage is important. So the survey difference could be due to the fact that Republicans are simply less likely to admit to an unhappy marriage. As Wilcox says, “Perhaps Republicans are more optimistic, more charitable, or more inclined to look at their marriages through rose-colored glasses.”

 Personally, I’d be happy to put this whole subject to rest. The differences are small no matter how you slice the data, and really, who cares? Republicans generally report higher happiness levels overall, which is understandable at one level (conservatism doesn’t challenge your comfort level much) but peculiar at another (if they’re so happy, what’s the deal with the endless anger and outrage?). But whatever the reason, if they’re generally happier they’re probably also happier with their marriages.

 As for generally dysfunctional family behavior (teen pregnancy, divorce rates, etc.), I suspect that has a lot more to do with social factors like race, age, religion, and so forth. Party ID doesn’t seem likely to play a huge role as a causal factor. Unless someone comes up with some genuinely blockbuster results, I’m willing to just call this a tie and move on. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist, has written two recent papers noting that children in conservative parts of the country are more likely to grow up with both parents than in liberal ones. In both articles, he challenged the view that blue states are more conducive to stable family life than red states.

 Now Mr. Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia, has published an analysis of data about individual families rather than geographical areas. And he argues this data continues to support his case that the so-called blue-state family model is overrated.

 Self-identified Republicans are more likely to be married and less likely to be divorced than self-identified Democrats, write he and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, based on an analysis of the General Social Survey, an oft-studied national poll. Republicans also report being more satisfied with their marriages on average than Democrats.

 Among married people between the ages of 20 and 60, 67 percent of Republicans report being “very happy” with their marriages. Among Democrats, the share was 60, as it is among independents, write Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Wolfinger, a professor at the University of Utah.

 That gap shrank when the researchers factored in demographic differences between parties. Whites and the religiously observant are both more likely to be Republicans and more likely to report having happy marriages.

 But the gap did not disappear. Even among people with the same demographic profile, Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say they are happily married. The seven-percentage-point gap that exists between Republicans and Democrats without any demographic controls shrinks to three percentage points with those controls.

 The findings are broadly consistent with previous work, also based on national surveys, finding that Republicans are happier with their lives than Democrats on average and also more likely to be married.

 The researchers acknowledge that the gap could stem from people’s attitudes toward life — and survey questions — rather than from the quality of their marriages. “Perhaps Republicans are more optimistic, more charitable or more inclined to look at their marriages through rose-colored glasses,” they write in the article, which was published by the Institute for Family Studies. But it also seems possible that the more respect and even reverence for the idea of marriage in conservative communities affects people’s behavior and attitudes toward their marriages.

 Continue reading the main story Politics and Marriage Satisfaction Republicans report being happier with their marriages on average than Democrats or independents. Very happy Pretty happy Not too happy Democrat Independent Republican 60% 36 4 60 36 4 67 31 Very happy Pretty happy Not too happy Democrat Independent Republican 60% 36 60 36 67 31

 A few decades ago, there was a fairly widespread assumption that “family values” were more the province of conservative America than liberal America. That notion was upended in academic circles by a series of articles and studies, the most important and influential being “Red Families v. Blue Families,” a 2010 book by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone. Liberal attitudes toward gender equality, sexual orientation and education all seem to foster stronger, more stable family lives.

 But Mr. Wilcox’s recent writings strike me as significant because they’re a reminder that conservatism also has values and cultural attitudes — about the importance of marriage and family life — that seem to improve the environment in which children grow up.

 Given the widespread anxiety right now about upward mobility in the United States — about how today’s children can grow up to live more prosperous lives than their parents — it’s worth looking for potential lessons from any political ideology. ||||| Blue families are stronger and more stable than red families. Until recently, this was the conventional wisdom in the media and the academy. But this belief has been challenged by new reports in Family Studies and the New York Times. At least at the regional level, blue families—that is, families in areas that vote Democratic in presidential elections—do not have an advantage. It turns out that, on average, more conservative counties across the country have more marriage, less nonmarital childbearing, and more family stability for their children than do more liberal counties.

 Some scholars haven’t been persuaded by the new research. For instance, economist Noah Smith, who has argued that “liberal morality is simply better adapted for creating stable two-parent families in a post-industrialized world,” wondered if the new red families vs. blue families story held up at the family level: in his words, “Try doing family-level studies” of the red vs. blue divide. We have taken up Smith’s challenge in this Institute for Family Studies research brief.

 Our analysis of adults aged 20 to 60 in the 2010-2014 General Social Survey (GSS) casts doubt on Smith’s contention. Forty percent of Democrats are currently married, versus 57 percent of Republicans.1 Forty-seven percent of ever-married Democrats have been divorced, compared to 41 percent of ever-married Republicans. These data are cross-sectional, so we cannot be sure about the causal relationship between party identification, marriage, and divorce.2 But the data lend no empirical support to the view that blue families are more stable.

 Instead, the GSS data and our earlier research suggest that an elective affinity—based on region, religion, culture, and economics—has emerged in the American electorate: married people are more likely to identify as Republican and unmarried people are more likely to identify as Democratic. Given that marriage generally stabilizes family life, and that there is an affinity between marriage and conservatism, it may well be that it is actually conservatives and conservative regions that are better at fostering “stable two-parent families in a post-industrialized world.” More research is needed to investigate the effect of ideology and region on family stability over the life course.

 But stability is only one measure of the character of family life. We further took up Noah Smith’s challenge by exploring how partisanship is related to another important family-level outcome: marital quality. The benefits of a happy marriage include better physical and psychological outcomes for adults, and, for couples who have children, better emotional and marital outcomes for their sons and daughters. Our main question in this research brief is simple: are red or blue spouses happier?

 According to our analysis of the 2010-2014 GSS, red spouses are happier than blue spouses in their marriages. Married men and women between 20 and 60 years of age who are Republican are seven percentage points more likely than Democrats (and independents) to say they are “very happy” in their marriages. This is a statistically significant difference in marital quality.

 Why are married Republicans happier than their Democratic counterparts? Perhaps the partisan divide can be accounted for by differences in the demographic and cultural composition of each party. After all, prior scholarship has found that marital quality varies by sex, race/ethnicity, education, and religiosity. In turn, each of these factors is linked to partisan identification in America. Women, minorities, and less religious Americans are more likely to identify as Democrats. By contrast, men, whites, and more religious Americans are more likely to identify as Republicans. (We also find a modest Republican advantage in college education in the 2010-2014 GSS.)

 The figure above shows that there are indeed differences in marital quality by race/ethnicity, education, and religious service attendance among GSS respondents. Whites, college-educated Americans, and churchgoing Americans are more likely to report that they are very happy in their marriages, although the education difference isn’t statistically significant. So how do these compositional differences help us to understand partisan differences in marital quality?

 As the figure above indicates, race and ethnicity clearly contribute to the red-blue divide. Once we factor in differences in marital quality by minority status, the Republican advantage shrinks. This suggests one reason Republicans have happier marriages is that, as a party with a larger share of white couples, they are less likely to face the discrimination, segregation, and poverty that minority couples often experience in America, all of which can compromise the quality of married life.

 What about education and income? Given the centrality of social class in predicting better family outcomes for Americans, might the partisan difference in marital happiness be linked to these measures of socioeconomic status? No. The figure above suggests that socioeconomic differences do not help explain the Republican advantage.

 Finally, we explore the extent to which religious service attendance drives the Republican advantage in marital quality. Churchgoing is associated with happier marriages, especially for couples who attend together. That’s because churchgoing couples enjoy more social, normative, and ritual support for their marriages and family lives. We find that religious differences account for a portion of the Republican advantage in marital quality, as the figure above indicates. In other words, once you control for religiosity, the Republican advantage in marital quality shrinks.

 In sum, this Institute for Family Studies brief indicates that married Republicans are more likely than married Democrats to say they are in very happy marriages. Partisan differences in race/ethnicity and religious practice account for more than half of the GOP advantage, but we cannot explain the remainder of it. Perhaps Republicans are more optimistic, more charitable, or more inclined to look at their marriages through rose-colored glasses. But what we do know is this: Democrats do not enjoy an advantage over Republicans when it comes to the quality of their marriages. Further, the General Social Survey indicates that Republicans are also more likely to be married, and less likely to be divorced, than their Democratic fellow citizens. Our analysis of family-level data on marriage, divorce, and marital quality provides no support for the theory that blue families are superior to red families in America. Instead, the evidence suggests the contrary.

 W. Bradford Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Nicholas H. Wolfinger is Professor of Family and Consumer Studies and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. Their coauthored book, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Children, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos, will be published by Oxford University Press at the beginning of 2016.

 Appendix ||||| Today, the conventional wisdom is that “red families” are weaker than “blue families,” a view that was cemented by the publication of Naomi Cahn and June Carbone’s groundbreaking 2010 book on family life and political culture, Red Families v. Blue Families. Red America, the argument goes, is more likely to embrace outmoded views about sex, gender, and marriage that are ill suited to the new economy and the more egalitarian world that we now live in. By contrast, blue America emphasizes education, delayed parenthood, and gender egalitarianism, all values that are supposed to equip its citizens to build comparatively stronger and more stable families in twenty-first-century America.

 In an interview with Cahn and Carbone, Neal Conan at NPR summarized the conventional wisdom this way:

 The most stable families, the homes with two parents to nurture their kids, are found in the liberal strongholds along the East and West Coasts. [By contrast]… the red states, the heartland states, if you will, the states that tout family values or celebrate family values, there are religious and traditional [values there] that you [Cahn and Carbone] say increase the likelihood of having less stable families.

 There is only one problem with the conventional wisdom about family life in red and blue America. It’s mostly wrong. While it’s true that some of the bluest states in the country—such as Massachusetts and Minnesota—have some of the most stable families, some of the reddest states—such as Utah and Nebraska—do, too. In fact, at the state level, as Nicholas Zill and I recently showed at Family Studies, the relationship between voting Republican and stable family life is curvilinear: that is, the bluest states and the reddest states are most likely to enjoy high levels of family stability for the children living within them. In other words, at the state level, there is no straightforward, linear relationship between voting Democratic and children enjoying a more stable family life.

 But the state-level focus of this discussion misses the connection between family stability and political culture at the local level. After all, there are plenty of blue states with lots of red counties (think Pennsylvania), and vice versa (think Texas). Up until now, we have not known about the connection between local political culture and stable family life. As this research brief shows, it turns out, at the local level, red counties typically enjoy somewhat stronger families than do blue counties on at least three measures worth considering: marriage, nonmarital childbearing, and family stability.1

 Figure 1 shows that counties that gave a larger share of their vote to the Republican presidential candidate (Mitt Romney) in 2012 have a higher share of their population that is married. This is true with and without controls for region, education, race, and age at the county level (and weighting for population size). The data suggest that marriage is more likely to ground and guide adult lives, including the entry into parenthood, in red America. The red advantage in marriage, in all likelihood, flows in part from higher levels of religious participation and normative support for marriage found in more politically conservative counties.

 Indeed, as Figure 2 shows, red counties also have somewhat lower levels of nonmarital childbearing. Again, this relationship holds up with and without county-level socio-demographic controls. Being born within marriage matters because children who are born into a married home are much more likely to experience stable family lives than children born to unmarried couples or single parents.

 Contrary to the thesis that blue America does a better job of delivering family stability to our nation’s children, Figure 3 shows that today’s teens are more likely to be living with their biological parents if they live in a red county. Specifically, both with and without controls for county trends in education, race, and age (and weighting for population size), teens in red counties are more likely to be living with their biological parents, compared to children living in bluer counties. To be sure: the positive link between voting Republican and family stability is only modest, but it runs directly against the conventional wisdom.

 This finding is noteworthy because children raised in stable, two-parent families are more likely to avoid detours in life that can get them off track, such as a teenage pregnancy or incarceration. They are also significantly more likely to get a good education and to flourish in the contemporary labor force. And Harvard economist Raj Chetty’s new research tells us that communities with more two-parent families are also more likely to foster high levels of economic mobility for poor children.

 Now, it is true that divorce is more common in the South, a region that tilts red. As I have noted, “the legacy of slavery, low levels of education, a history of underinvesting in public institutions, and a Scotch-Irish culture marked by higher levels of family instability” all seem to have combined to make family life more fragile in the South. If the South did a better job of fostering marital stability, the red family advantage would be stronger than it is.

 But this divorce disadvantage does not translate into higher levels of family instability in red America as a whole. That’s probably because nonmarital childbearing, not divorce, is now the biggest engine of family instability in the United States. Here, red America’s stronger religious and normative support for marriage—manifested in higher rates of marriage and lower rates of nonmarital childbearing—means that the divorce disadvantage in red America is outweighed by the fact that children are more likely to be born to a married family in more conservative counties. The bottom line: the marriage advantage in red America helps explain why children in red counties are somewhat more likely to enjoy stable families than are children in blue counties.

 These analyses don’t mean that other factors, such as education and race, are unimportant. As Cahn and Carbone would predict, the American Community Survey indicates that a higher level of education is also linked to more marriage, less nonmarital childbearing, and more family stability at the county level (see Appendix below). Teenagers in counties with lots of college-educated adults are more likely to be raised by their own married parents, because better-educated Americans are now more likely to get and stay married. And education is higher in blue counties. So, education would seem to play a particularly important role in stabilizing family life in blue America.

 Furthermore, one reason that blue counties are more likely to have lower levels of marriage, higher levels of nonmarital childbearing, and more family instability is that they also have more African Americans. As the Appendix (below) indicates, the share of African Americans in a county is linked to lower levels of marriage, higher levels of nonmarital childbearing, and lower levels of family stability. Here, the cumulative effect of slavery, racism, segregation, and poverty help explain these family trends by race.

 These analyses also tell us that red counties do not have an overwhelming advantage when it comes to family life. Unfortunately, only about one in two teens is part of a two-parent, biological family in most red and blue counties across America.

 But this research brief makes it very clear that the conventional wisdom about red families vs. blue families is wrong. In contemporary America, red families have a modest comparative advantage when it comes to family stability for children. That’s in part, it would seem, because red America endows marriage with comparatively greater significance and power than does blue America.

 W. Bradford Wilcox is a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and the co-author of “For Richer, for Poorer: How Family Structures Economic Success in America.” He also directs the Home Economics Project at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies. Follow him on Twitter @WilcoxNMP.

 1. Earlier research and journalistic coverage have highlighted the elective affinity between high rates of marriage and voting Republican for president at the local levels. In fact, in 2012, the share married was one of the best correlates of red voting at the county level. This also means that the share unmarried in a county was one of the best correlates of voting blue. To put this another way: The arrow of causality between the (political) culture of red counties and marriage is likely to point both ways, with more conservative regions valuing marriage more, and with more married counties more likely to favor limited government, conservative values, and the Republican Party.

 Appendix

 The association between county partisanship and family stability holds in the South and the North, as the scatterplots below indicate. (Southern states include Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.) Also below are the regression equations for the three outcomes covered in this research brief: the share of adults married, percent of births to unmarried parents, and family stability. In each of these models, variables tapping county-level trends in education, age, race, and region (South vs. North) are controlled for, and the data are weighted by county population size. |||||

Write a summary.

– A University of Virginia sociologist who's not convinced that liberal families are better off than conservative ones has what he says is more data to back up his theory. W. Bradford Wilcox says that not only do families who live in "red" conservative counties "enjoy somewhat stronger families" than those who live in "blue" liberal counties: He's also analyzed data about individual families, not just geographical areas, and finds that self-identified Republicans are more likely than self-identified Democrats to be married and less likely to be divorced, the New York Times reports. And of married people between the ages of 20 and 60 polled in the survey on the Institute of Family Studies website, Wilcox found that 67% of GOPers reported they were "very happy" in matrimony, while only 60% of Democrats were, and 60% of independents. The gap did shrink to three percentage points once certain other demographic factors were taken into account (e.g., whites and religious people were more likely to say they have happy marriages). However, Kevin Drum writes for Mother Jones that we should probably "call it a tie" instead, since the study was done for a right-wing website—"You have to figure it's as friendly toward Republicans as possible," he notes—and because Republicans may simply be less likely to admit when their marriages are rocky. "As Wilcox says, 'Perhaps Republicans are more optimistic, more charitable, or more inclined to look at their marriages through rose-colored glasses,'" Drum points out. But David Leonhardt writes for the Times that "it also seems possible that the more respect and even reverence for the idea of marriage in conservative communities affects people's behavior and attitudes toward their marriages," adding that, "given the widespread anxiety right now about upward mobility … it's worth looking for potential lessons from any political ideology." (A stunning 99% of evangelical Christians said they were happy a few years back.)


Article:
ROBIN YOUNG, HOST:

 It's HERE AND NOW.

 And when we were in Atlanta earlier this week, a story caught our eye. It started as a nightmare. A family had invested thousands in a wedding - dinner for 200 at the Villa Christina restaurant, complete with gold plates, crystal glasses. Then something went wrong; the wedding was called off. What to do? Well, the family decided to give the reception to the homeless.

 The Fowler family of Atlanta donated their reception to groups like Hosea Feed the Hungry and Mary Hall Freedom House. They were the recipients. Joining us from the studios of WABE in Atlanta are Carol Fowler, one of the hosts. Welcome.

 CAROL FOWLER: Thank you.

 YOUNG: And Elisabeth Omilami. She's with Hosea Feed the Hungry. Elisabeth, welcome to you as well.

 ELISABETH OMILAMI: Thank you so much.

 YOUNG: And Carol, we don't want to pry, but we know that it was your daughter, Tamara, who actually went to the reception that is now - that was now for the homeless in the Atlanta area - who was part of a wedding that was called off. Was this a shock to you, the parent, when this happened?

 FOWLER: Yes, we were surprised, and we're very pleased that she's handling it so well.

 YOUNG: I should say so. I mean, going to...

 FOWLER: Yes, indeed.

 YOUNG: Going to the reception that was going to be for her, and now it's for 200 strangers.

 FOWLER: Yes, and she was also very delighted to see and know that others had an opportunity to enjoy something rather than just allow it to go to waste.

 YOUNG: Well, but here you are, the parent, and along with your husband, Willie Fowler, I only imagine this was costing thousands. You had 200 guests, beautiful place settings; it just seemed like a wonderful hall. You could've had 200 of your friends. You could've had the friends who were invited still come, and feed them. When was the decision made to give this meal to the homeless?

 FOWLER: Forty days prior to the wedding, when we were made aware that there would no longer be a wedding, it was my husband's idea. We prayed about it. And when he woke up the next morning, he said, we're going to call Hosea Feed the Hungry, and ask if we can donate it to the needy. I immediately looked up the number and called, and spoke with Mrs. Elisabeth Omilami. And in doing so, we partnered. And it was such a wonderful feeling just to partner with them.

 YOUNG: Yeah. Well, I want to bring Elisabeth in. Elisabeth, what happens when you get that phone call from the Fowlers saying, we'd like to give you our reception for 200?

 OMILAMI: At first, I thought it was a prank call because it was such an amazing offering. And then she said she wanted to focus on women and families, that she wanted to focus on children - which 70 percent of the homeless in Atlanta are children. And so we had an opportunity to go out and look for places like the Nicholas House and Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, as well as Mary Hall Freedom House. We'd called them all. We said, the Fowler family is going to have a party for you! Then they said, what do you mean? Then we said, it's just for you. There's no cost. All you have to do is get there. They never would've - we were talking about which fork to use.

 (LAUGHTER)

 OMILAMI: And we would try to teach the children about the etiquette of sitting at a formal table setting. So it was just an exciting day, and example of how we can address the issues of homelessness across the country.

 YOUNG: Elisabeth, tell us more about the actual meal. You mentioned the forks - probably three, you know, and then a couple of spoons. And I mentioned, this is at the Villa Christina, beautiful settings, sweet tea lemonade, hors d'oeuvres.

 OMILAMI: Four glasses.

 YOUNG: Four glasses, which...

 OMILAMI: Yes. Four glasses...

 YOUNG: For a lot of people is...

 OMILAMI: And a wonderful - passed hors d'oeuvres, and then a wonderful four-course meal as well as dessert. The passed hors d'oeuvres were very interesting because the children were wondering, could we take the whole tray or do we just take one off of the tray?

 (LAUGHTER)

 OMILAMI: So this was an educational opportunity as well because now, they all know how to eat at a four-course meal, and the etiquette involved in that.

 YOUNG: That's Elisabeth Omilami of Hosea Feed the Hungry. It's a homeless organization in the Atlanta area. They were the beneficiary of an incredible gift from the Fowler family. We're speaking with Carol Fowler. She was supposed to be the mother of the bride. You're listening to HERE AND NOW.

 Well, so here you have this event just this past Sunday. We understand you renamed it from Tamara's wedding to the First Annual Fowler Family Celebration of Love.

 OMILAMI: Yes, and I got that from Mr. Fowler because it was his birthday. It was his 70th birthday, and he could have had his own birthday party, but he got up and he talked about what it meant to be a real man. And he talked about the commitment to the community, as a real man. And after I heard him speak, I realized that this was a celebration of love - love between Carol and Willie and the Fowler family, their love for the poor, and Hosea Feed the Hungry's love for the 61,000 people we serve per year.

 YOUNG: OK. So it's been renamed the First Annual Fowler Family Celebration of Love.

 OMILAMI: Yes.

 YOUNG: Will there be another one, Carol?

 FOWLER: We would love it to happen, and we will start working on it immediately. What we would like to do is look for sponsors, to have a larger gathering.

 YOUNG: Well, and I'm wondering, too, you might also get the word out that if others have, I mean, weddings get canceled. Thousands of them get canceled every year.

 FOWLER: Yes. Mm-hmm.

 YOUNG: We did a story about a website where you can resell your wedding, but what an idea to maybe give it away. And I'm sure there was a little - perhaps a tax write-off; not that that's why you would ever do it.

 OMILAMI: Available.

 YOUNG: Yeah.

 OMILAMI: The difference in selling your wedding and giving it away, as the Fowlers did, is that these children will never forget what they experienced - for the rest of their lives.

 FOWLER: Exactly.

 OMILAMI: We had a face painting there. We had 16 different - the entertainment for the children, 16 different acts. And then the inspirational teaching that we got to pour into them to let them know, your beginning does not determine your destiny.

 FOWLER: Exactly. That is not our main focus - a tax write-off - because if we're able just to save one child in that group and have them soar to the heights of corporate America, we will have won.

 YOUNG: Well, and I'm thinking, too, Carol Fowler, something Elisabeth just said - that the message that came from your husband and others to these kids was, your beginning is not your destiny - I'm wondering if that's a message for your daughter Tamara as well.

 FOWLER: I'm certain it is. As I indicated and stated previously, she is handling it very well. There is no empathy or pity to be given. She is a young, educated, black woman with many opportunities.

 YOUNG: Well, in the picture that I'm looking at in the Atlanta Constitution as she greets her guests at what was going to be her wedding, she looks pretty happy.

 FOWLER: She is...

 OMILAMI: And she was.

 FOWLER: There's a message I would like to leave with the public, and that is: Events are canceled and sometimes, for unknown reasons. Do not allow that opportunity to go to waste. Call up your favorite charity. Give them an opportunity to use that for people that will not have an opportunity, perhaps, in life.

 YOUNG: That's Carol Fowler. She was to be the mother of the bride. But when a wedding was canceled, the family decided to give it to the homeless. We've also been speaking with Elisabeth Omilami of Hosea Feed the Hungry, the homeless organization in the Atlanta area that was one of the recipients of the Fowler family's generosity. Thank you both.

 FOWLER: You're welcome.

 OMILAMI: Thank you, Robin.

 FOWLER: Thank you, Robin.

 YOUNG: To heck with that guy!

 (LAUGHTER)

 FOWLER: She is not marred by it, in the least.

 OMILAMI: ...missed a beat.

 (LAUGHTER)

 YOUNG: Sorry, a little editorializing there. From NPR and WBUR Boston, I'm Robin Young.

 JEREMY HOBSON, HOST:

 I'm Jeremy Hobson. This is HERE AND NOW.

 (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. ||||| When Willie and Carol Fowler's only daughter cancelled her wedding 40 days before she was set to walk down the aisle, the parents were faced with a venue, food and entertainment that had all been paid for.

 But instead of cancelling everything and losing their deposits, they decided to change the guest list -- to 200 homeless people.

 "We went home that evening and my husband woke up the next morning and I was in the process of cancelling out the venue and he said, 'No, what we'll do is donate it to Hosea Feed the Hungry,'" Carol Fowler told ABCNews.com today.

 "It was a vision," Fowler said of her husband's idea. "He said he had prayed on it during the night and God had directed him and that's what we were going to do."

 The Fowlers called Hosea Feed the Hungry, an organization that their daughter had volunteered for when she was younger. It is a nonprofit organization in Atlanta, Ga., that provides homeless individuals with services and resources.

 "When they first called, the administration thought it was a prank call because it was too good to be true," Quisa Foster of Hosea Feed the Hungry said. "It's a very creme de la creme wedding venue, so to say that you're going to host 200 homeless individuals at Villa Christina -- it sounds like a prank call."

 The Fowlers persisted and eventually had a meeting with the organization to prove their good intentions and plan the event.

 On Sept. 15, buses transported 200 homeless women, children and families to Villa Christina for the event. It began at 2 p.m. with outdoor appetizers and space for the children to run and play.

 The event then moved inside, where the approximately 50 children had a room to themselves with face-painting, juggling and crowns.

 "The children had chicken fingers, French fries, fresh fruit and chocolate chip cookies," Carol Fowler said. "The adults had salmon and chicken."

 "All the plates were empty and there wasn't any leftover food at all. It was an eye-opening experience," Foster said. "You go to weddings sometimes and you see a lot of people really waste food. We take so many things for granted. These clients or guests, as we call them, they don't."

 The day's "inspiration program" included a motivational speaker for the adults.

 "When you look at the faces of the women and children and actually participated in the event, they look like you and me," Foster said. "These are working families that for whatever reason -- the recession, economic turn -- have found themselves in a place where they're without a place to live and starting over."

 "It was a wonderful event. It brought tears to my eyes," she said.

 The Fowlers were very involved in the whole event and enjoyed greeting all of their guests. Their daughter was also on hand for a day that was "bittersweet but rewarding" for her, Willie Fowler said. The family declined to comment on why the wedding had been cancelled.

 "There is no way to explain how it makes you feel, but it's wonderful," Willie Fowler said of seeing the joy at the event.

 "It's just that wonderful, rewarding feeling," Carol Fowler said. "If we could just inspire one youth in that crowd to rise above the situation today and be a very responsible member of society tomorrow, that would be extremely rewarding."

 The Fowlers are hoping to make the affair a yearly event that will be two days and incorporate educational elements for the participants.

 They pointed out that events are cancelled all the time and encouraged others to think about donating

 "If you have cancelled an event, do not walk away. Pick up the phone and call your favorite charity and offer it to them," Carol Fowler said. "We're regular, working people and anybody can do this. This is not star stuff." ||||| share tweet pin email

 Today Children attend a party that was converted for a celebration for the homeless by a family who donated their cancelled wedding reception.

 Carol and Willie Fowler had planned an elaborate, sophisticated wedding reception for their daughter, only to have it canceled six weeks before the ceremony. So the Atlanta couple turned their heartbreak into an occasion for celebration — throwing a party for more than 200 homeless people instead.

 “My husband actually prayed about it,” Carol Fowler said. “The next morning he woke, I was in the process of canceling the venue, letting them know that we had no use for it, and he said, ‘No, we’re going to call "Hosea Feed the Hungry" and have them round up people from the shelters.'”

 Fowler said she loved the idea, especially since “we were going to spend this money anyway" with only 40 days left before the Sept. 15 ceremony.

 Neither of the Fowlers had worked with "Hosea Feed the Hungry" before but knew about the organization because both of their children — their daughter, Tamara, and their son — had volunteered for the Atlanta-based nonprofit group.

 Today The couple wanted to do something positive with the money they'd spent on the event, so they turned the party into entertainment for local homeless families, bringing in entertainment like a clown for the kids.

 “At first I thought it was a prank call. I thought somebody was joking with us,” recalled Elizabeth Omilami, the charity’s chief executive office.

 But she quickly realized that the Fowlers were for real — and started working to meet their wishes of gathering 200 people, preferably women with children, for a full sit-down meal at a swanky local restaurant.

 “We didn’t get any cash out of it, but people found out that somebody cares about them and that’s worth more than any cash we could have given them,” she said.

 Omilami arranged to have buses transport residents from three area shelters to the restaurant for the afternoon celebration. Guests were greeted with glass tumblers of punch and lemonade and plated hors d’oeuvres of beef tenderloin kabob, coconut shrimp and, for the kids, mac ’n cheese shooters.

 Children were greeted by a clown, juggler and face painter. They later were served their own special meals of chicken fingers, French fries and fresh fruit in a room separate from the adults, who sat down to a meal of salmon and chicken.

 Alvin Evans / Today Guests attending a party that originally was supposed to be a wedding reception, but converted into a party for the homeless.

 “The feeling was one you cannot explain, to see the faces and hear their thank you’s,” Fowler said of the guests. Her entire family attended the celebration, including her husband, children and her grandchildren.

 Fowler, who declined to comment on why the wedding was canceled, said her daughter found the experience “surreal but incredibly rewarding.” What made it all the more special was the fact that the party fell on the day before the 70th birthday of Fowler’s husband.

 “In lieu of having all of our friends, and we could have packed the place with just our friends, he opted to have people from shelters be our guests,” he said.

 Julie Bilecky, sales and marketing director of the party’s venue, Villa Christina, called the event “awesome.”

 “What a way to make lemonade out of lemons,” she said. “Carol and Bill did a phenomenal job of giving back to the community. It could have been difficult situation but everyone worked together to make it a different kind of party. It was fabulous.”

 The event turned out so great that the Fowlers hope to hold a similar opportunity annually and already have started thinking about sponsors for next year.

 “We feel that this is something that God would like us to do because obviously, we did not set out to do this,” she said. |||||Summary:

– Willie and Carol Fowler were prepared to lose their deposits. Their daughter canceled her Georgia wedding with just 40 days' notice, and the venue, food, and entertainment were already paid for. Then Willie had "a vision," his wife tells ABC News. "I was in the process of canceling out the venue and he said, 'No, what we'll do is donate it to Hosea Feed the Hungry.'" Their daughter had volunteered for the organization, which helps homeless people in the Atlanta area, when she was younger. And that's how, on Sept. 15, the Fowler Family Celebration of Love was born. Two hundred guests were bused to Villa Christina for a four-course meal complete with coconut shrimp and salmon (the 50 kids in attendance got chicken fingers). The family hopes to get sponsors and make it an annual event, Carol tells WBUR. A rep for Hosea Feed the Hungry said the nonprofit initially thought the Fowlers were pulling their leg: "It's a very creme de la creme wedding venue, so to say that you're going to host 200 homeless individuals at Villa Christina—it sounds like a prank call." The Fowlers' daughter attended the event, and her dad says it was a "bittersweet but rewarding" experience; her mom tells Today Tamara found it "surreal but incredibly rewarding." Carol has this advice: "If you have canceled an event, do not walk away. Pick up the phone and call your favorite charity and offer it to them. We're regular, working people and anybody can do this. This is not star stuff." (In Boston, a homeless man who did a very good deed is being handsomely rewarded.)


Write a summary based on this article:

Major Garrett, the network's chief White House correspondent, and Norah O'Donnell, the co-anchor of CBS This Morning, are two likely candidates. | AP Photo

 Now that Bob Schieffer has announced his retirement, CBS News is hard at work determining who will become the next host of "Face the Nation."

 Network President David Rhodes is a long way from settling on a successor. He declined to comment on the matter during an interview with the On Media blog on Wednesday night, and sources close to the network said no final decision has been made.

 But there is a shortlist, those sources said: Internally, Rhodes and his fellow executives are looking at Major Garrett, the network's chief White House correspondent, and Norah O'Donnell, the co-anchor of "CBS This Morning" and substitute host for Schieffer on "Face." One source also said that John Dickerson, the network's political director, is on the list of potential replacements.

 But CBS brass are considering outside talent as well: Jake Tapper, the CNN host who previously substituted for George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Sunday show "This Week," is a top consideration. ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl is also under consideration. However, both men are believed to be under contract with their respective employers.

 A key factor in CBS' decision-making process is the 2016 presidential campaign season, which is prime time for Sunday public affairs programs. While Schieffer intended to retire soon, a source close to him said that the host felt increased pressure to make the decision because CBS wanted to be well-positioned for 2016. Schieffer, while widely respected, is not as wired-in as other Sunday show hosts to the machinations of the campaign process.

 Of course, CBS isn't the only Sunday morning public affairs program looking for new talent. CNN "State of the Union" host Candy Crowley left the program months ago. Since her departure, CNN has filled in with a rotating cast of hosts and has yet to announce a formal replacement.

 Follow @politico

 Read more about: Major Garrett, Jake Tapper, Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer, Norah O'Donnell, Jonathan Karl, John Dickerson ||||| Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas

 April 8, 2015

 58 years ago when I was a student, it was the end of my sophomore year here at TCU, I got my first paid job in journalism. A full time job. I was hired by a little radio station here in Fort Worth. And because that is where it all started for me, I wanted this to be the place, and I wanted you all to be the first to know: This summer I am going to retire.

 It's been a great adventure. You know, I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. Because as a little boy, as a young reporter, I always wanted to be a journalist. And I got to do that! And not many people get to do that. I couldn't have asked for a better life or something that was more fun and more fulfilling.

 That little job at KXOL - which by the way paid $1 an hour. They had the strangest overtime system I've ever heard of. I've never heard of anything since like it. The first hour of overtime was 90 cents. The second hour was 80 cents. The third hour. We always used to say that if you worked 11 hours, you had to pay them a dime! But this is true! I'm sitting here. This is true.

 But that job led to other jobs. When I went into the Air Force, there years I was there, I was always the editor of military publications. I came back to Fort Worth after the Air Force and because Phil Record, the police reporter at the Star-Telegram knew me because we had covered so many wrecks together on the police beat. He was promoted to night city editor and there was an opening the police reporter. So he promised me -- he recommended me for the job and I became the police reporter at the Star-Telegram. That of course led to a job at channel 5 television and that of course led to my eventual hiring at CBS in New York.

 I've never believed much in the self-made man theory. I think we all need a little help. And I had a lot of help along the way.

 I am especially indebted to the Star-Telegram. Because when I got there, Phil Record taught me to be a reporter, editor Jack Butler then sent me to Vietnam, which was the turning point in my career. The publisher Amon Carter Jr.'s wife found me a wife. It was one-stop shopping for me at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Georgianna Carter is here tonight.

 And once I got to CBS, I had this series of wonderful bosses. Bill Small, who was the Washington bureau chief, who hired me when I walked in off the street literally without an appointment. I later found out that I walked in on someone else's appointment and for the beginning, I was the other guy. I was the only guy that was ever hired by CBS, well they knew by then. But it turned out that the bureau chief knew James A. Byron, who was the news director at channel 5. He called him and gave him a recommendation. Then I had this job at CBS.

 Then I had this wonderful boss, Richard S. Salant, who was the epitome of the values that CBS News has always stood for. Then down the years, Les Moonves, who was the CEO of CBS, who put me in the anchor chair after Dan Rather left. He was my great good friend and we worked together during that very difficult time at CBS News. Then Jeff Fager, the executive producer of "60 Minutes." Then, one of the most remarkable people I know, my current boss David Rhodes. He's right over here. David, stand up, I want people to see you. Truth is, I'm twice as old as David Rhodes. And people have said why are you deciding to retire -- that kind of might be a hint that somebody's telling me! But he is very precocious. His brother told me that when he was in the second grade, he was the only second grader who carried a briefcase around. It's true. But he's done a remarkable job at CBS News.

 One of the reasons that I have decided this is the time for me retire is that I am so proud of where CBS News is now. Like any large organization, we've had our ups and down. We're on a high right now. And with shows like CBS This Morning, with a real of emphasis on hard news. A lot more emphasis on foreign reporting than others are doing, with people like Holly Williams.

 Face The Nation I think is better than it has ever been. And what I want to say is this was total team effort. My equal partner in all of this - someone I have worked with for 25 years - she was there when we decided to go to an hour, and when we finally moved to number 1. She was right there with me and we've been together all the way. There is nobody on the professional side of my life that I feel more indebted to, or that I owe more to, than my great friend Mary Hager.

 Mary was about the age of these other kids when she started with me. We were covering Capitol Hill together and we had some great times. it was the time of the Contract for America and all that was going on. Mary and I worked 50 straight days without a day off. We were off a couple days then worked another 39 straight days without a day off. And I'll tell you something else: You couldn't have made me not show up. There were always so many exciting things going on. And Mary was always there. It was a great experience for both of us. And now, to be working with her when Face The Nation is in the place that it is, is a wonderful thing for me.

 I have received many forms of recognition over the years, but no honor that I have received over the years is more important to me, or means more to me, is having my name first on the journalism school here and then last year on the College of Communications. Thank you. I think some of my professors would probably have a heart seizure if they realized my name was on those schools now after some of the grades I turned in. Kindly old Dr. [IN AUD] gave me a C in Spanish that final semester, which I needed to get out of here. But he believed in mercy over justice. I got that C and I took my diploma and left before they took it away from me.

 I am so proud also of where the journalism school and the college have come in the last 11 years. When they asked me about putting my name on the journalism school, I said I would be greatly honored to do that, but I only want to do it if you want to take it to another level. I said we must strive to be the best in the country. We might not get there. But we're certainly not going to get there unless we aim high, unless we try to do it. And they said they would. It took us about three years to do it, but we raised the money. We're not the best school yet but we have a chance to, because we now have a facility that is good as any communications college in the country. We still have a ways to go, but I think with the right attitude and the right vision, I think we can get there. I believe we can do it. It's going to take a lot of people working together to get that done. But I think it is doable.

 And finally, I just want to say one thing. Of all the people that have been with me all along, there is the one who counts the most, the one who has done the most. In fact, every once in a while she's the one who comes up with these commentaries that I write on Sunday. She is truly a great muse. She is that young woman that Georgianna Carter found for me 48 years come Wednesday, we will have been married. My dear wife Pat. Turn around! She is just simply the best.

 I want to thank all of you all for coming. To those of you students who are thinking of going especially into journalism or any of these communications jobs, all I can tell you is that I can't think of anything I could have done that I could have gotten more satisfaction from and more downright fun. And when you come right to it, that is why you should choose what you want to do. Don't worry about the success. Pick something you like to do, and if you're good at it, the success part takes care of itself.

 For me, it was a great life. I've often said that if my life ended tomorrow, I would have gotten my money's worth. I never imagined I would have the kind of experiences I had in journalism and I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world. To all of you at the Journalism College and at the College of Communication - I'd just say to you, let's still try to be the very best we can. Always aim high. Because if you don't aim high, there's no way you're going to move very far. Thank you for what you've done and thank you all for coming tonight. I love you all. Thank you all! ||||| Bob Schieffer, the anchor of CBS News' "Face the Nation," announced Wednesday that he will retire this summer after more than 50 years of working in journalism.

 Bob Schieffer announces retirement

 Schieffer, who is 78, has been with CBS News for 46 years. 2015 marked his 24th year anchoring "Face the Nation," which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year.

 "Because that was where it all started for me, I wanted this to be the place, and I wanted you all to be the first to know that this summer I'm going to retire," he said at the annual Schieffer Symposium at Texas Christian University, his alma mater.

 "It's been a great adventure," Schieffer said. "You know, I'm one of the luckiest people in the world because as a little boy, as a young reporter, I always wanted to be a journalist, and I got to do that. And not many people get to do that, and I couldn't have asked for a better life or something that was more fun and more fulfilling."

 President Obama talks ISIS, immigration, and midterm elections

 He has interviewed every president since Richard Nixon as well as most of those who sought the office. Schieffer most recently interviewed President Obama last November, his third interview with the president on "Face the Nation."

 Schieffer also moderated three debates for the Presidential Commission on Debates in 2004, 2008 and 2012.

 "He's been an inspiration and a mentor to so many colleagues-- and frankly, to me. You could see at TCU tonight how that inspiration extends to a wider community of reporters and editors and academics," said CBS News President David Rhodes.

 Prior to joining CBS in 1969, Schieffer was a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram where he was the first reporter from a Texas newspaper to report from Vietnam.

 Bob Schieffer: Why I love moderating “Face the Nation”

 Schieffer has won virtually every award in broadcast journalism, including eight Emmys, the overseas Press Club Award, the Paul White Award presented by the TV News Directors Association, the Edward R. Murrow Award given by Murrow's alma mater Washington State University.

 In 2008, Schieffer was named a living legend by the Library of Congress. In 2013, he was inducted into the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame along with CBS Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves, actor Ron Howard, sportscaster Al Michaels and writer/producer Dick Wolf.

 Schieffer also received the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence from the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Writing from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) in the Network Radio and Television category for a CBS Radio News commentary about "the ghost of Congress future."

 "Face the Nation" was the highest rated Sunday talk show in 2014 for the third consecutive year and the broadcast won an Emmy for its show covering the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination in 2013.

 In his announcement Wednesday, Schieffer thanked several people who helped advance his career: Phil Record, an editor at the Star-Telegram; the paper's editor, Jack Butler; and CBS colleagues Bill Small, Richard Salant, Sean McManus, Jeff Fager, Moonves and Rhodes. He called "Face the Nation" Executive Producer Mary Hager his "equal partner" in his career and the person to whom he feels the most indebted.

 "I've never believed much in the self-made man theory; I think we all need a little help and I had a lot of help along the way," he said.

 Schieffer said that one of the factors behind his decision to retire now is his pride in CBS News' current footing.

 Bob Schieffer explains what keeps him going

 "We, like any large organization, we have had our ups and downs; we're on a high right now," he said, praising the commitment to hard news and foreign reporting across the network. "Face the Nation, I think, is better than it has ever been."

 In 2005, TCU named its journalism school in his honor and in 2013 named the college in which the journalism school is located the Bob Schieffer College of Communication. In his speech, he said it was the honor that has meant the most to him.

 Schieffer is one of the few reporters in Washington to have covered all four of the major beats: the Pentagon, the White House, Congress and the State Department. He became the network's chief Washington correspondent in 1982 and was named the anchor and moderator of "Face the Nation", CBS News' Sunday public affairs broadcast, in 1991.

 Schieffer anchored the Saturday edition of the "CBS Evening News" for 23 years. In March 2005, with the departure of Dan Rather, Schieffer served as interim anchor of "The CBS Evening News," until August 2006 - a period that saw a substantial increase in ratings.

 Schieffer has written four books: The New York Times bestsellers "This Just in" and "Bob Schieffer's America" as well as "Face The Nation: My Favorite Stories from the First 50 Years of the Award-winning News Broadcast" and "The Acting President."

 He was born in Austin, Texas and grew up in Fort Worth where he graduated from North Side High School and Texas Christian University. He served three years in the U.S. Air Force. |||||

– Most people don't keep the same spouse or home for nearly half a century, much less the same job, but veteran newsman Bob Schieffer has stuck it out with CBS News for 46 years. That's a run that will end this year, he announced at alma mater Texas Christian University yesterday. "And because that is where it all started for me, I wanted this to be the place, and I wanted you all to be the first to know: This summer I am going to retire." Acknowledging the network's "ups and downs," Schieffer said one of the factors driving his decision "is that I am so proud of where CBS News is now." The 78-year-old has held the moderator job at Face the Nation since 1991; Politico has a short list of who might replace him.


“ Be Free or Die makes you want to stand up and cheer. Cate Lineberry has done us all a great service by telling this incredibly moving, thrilling, and important story about an American hero who deserves to be remembered, and admired.”

 – Candice Millard, New York Times bestselling author of Hero of the Empire ||||| View Images Harold Hayes, seen here on the left in 1945 and on the right in present day, was one of the first medics added to the 807th’s roster.

 Photographs courtesy Miranda Harple/Cate Lineberry (right) and Harold Hayes Collection (left)

 Harold Hayes was only 21 years old in November 1943 when the transport plane he and 29 other Americans were traveling in crash-landed in Nazi-occupied Albania.

 During their months-long ordeal, the group of men and women traversed more than 600 miles of brutal terrain, dodged German troops, faced desperate hunger and debilitating illnesses, survived blizzards, and were caught in crossfire. When they finally made it across Allied lines, they were forbidden by the military from discussing the details of the events with anyone, even their family members.

 Now, almost 70 years later, Hayes, the only living member of the group, talks about his experiences with Cate Lineberry, author of the new book, The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines, published this month.

 What was your role in the Army Air Forces, and where were you serving in early November 1943?

 I was a medic and a member of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron in Catania, Sicily. We flew from our headquarters in Sicily to southern Italy on transport planes carrying equipment and men toward the front lines, helped load sick and wounded patients onto empty planes, and escorted the patients back to Sicily or North Africa where they could receive better medical treatment.

 Who was traveling with you on the C-53D transport plane that November day?

 There were 30 people on the plane: a pilot, a co-pilot, a radio operator, and a crew chief, plus 13 nurses and 13 medics. Rain had prevented any of us from leaving Catania for the previous three days, so our commanding officer decided to send half of the medical personnel in our squadron to help evacuate the many patients who were waiting. Only one passenger, besides the flight crew, was not part of the 807th. He was a medic from the 802nd who was catching a ride with us to Bari [on the southeastern coast of Italy].

 Why did the pilots crash-land the plane?

 There wasn't a cloud in the sky when we left the airfield, but the closer we got to Bari, the more clouds appeared. We were soon caught in a violent storm and lost all communication with the station at Bari. The pilots ascended above the clouds, but when the plane got up to about 8,000 feet, the wings started icing up, so we had to dive down through the clouds. We could see a coastline; the pilots thought we might have flown across Italy and were near Italy's western coast. They didn't realize we'd crossed the Adriatic. The pilots tried to land on what looked like an abandoned airfield, and that's when someone started shooting at us. The pilots immediately headed for the clouds. That was probably the scariest part—flying through a valley where the tops of the mountains were higher than the clouds. When we emerged from the clouds, our plane was very close to a German fighter plane and then to another. The pilots continued trying to dodge the enemy planes and eventually found a place near a lake where we crash-landed.

 Who helped you after the crash?

 Our first helpers were Albanian partisans, members of a resistance group fighting the Germans, who led us through the mountains. We were also helped by many Albanian villagers who let us stay with them at night and shared what little food they had with us. If they'd been caught, the Germans would likely have killed them. I'm certain that without the help of the Albanian people, we wouldn't have survived that winter. The British working in the country as well as an American officer sent in to help us eventually got us out.

 What was your greatest concern while you were trapped behind enemy lines?

 One of our biggest concerns was that the American military, as well as our families, didn't know where we were. They didn't even know we were in Albania; they only knew we were missing. Our other major concern was that our shoes were wearing out quickly because of the terrain, particularly those of the nurses. We hoped to get to the coast, and the only way there was to walk.

 How did the group get along during those difficult months?

 For the most part, we got along pretty well, but there were a few people who rubbed each other the wrong way. When you're hungry, cold, and tired, you forget about almost everything else and are only thinking about surviving. Watson, one of the nurses, said, "Anything a medic can do, I can do," and that's exactly what she did. That's how most of the nurses were. They didn't slow us down.

 Why were you forbidden from discussing your experiences in Albania, even after the war was over?

 When we returned to Allied lines, we were not allowed to tell anyone where we had been, who helped us, or how we escaped. The secrecy was to protect the people who had helped us and to protect the means of escape for future downed airmen. After the war, Enver Hoxha became the ruthless dictator of Albania, and we were concerned that if we named the Albanians who saved our lives, they would be killed. We later learned that one of the partisans who helped us was imprisoned shortly after the war and was eventually executed. ||||| “For many years, I didn’t say anything about what happened in Albania,” Mr. Hayes said in a 2015 telephone interview with The New York Times from his assisted-living home in Medford. “After the war was over, Hoxha was ruthless. If he discovered the names of anyone who had helped us, he had them and their families executed.”

 Mr. Hayes had no special role in the group’s survival, but by outliving all his wartime comrades, he became a last conduit for their story, which was related in a 1999 memoir by one of the nurses, and more recently in several books, notably “The Secret Rescue” (2013), by Cate Lineberry, whose account relied heavily on Mr. Hayes’s recollections.

 The perilous adventure began two months after Italy surrendered and Allied forces invaded Italy to begin pushing the Germans back across Europe. On Nov. 8, 1943, the nurses, medics and fliers of the Army Air Force’s 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron took off from Catania, Sicily, bound for Bari, on Italy’s east coast, where hundreds of wounded troops awaited air evacuation.

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 Their twin-engine cargo plane carried no weapons, but the pilot, First Lt. Charles Thrasher, 22, anticipated no fighting. With him were a co-pilot, radio operator and crew chief. The nurses, all second lieutenants, were 22 to 32 years old. The medics, including Mr. Hayes, 21, from Indianola, Iowa, were all equivalent to staff sergeants and ranged in age from 21 to 36.

 An hour into the flight, the plane became lost in a huge storm over the Adriatic Sea. Its compass and communications failed. Blown 100 miles off course, it crossed the coast of Albania and was intercepted by German fighters and attacked by antiaircraft guns. It plunged to a belly landing in a marsh 25 miles inland. Willis Shumway, 23, the crew chief, was the only casualty, with a knee injury that left him unable to walk.

 The disoriented Americans had no idea where they were. Fearing a fuel explosion, they scrambled out of the plane and encountered their first bit of luck. Striding out of a woods was a band of rugged-looking men with rifles and daggers. One spoke a little English. He was Hasan Gina, an anti-German partisan leader. He told the Americans they were in Albania.

 Later, they would learn that they were 150 miles east of Bari, on the wrong side of the Adriatic, surrounded by German forces that had occupied Albania for months, and were caught in a civil war between rival partisan groups.

 The Americans knew almost nothing of Albania, a small, mostly Muslim country that had changed little in centuries. The mountainous terrain was dotted with impoverished villages. There were no railroads and few roads. Mules and horses were the main transportation. There was little running water or electricity. Winters were brutal, food was scarce, and blood feuds were common among the ferociously proud peoples.

 With only a general plan to reach the west coast and somehow cross the Adriatic to Italy, the Americans began walking in the wrong direction. Over the ensuing weeks, guided by the partisans, they trekked through mountains and valleys, sometimes cutting back or traveling in circles to avoid German patrols, living in the open or sheltering in villages and sharing cornbread with peasants.

 The Americans were soon listed as missing in action, and War Department telegrams, beginning “regret to inform you,” were sent to their families back home.

 The survivors, meantime, carried Sergeant Shumway on a stretcher made of seats from the plane; they later found pack animals for him. After five days, they rested at a partisan-controlled town called Berat, where they were cheered, mistaken for the vanguard of an Allied invasion to liberate Albania. They also met other partisan leaders, and learned of a British agent who had recently parachuted into the country.

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 Their respite lasted only a few days. Then, they awoke to gunfire and the explosion of artillery shells as German forces entered the town. In the ensuing confusion, German planes strafed a truck carrying some of the escaping Americans. Three nurses were separated from the main group and left behind in Berat; they took refuge in a farmhouse, and remained in hiding in the area for four months.

 The main group of Americans climbed on foot to a mountain village and were caught in a crossfire between partisan groups. “It was the first time the Americans had heard of the rival group, and they were beginning to realize they were in as much danger from the country’s internal battle as they were from the Germans,” Ms. Lineberry wrote in “The Secret Rescue.”

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 They encountered other perils. “Some of the blankets offered to them to ward off the cold night air were infested with fleas and lice,” the author wrote. “Since they’d crashed, most of them had been unable to bathe, aside from splashing some water on their faces and arms from mountain streams or an occasional basin, and they were all filthy and now battling fleas, lice and the GI’s,” Army slang for diarrhea.

 The Americans were often unable to find food. Facing starvation, they made tea by boiling straw and ate berries that worsened their diarrhea. Sharing with peasants was sometimes a culture shock. Mr. Hayes and another medic saw a sheep’s head roasted over coals, then split in half with an ax.

 “The Americans watched wide-eyed as two women each took one-half of the head and ate everything, including the eyeballs,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “Nothing was wasted.”

 As autumn waned, blizzards enveloped the Americans. Their clothing was too thin. Their shoes were worn out. “Though all their feet soon felt like blocks of ice and their bodies shivered, they knew they had to keep going,” Ms. Lineberry wrote. “The snow was coming down so fast they could barely see the person in front of them, but they had to stay together to avoid losing one another in the blinding white storm.”

 On Nov. 27, British intelligence in Albania learned from partisans that the American plane had crashed and that the nurses, medics and crew were alive, trying to reach the coast. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe, as well as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the families of the missing were told.

 In December, an American rescue plan was developed, led by Army Capt. Lloyd G. Smith, 24, who was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under cover of darkness, he slipped onto the heavily guarded Albanian coast by boat and set up a base camp in a cave in the cliffs overlooking the Adriatic. Others joined him, and they moved inland to find the Americans.

 The British, meantime, organized a second rescue effort under Lt. Gavan Duffy, a secret agent who with a small team had reached Albania months earlier by parachute and on foot. Through partisan contacts, he found the Americans in eastern Albania and began leading them westward, intending to reach the coast.

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 But halfway there, at Gjirokaster, German troops blocked the way, and the Americans were too sick and exhausted to go on. He radioed for an American air rescue. Two C-47 cargo planes flew in with fighter escorts. But the Germans disrupted the landing, and Lieutenant Duffy called it off.

 The Americans, after the euphoria of nearly being rescued, were crushed. But they resumed their journey, and with American and British help reached the coast. On Jan. 9, after a 63-day ordeal, 27 Americans — 10 nurses and 17 medics and fliers — boarded a British launch and crossed to Italy.

 Three nurses remained behind in German-occupied Berat. Captain Lloyd Smith brought them to safety in March 1944. They rode pack mules most of the way to the coast and were met by a torpedo boat, which took them across the Adriatic.

 After the war, Mr. Hayes returned to civilian life, attended Iowa State College and became an aeronautical engineer for North American Aviation, designing military planes and conducting studies for the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration until he retired in 1984.

 He married the former Betty Allen in 1944. She survives him, as do two daughters, Margaret Bleakley and Victoria Sprott; two brothers, Karl and James; a sister, Virginia McCall; two grandsons and a great-granddaughter.

 Harold Lyle Hayes was born in Pekin, Iowa, on April 11, 1922, to Ralph and Jenella Van Gorp Hayes. He graduated from high school in Indianola in 1940. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he was drafted, volunteered as a medic and by 1943 was in Sicily, flying evacuation missions.

 “When he first returned to Allied lines, he had nightmares of being chased,” Ms. Lineberry wrote of Mr. Hayes. “Those faded with time, but as was true of many in the group, he rarely talked about his ordeal over the years.” |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– When Harold Hayes said he had one helluva war story to tell, he wasn't kidding. The 94-year-old, who died on Sunday, was the last survivor of 30 intrepid Americans who crash-landed behind Nazi lines during World War II, plunging them into a surreal odyssey that included German attacks, blizzards, illness, and near starvation as they trekked 600 miles until their eventual rescue 63 days later. Details of their saga was a "long-held-secret" for decades, the New York Times reports. It all began on a clear day in November 1943 when a cargo plane carrying nurses and medics from Sicily to Bari, Italy, was blown off course by a major storm and fired on by German flak guns. After ditching in a remote area, the group learned they were in Albania from locals. Under constant threat of capture, Hayes, then 21, and the others bunked with peasants with little to share except lice-infested blankets. They boiled tea from straw and ate berries. Their limbs froze as autumn gave way to white-out blizzards. "When you're hungry, cold, and tired, you forget about almost everything else and are only thinking about surviving," Hayes said, per National Geographic. A British spy found them too sick to go on, and arranged a US air rescue that failed. Crushed, the group managed to continue moving west and reached the Adriatic coast on Jan. 9. To protect their Albanian saviors, they stayed mum during the war and for years after during the Communist years. Hayes "rarely talked about his ordeal," author Cate Lineberry tells the Times. (This lost WWII sub was found off Hawaii.)


– Looks like there are teeth to the rumors that the Secret Service's Colombian sex adventure wasn't a one-time thing. The Service is investigating reports that its agents were serviced by prostitutes on a trip to El Salvador in March of last year, according to the Hill. A government subcontractor told KIRO-TV that he visited a strip club with about a dozen Secret Service Advance Team members, and that most got "wasted" and paid the strippers for sexual favors in the VIP section. A couple of agents also brought women (possibly the aforementioned strippers, possibly not) back to their hotel rooms. The source says he warned them that it was a "really bad idea" but they replied that they "did this all the time" and "not to worry about it." The club's owner confirmed the story, saying agents showed up at least three nights that week, though he noted that he did not allow prostitution on-premises. He said the visit was "no surprise to me" because his club was popular with "those who want to be discreet."

Expand this summary.

Seattle-based Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne (KIROTV- CBS- COX MEDIA GROUP) just returned from El Salvador, where he interviewed a U.S. government subcontractor who worked extensively with the Secret Service advance team (snipers, K-9 and explosives sweeps) in San Salvador prior to President Obama’s trip there in March of 2011.

 The eyewitness says he joined about a dozen Secret Service agents and a few U.S. military specialists at a strip club in San Salvador a few days before President Obama and his family arrived in El Salvador to meet with its new president, Mauricio Funes.

 This source witnessed the majority of the men drink heavily ("wasted," "heavily intoxicated") at the strip club. He says most of the Secret Service "advance-team" members also paid extra for access to the VIP section of the club where they were provided a number of sexual favors in return for their cash. Although our source says he told the agents it was a "really bad idea" to take the strippers back to their hotel rooms, several agents bragged that they "did this all the time" and "not to worry about it." Our source says at least two agents had escorts check into their rooms. It is unclear whether the escorts who returned to the hotels were some of the strippers from the same club.

 These alleged incidents in El Salvador occurred a full year prior to recent revelations that secret service agents used prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, on a presidential trip this month.

 To further confirm information provided about behaviors in El Salvador that reportedly occurred in March of 2011, Halsne interviewed the owner of the San Salvador strip club in which the subcontractor said they visited. The strip club’s owner confirmed a large number of U.S. secret service agents (and some military escorts) “descended on his club” that week prior to President Obama’s visit. He claims agents were there at least three nights in a row. "No surprise to me." The owner told Halsne his club routinely takes care of high-ranking employees of the U.S. embassy in San Salvador as well as visiting FBI and DEA agents. The owner says his reputation for "security" and "privacy" makes him a popular strip club owner with "those who want to be discreet." He told Halsne during a lengthy interview, he doesn’t allow prostitution inside the club and that all his "girls" are at least 18-years-old. He says the girls can do what they want after work, but he discourages them from making contact with customers at other locations.

 This investigation is still fast-developing. Halsne has names of some of the agents allegedly involved in the partying and has viewed records which add credibility to the subcontractor’s eyewitness testimony. KIRO-TV is currently writing and editing-together a series of television stories for air beginning at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 26. ||||| ADVERTISEMENT

 The station also interviewed the owner of the strip club, who corroborated the allegations. The story is largely similar to the events that led up to an incident in Colombia earlier this month that prompted a widespread investigation into the agency.The Secret Service said Thursday it was investigating the report."The recent investigation in Cartagena has generated several news stories that contain allegations by mostly unnamed sources. Any information that is brought to our attention that can be assessed as credible will be followed up on in an appropriate manner," said Secret Service spokesman Max Milien in a statement.The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.On Sunday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said he believed that there were instances of misconduct by Secret Service agents prior to the Colombian prostitution scandal that has led to a number of resignations and firings and shaken confidence in the agency tasked with protecting the president."Things like this don't happen once if they didn't happen before," Issa told CBS News.

 Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the report was further evidence of the need for an independent investigation into the agency.

 “This latest allegation only reaffirms the need for independent investigations by the Inspector General. Regardless of whether the incidents were previously referred to internal investigators, they need to be examined," Grassley said. "There are rumors flying about various incidents over several years about the conduct of Secret Service personnel, as well as other law enforcement and military personnel in locations around the world. The only way to put to rest the rumors of a much wider problem is for the allegations to receive transparent and independent reviews.”

 But Wednesday, Napolitano insisted that there was no evidence of additional misconduct.

 “There was nothing in the record to suggest that this behavior would happen and it really was, I think, a huge disappointment to the men and women of the Secret Service,” Napolitano said.

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– The tiniest thing in the universe is not a grain of sand, as people once thought, nor a proton or neutron, or even a quark or electron—as small as they all are. In fact, experts today balk at naming any point-like object "the smallest" because of a theoretical conundrum: When you're infinitely near any point, the forces that act on it turn infinitely huge. Hoping to duck the whole "infinite" thing, scientists have invented novel theories around it, physicist Andy Parker tells Space.com. Among the work-arounds: Superstring theory, which posits that particles are like loopy strings rather than points. This would enable scientists to get infinitely close to something but always remain further from another part of it. "Space-time foam," the theory that space is made of pixels or grains. This would keeps particles from being infinitely close to each other, because the grain create a natural distance. One candidate for "smallest" that Parker discounts is black hole singularities, although he concedes that "they are maybe a million million times or even more than that smaller than the distances we've seen so far." See excerpts of Parker's BBC show on the subject.

Horizon plunges down the biggest rabbit-hole in history in search of the smallest thing in the universe.

 It is a journey where things don't just become smaller but also a whole lot weirder. Scientists hope to catch a glimpse of miniature black holes, multiple dimensions and even parallel universes. As they start to explore this wonderland, where nothing is quite what it seems, they may have to rewrite the fundamental laws of time and space. ||||| One contender for the smallest thing in the universe is the singularity at the center of a black hole. (Shown here, an artist's drawing of a black hole pulling gas away from a companion star.

 The answer to the enduring question of the smallest thing in the universe has evolved along with humanity. People once thought grains of sand were the building blocks of what we see around us. Then the atom was discovered, and it was thought indivisible, until it was split to reveal protons, neutrons and electrons inside. These too, seemed like fundamental particles, before scientists discovered that protons and neutrons are made of three quarks each.

 "This time we haven't been able to see any evidence at all that there's anything inside quarks," said physicist Andy Parker. "Have we reached the most fundamental layer of matter?"

 And even if quarks and electrons are indivisible, Parker said, scientists don't know if they are the smallest bits of matter in existence, or if the universe contains objects that are even more minute. [Graphic: Nature's Tiniest Particles]

 Parker, a professor of high-energy physics at England's Cambridge University, recently hosted a television special on the U.K.'s BBC Two channel called "Horizon: How Small is the Universe?"

 Strings or points?

 In experiments, teensy, tiny particles like quarks and electrons seem to act like single points of matter with no spatial distribution. But point-like objects complicate the laws of physics. Because you can get infinitely close to a point, the forces acting on it can become infinitely large, and scientists hate infinities.

 An idea called superstring theory could solve this issue. The theory posits that all particles, instead of being point-like, are actually little loops of string. Nothing can get infinitely close to a loop of string, because it will always be slightly closer to one part than another. That "loophole" appears to solve some of these problems of infinities, making the idea appealing to physicists. Yet scientists still have no experimental evidence that string theory is correct.

 Another way of solving the point problem is to say that space itself isn't continuous and smooth, but is actually made of discrete pixels, or grains, sometimes referred to as space-time foam. In that case, two particles wouldn't be able to come infinitely close to each other because they would always have to be separated by the minimum size of a grain of space.

 A singularity

 Another contender for the title of smallest thing in the universe is the singularity at the center of a black hole. Black holes are formed when matter is condensed in a small enough space that gravity takes over, causing the matter to pull inward and inward, ultimately condensing into a single point of infinite density. At least, according to the current laws of physics.

 But most experts don't think black holes are really infinitely dense. They think this infinity is the product of an inherent conflict between two reigning theories — general relativity and quantum mechanics — and that when a theory of quantum gravity can be formulated, the true nature of black holes will be revealed.

 "My guess is that [black hole singularities] are quite a lot smaller than a quark, but I don't believe they're of infinite density," Parker told LiveScience. "Most likely they are maybe a million million times or even more than that smaller than the distances we've seen so far."

 That would make singularities roughly the size of superstrings, if they exist.

 The Planck length

 Superstrings, singularities, and even grains of the universe could all turn out to be about the size of the "Planck length." [Tiny Grandeur: Stunning Photos of the Very Small]

 A Planck length is 1.6 x 10^-35 meters (the number 16 preceded by 34 zeroes and a decimal point) — an incomprehensibly small scale that is implicated in various aspects of physics.

 The Planck length is far and away too small for any instrument to measure, but beyond that, it is thought to represent the theoretical limit of the shortest measureable length. According to the uncertainty principle, no instrument should ever be able to measure anything smaller, because at that range, the universe is probabilistic and indeterminate.

 This scale is also thought to be the demarcating line between general relativity and quantum mechanics.

 "It corresponds to the distance where the gravitational field is so strong that it can start to do things like make black holes out of the energy of the field," Parker said. "At the Planck length we expect quantum gravity takes over."

 Perhaps all of the universe's smallest things are roughly the size of the Planck length.

 This story was provided by LiveScience, sister site to SPACE.com. Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+. |||||