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Officials: Woman claimed she fell off bridge into river

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Osterhout Free Library hosting annual book sale

The word &#8220;hero&#8221; is bandied about quite recklessly these days.We use it to describe famous athletes, movies stars, maybe even a certain politician who sits in the Oval Office &#8212; depending on which side of the political aisle you prefer.We would argue not one of those people is a true &#8220;hero&#8221; &#8212; defined by Merriam-Webster as &#8220;a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities.&#8221;But &#8220;hero&#8221; is the absolute perfect way to describe Eugene Couto, a humble 94-year-old living in Shavertown who helped save the world.And that&#8217;s not overstating things one bit.The Times Leader profiled Couto last week for the 73rd anniversary of D-Day. He was one of the &#8220;great&#8221; and &#8220;brave&#8221; men who took part in the Normandy Invasion of France. Couto and other Allied troops took the beaches from the Nazis that day, then all of France, then all of Europe as well &#8212; dislodging Hitler from power and ending one of the most evil regimes in human history.And they did all that in less than a year&#8217;s time, which is quite remarkable when you think about it.D-Day was June 6, 1944.Germany formally surrendered by early May 1945.Let&#8217;s just imagine for a moment if that D-Day invasion had failed, as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower feared it might. (Ike went as far as to write a letter to explain the failure, insisting he should take the blame, not the troops.)We would&#8217;ve attacked again, but Hitler and the Germans would have had even more time to fortify their positions and tighten their grip over Europe. Plus, if D-Day&#8217;s beach landings were repelled, the Allies would&#8217;ve been forced to come at the Nazis some other way the next time to try to re-establish the element of surprise. All that would&#8217;ve taken time, allowing Germany to concentrate on the eastern front of the war and pack a full wallop on the Russians.It&#8217;s hard to imagine the bad guys winning. But they very well could have, if not for young men like Couto who were prepared to, as Lincoln said, offer that &#8220;last full measure of devotion.&#8221;Hence, it&#8217;s vitally important we never forget their efforts that day &#8212; whether it&#8217;s 73 years ago or a 1,073 years ago. Simply stated, if they didn&#8217;t do what they did then, our country would most likely look a lot different today.And stories like that from Couto, who ran onto Utah Beach, need to be recorded and retold over and over again so the younger generations never forget they are living off the successes of the generations that went before them.As one 88-year-old we were talking to recently remarked while lamenting a general lack of D-Day coverage: &#8220;It&#8217;s part of our history and who we are.&#8221;That&#8217;s exactly why history is so important.It shows us &#8220;who we are&#8221; and how we got to where we are today. It not only explains the past, but helps us anticipate the future.You might have also read in our pages last week about Hanover Area history teacher Carl Daubert, a dedicated instructor selected to be a Woodrow Wilson Foundation HistoryQuest Fellow.Daubert is molding young people into highly informed, critically thinking patriots, a must-have for any democracy to thrive. We cannot envision a more important job in any classroom today. (Especially in light of a 17-year-old recently telling us he had no idea who even Richard Nixon was, and knew Eisenhower simply as some &#8220;war guy.&#8221; Don&#8217;t worry, Carl, it wasn&#8217;t one of your students.)Oh, you know how that definition of &#8220;hero&#8221; includes the possession of &#8220;fine qualities.&#8221;Well, how about humility.&#8220;We were all young fellas in our early 20s,&#8221; recalled Couto of D-Day. &#8220;This was our first battle experience. We were all green, and we tried to do the best we could.&#8221;Thank God for all of us, they did pretty darn good.&#8212; Times Leader

Our view: Stories from D-Day heroes must never die