Chris Smith: Long live the daring Doolittle Raiders

Expect singer-activist Holly Near to speak frankly at a special concert in Sebastopol next week about what’s become of the revolution in Nicaragua that she and many others cheered in the 1980s.

Back when Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas brought down right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza and then fought to defend their victory from assault by the U.S.-backed Contras, Near said Wednesday, “we were all part of the solidarity movement with Nicaragua.”

Today, Ortega is the despot and Nicaragua bleeds again.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Near. On Thursday, she’ll perform at a benefit for Nicaragua that will feature two of the country’s most beloved and influential musicians, brothers Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy and Carlos Mejía Godoy.

The concert to benefit struggling Nicaraguans starts at 7:30 p.m. on April 18 at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center. Tickets are $40 and $45, but Near and the Nicaraguan brothers want no one turned away for an inability to pay.

“We trust everybody at the door to do what they can,” Near said.

She has traveled to Nicaragua and met and performed with the Godoys. “I was charmed by the way they embraced their audience,” she said.

She appreciates the brothers’ current quest as their country again convulses: Standing with young Nicaraguans who press for an end to violence and suffering, the Godoys plead for a return to civility and a search for common ground.

Luis Enrique Godoy said in Sebastopol earlier this week that young Nicaraguans didn’t know Somoza or the younger Ortega, and they seek to restore their country nonviolently.

“They’re the ones who are going to have to do the work,” said the 74-year-old musician and former ally of the Sandinistas. “We’re too old.”

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THE LAST RAIDER: If you think of it, and are so inclined, you might raise a glass to Richard “Dick” Cole, who died Tuesday in Texas at 103.

Cole was the last surviving Doolittle Raider.

Soon after the Japanese attack on Oahu that abruptly drew the U.S. into a two-theater war, Cole and 78 other Army aviators volunteered to join Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle on a secret and historically audacious mission.

On April 18, 1942, they launched 16 modified B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, then in the Pacific 650 miles from Japan. The bombing raid stunned Japan, piercing its presumption of invincibility, and it greatly heartened Americans.

Cole had been Doolittle’s co-pilot in B-25 No. 1.

For decades, we had a Doolittle Raider in our midst. Frank Kappeler, a soft-spoken and elegant man who’d been the navigator on B-25 No. 11, lived in Santa Rosa from 1967 until his death in 2010 at age 96.

Kappeler said in ’07 that he and the others were told when they volunteered for a mission they knew nothing about, that “there was a 50-50 chance of surviving.”

“A 50-50 chance didn’t sound so bad,” he said. “All of us felt that way.”

When the nation four years ago awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to all 80 on Doolittle’s team, only two, Dick Cole and David Thatcher, were still alive to receive the honor. Thatcher, who’d been tail gunner in bomber No. 7, died in June 2016 at 94.

Long live the Raiders.

You can contact Chris Smith at 707 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.