George McGovern "coming to the end of his life"

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Longtime former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate who lost to President Richard Nixon in a historic landslide, has moved into hospice care near his home in South Dakota, his family said Monday.

"He's coming to the end of his life," his daughter, Ann McGovern, told The Associated Press. She declined to elaborate but noted that her 90-year-old father has suffered several health problems in the last year.

George McGovern, who became a leader of the Democrats' liberal wing during his three decades in Congress, lost his 1972 challenge to Nixon, who later resigned amid the Watergate scandal. McGovern has turned his focus in recent years to world hunger.

It was after a lecture tour last October that he was treated for exhaustion. Two months later, he fell and hit his head just before a scheduled interview with C-SPAN for a program focusing on failed presidential candidates who've had a lasting impact on American politics.

McGovern also spent several days in a Florida hospital in April for tests to determine why he occasionally passed out and had difficulty speaking.

His daughter said he has moved in the Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, where he moved in August to spend more time near his family. He had been splitting his time between homes in Mitchell, S.D., and Florida.

McGovern was a member of the U.S. House from 1957 to 1961 and a U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57532933/george-mcgovern-coming-to-the-end-of-his-life/

Very sad. There are few issues on which I agree with McGovern, but I do not doubt his love of country or sincerity.
 
Do not forget his war service to our nation. He was a liberator pilot at a time when the attrition rate was around 200% for completing a full combat tour. The man had courage too. He recieved the distinguished flying cross and the air medal. He's damned luky he survived the war.
 
One has to wonder how he took losing in a landslide to the man who turned out to be the worst US President of the 20th century?
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
Do not forget his war service to our nation. He was a liberator pilot at a time when the attrition rate was around 200% for completing a full combat tour. The man had courage too. He recieved the distinguished flying cross and the air medal. He's damned luky he survived the war.
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McGovern flew 35 combat missions!

Soon thereafter McGovern was sworn in as a private at Fort Snelling in Minnesota.[SUP][24][/SUP] He spent a month at Jefferson Barracks Military Post in Missouri and then five months at Southern Illinois Normal University in Carbondale, Illinois for ground school training; both the academic work and physical training would be the toughest he would ever experience.[SUP][25][/SUP] He spent two months at a base in San Antonio, Texas and then went to Hatbox Field in Muskogee, Oklahoma for basic flying school in a single-engined PT‑19.[SUP][25][/SUP] Lonely and in love, McGovern married Eleanor Stegeberg on October 31, 1943, while on three-day leave in a ceremony at the small Methodist church in Woonsocket with his father presiding, as the couple decided not to wait any further.[SUP][26][/SUP][SUP][27][/SUP] After three months in Muskogee, McGovern went to Coffeyville Army Airfield in Kansas for three months of training on the BT‑13.[SUP][28][/SUP] Around April 1944, McGovern went on to advanced flying school at Pampa Army Airfield in Texas for twin-engine training on the AT‑17 and AT‑9.[SUP][28][/SUP] Throughout, Air Cadet McGovern showed skill as a pilot, with his exceptionally good depth perception aiding him.[SUP][25][/SUP] Eleanor McGovern followed him to these different stops and was there when he got his wings and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant.[SUP][28][/SUP]


McGovern was assigned to Liberal Army Airfield in Kansas to transition school to learn to fly the B‑24 Liberator, an assignment he was pleased with.[SUP][28][/SUP] McGovern recalled later: "Learning how to fly the B‑24 was the toughest part of the training. It was a difficult airplane to fly, physically, because in the early part of the war, they didn't have hydraulic controls. If you can imagine driving a Mack truck without any power steering or power brakes, that's about what it was like at the controls. It was the biggest bomber we had at the time."[SUP][4][/SUP] Eleanor was constantly afraid of her husband suffering an accident while training, which claimed a huge toll of airmen during the entire war.[SUP][29][/SUP] This was followed by a stint at Lincoln Army Airfield in Nebraska, where McGovern met his B-24 crew.[SUP][30][/SUP] The traveling around the country and mixing with people from different backgrounds was a broadening experience for McGovern and others of his generation.[SUP][30][/SUP] The USAAF sped up training times for McGovern and others due to the heavy losses that bombing missions were suffering over Europe.[SUP][31][/SUP] Despite, and partly because of, the risk that McGovern might not come back from combat, the McGoverns decided to have a child and Eleanor became pregnant.[SUP][32][/SUP] In June 1944, McGovern's crew received final training at Mountain Home Army Air Field in Idaho.[SUP][30][/SUP] They then shipped out via Camp Patrick Henry in Virginia, where McGovern found history books to fill downtime, and overseas on a slow troopship.[3

In September 1944, McGovern joined the 741st Squadron of the 455th Bombardment Group of the Fifteenth Air Force, stationed at San Giovanni Airfield nearby Cerignola in the Apulia region of Italy.[SUP][34][/SUP] There he and his crew found a starving, disease-ridden local population wracked by the ill fortunes of war and far worse off than anything they had seen back home during the Depression.[SUP][34][/SUP][SUP][35][/SUP] (The sights would be part of his later motivation to fight hunger.[SUP][36][/SUP]) Starting on November 11, 1944, McGovern flew 35 missions over enemy territory from there, the first five as co-pilot for an experienced crew and the rest as pilot for his own plane, known as the Dakota Queen after his wife Eleanor.[SUP][37][/SUP] His targets were in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and northern, German-controlled Italy, and were often either oil refinery complexes or rail marshalling yards, all as part of the U.S. strategic bombing campaign in Europe. The eight- or nine-hour missions were grueling tests of endurance for pilots, and while German fighter aircraft were a diminished threat by then, his missions often faced heavy anti-aircraft artillery fire that filled the sky with flak bursts.


On McGovern's December 15 mission over Linz, his second as pilot, a piece of shrapnel from flak came through the windshield and missed killing him by only a few inches.[SUP][38][/SUP] The following day on a mission to Brüx he nearly collided with another bomber during close-formation flying in complete cloud cover.[SUP][39][/SUP] The day after that he was recommended for a medal after surviving a blown wheel on the always-dangerous B-24 take-off, completing a mission over Germany, and then landing without further damage to the plane.[SUP][40][/SUP] On a December 20 mission against the Škoda Works at Pilsen, McGovern's plane had one engine out and another in flames after being hit by flak. Unable to return to Italy, McGovern was able to land his plane on a British airfield on Vis, a small island off the Yugoslav coast controlled by Josip Broz Tito's Partisans. The short field, normally used by small fighter planes, killed many of the bomber crews who tried to make emergency landings there, but McGovern successfully landed, saving his crew and earning him the Distinguished Flying Cross.[SUP][41][/SUP][SUP][42]

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In January 1945, McGovern used R&R time to see every sight he could in Rome and participate in an audience with the Pope.[SUP][43][/SUP] Bad weather prevented many missions from happening during the winter, and during downtime McGovern spent much time reading and discussing how the war had come about. He resolved that if he survived it, he would become a history professor.[SUP][44][/SUP] In February, McGovern was promoted to First Lieutenant.[SUP][45][/SUP] On March 14, McGovern had an incident over Austria in which he accidentally bombed a family farmhouse when a jammed bomb accidentally released above it and destroyed it, which McGovern felt guilty about.[SUP][46][/SUP] (Decades later, after a public appearance in that country, the owner of that farm came to the media to let the Senator know that he was the victim of that incident, but no one was hurt and he felt it was worth the price if that event helped achieve the defeat of Nazi Germany in some small way.[SUP][47][/SUP]) On return from the flight, McGovern was told his first child Ann had been born four days earlier.[SUP][46][/SUP] April 25 saw McGovern's 35th mission, to fulfill the Fifteenth Air Force requirement for a combat tour, against heavily defended Linz. The sky turned black and red with flak – McGovern later said "Hell can't be any worse than that" – the Dakota Queen was hit multiple times (producing 110 holes in its fuselage and wings) and the hydraulic system was knocked out. McGovern's waist gunner was injured and his flight engineer so terrified that he would be hospitalized with battle fatigue, but McGovern managed to bring back the plane safely with the assistance of an improvised landing technique.[SUP][42][/SUP][SUP][48][/SUP]
 
Mott the Hoople said:
One has to wonder how he took losing in a landslide to the man who turned out to be the worst US President of the 20th century?
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His ideas were too radical in the minds of US voters. That said, some of them would have been very workable. His idea to replace the entire welfare system with a negative income tax was supported even by some conservative economists, such as Milton Friedman.
 
George McGovern was good people and served his country in many aspects. May his family find peace at this sad time.
 
He was is a good man and I hope him a good journey.


I personally hope there is some place at the end of that journey.



I have no evidence that there is.

We all likely just take a journey into non being
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Do not forget his war service to our nation. He was a liberator pilot at a time when the attrition rate was around 200% for completing a full combat tour. The man had courage too. He recieved the distinguished flying cross and the air medal. He's damned luky he survived the war.
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I've learnt something, I never knew he flew combat missions in WW2.
 
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