As if suffering the indignities of being held prisoner in a World War II POW camp weren’t enough, six Air Force veterans who flew one of the most dangerous missions of the war suffered yet another at the hands of a restaurant hostess.
She turned away the six members of the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association, all fellow war prisoners, at the door of Five Sixty, Wolfgang Puck’s schmancy restaurant atop Reunion Tower because they showed up dressed in T-shirts commemorating their past ordeal, ball caps, and shorts.
According to today’s article in The Dallas Morning News, the guys shrugged it off, joked about being bad-boys, and ambled off. Some of the wives and children accompanying them pitched a fit and scored the old boys a couple of bottles of Scotch courtesy of the restaurant’s, likely, embarrassed general manager, Marcus Cascio.
Mayor Tom Leppert sent the guys a letter dripping of schmaltzy PR and gave them each a gold-colored lapel pin depicting the Dallas seal.
Leppert’s chief of staff, Chris Heinbaugh, was quoted in the story as suggesting, “They can add it to their hats," which seems a bit cavalier.
Maybe next year when the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association guys get together for their annual, um, get-together, they’ll have new T-shirts commemorating their most recent ordeal.
Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He wouldn’t eat in a restaurant that wouldn’t let him in. What?
