Letter from nonagenarian World War II veteran criticizes President Obama.
Many readers originally encountered the above-reproduced letter to President Obama on the web site Congress.org, where it was published in November 2009 after being submitted to that site by someone in Florida who had received it via e-mail.The actual author of the letter was Hawaii resident Harold B. Estes, a long-serving veteran of the U.S. Navy who was pictured in the May 2005 issue of Fore 'n Aft magazine and for whom the BMC Harold Estes Leadership Award is named.The publisher of Fore 'n Aft kindly responded to our inquiry and provided confirmation that Harold Estes was indeed the author of this piece:Thank you for your note and this opportunity to personally vouch for that to which you refer. The letter is REAL and so is Harold Estes. A retired Master Chief Boatswains Mate, he dictated the letter to a secretary who printed it and Harold has signed it personally. I believe that in addition to the president, over 50 hard copies were mailed to various VIPs bearing his signature. Another personal and mutual friend showed me his copy! Thus, Harold is the author, a dear friend, a very well known Navy Leaguer and so please do mark this TRUE.Honolulu television station KITV also interviewed Harold Estes at his Hawaii home and verified that he wrote the letter attributed to him:A letter from a 95-year-old retired World War II sailor in Hawaii to President Barack Obama has stirred up attention on the Internet. Retired ship's Boatswain Harold Estes wrote the letter and someone in Florida sent it to Congress.org. The letter then bounced around different sites and people questioned whether it was real. Estes said he was unaware of the controversy he caused on the Internet. 'I've never looked at anything on the Internet. I don't follow this. I didn't write this to get publicity,' Estes said.Some later versions of the piece circulated via e-mail included a photograph of the author posing with Navy personnel:For those who question Harold Estes' status as Master Chief, a rank which was not created until after his retirement from the Navy, Fore 'n Aft notes in a profile of Estes that:In 2007, to recognize his many years of voluntary service as the Navy's goodwill ambassador in Hawaii, the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Gary Roughead, promoted Harold to the honorary rank of Pacific Fleet Command Master Chief. At age 93.Harold B. Estes passed away at the age of 96 in May 2011 and was interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
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