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Under a gorgeous Sunset last October on the flight deck of the USS Midway, I had the honor of awarding The Buck Halperin Trophy to Danny Cayard at the 99th Star Boat World Championships in San Diego, California. The Star is a 23 foot long Olympic Class two person racing sailboat with over a hundred-year history of being the boat of choice more than any other in which legendary yachtsmen (and women) around the world hone their craft. Danny, a seasoned young champion, had just a few weeks earlier won the Star Class North American Championships alongside his Father, Paul Cayard, a two-time Olympian in Stars, as well as being a helmsman and skipper of several America’s Cup campaigns.
The coincidental significance of such father/son legacies is that Buck Halperin, for which the Trophy is named, is my Father, who for two decades raced Star Boats all over the world, culminating in winning Olympic Bronze in the 1960 Rome Games and Gold in the 1963 Pan American Games in Sao Paolo, Brazil.
In my comments prior to handing The Buck Halperin Trophy to Danny, beyond recognizing the father/son connection, I couldn’t resist acknowledging the remarkable coincidence that the Ceremony was taking place on the deck of a Navy ship. Thus I was moved to recall a blustery rainy (even hailing) morning four months earlier in Normandy, France where I had the good fortune to have been invited to attend the unveiling of a Monument at Omaha Beach that the Navy SEAL Museum and National WWII Museum jointly built to honor their SEAL forebears who had participated in the D-Day Invasion eighty year before, one of those men was Lt. Commander Robert ‘Buck’ Halperin, who’s participation on that day in 1944 was acknowledged for heroism with a Commendation for the Bronze Star. In this instance Buck had not skippered a racing sailboat, but rather a 36 foot Higgins scout boat that to launched to sea two hours prior to the rest of the invasionary Allied forces in order to mark the course and lead the first two waves of troops ashore. Buck not only led the way on D-Day, but he also served on the Admiral’s staff in the planning stages of the invasion, as well as having gone ashore under the cover of night weeks earlier to do pre-invasion reconnaissance as a member of his top-secret unit, the Scouts and Raiders. Read about Buck's actions on D-Day.
Normandy – Lt. Commander Robert Halperin - Bronze Star Commendation:
For meritorious performance of duty while attached to the Staff of Commander Assault Force “U”. This Naval Assault Force successfully landed the Seventh Corps, United States Army on the Cherbourg Peninsula of France against well prepared defenses and strong opposition. Lieutenant Halperin performed exceptionally meritorious service in assisting and in the guiding of the first two boat waves from the transport area to the line of departure and thence to the assigned Assault Beaches. His cool judgement and unusual ability contributed materially to the successful landing of the first waves in a position from which the troops reached their objectives with a minimum of casualties. Under the direction of Lieutenant Halperin, troops were rescued from swamped boats and dispatched to the beaches, and two men were saved from drowning by his exceptional initiative and quick action. His conduct was at all times in accordance with the best traditions of the United States naval service.
Eighty years hence an intrepid NBC news team found that in connecting the dots between the fact that both the Summer Olympics and the 80th Anniversary of Dday were to take place in France this past summer, a point of convergence connecting these two events was none other than Buck Halperin. Having participated in both Dday and the Olympics, the news team produced a short feature news story about Buck, and along with it, acknowledged my pursuit as a documentary filmmaker making the film of a lifetime, the one that folks have encouraged me to make for decades, a documentary about my Dad.
From that October evening on the deck of the Midway on the Pacific Coast, to the shores the North Atlantic and Normandy, France, I was also able to harken back memories of a young Buck Halperin in his youth building and racing sail boats on Lake Michigan, off shore from Chicago where Buck was born and raised. Also being an avid lake swimmer training alongside the likes of Olympic swimming champion and later movie star, Johnny Weissmuller, I couldn’t help imagine how these water based athletic passions that Buck engaged in as a youth, swimming and sailing, later contributed to the success of his Naval service, a unique combinations of skills that had significant positive impact on several Allied Atlantic invasions, Sicily, North Africa (for which Buck was awarded the Navy Cross) and Normandy on Dday. Attributes synonymous with aspects of SEAL training today.
And if that wasn’t enough, as captain of his powerhouse Oak Park River Forest, Illinois, high school football team, Buck went on to play college football at the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Notre Dame under the guiding tutelage of legendary coach Knute Rockne, leading ultimately to playing in the NFL for Brooklyn. After a debilitating knee injury, Buck returned home to coach high school football in Chicago.
At the start of WW II, it was not easy for Buck to join in the War effort. At the age of 34 he was too old to enlist. His salvation was a special team of shipboard physical fitness instructors that World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Gene Tunney had been tasked by the Navy to assemble made up professional and top college athletes. Enlisting as an ordinary seaman to lead sailors in daily calisthenics was not the kind of action Buck desired, nor was used to. Yet via his prowess in sports, he had earned a ticket in. His salvation soon came when the Navy sought candidates from the Tunney group for what was to become the Scouts and Raiders, a top secret pre-invasionary intelligence gathering commando force.
Certainly not by design, but perhaps by providence, Buck was the perfect candidate for the Scouts and Raiders. With his experience playing, leading and coaching team sports, and his passion for offshore swimming, sailing and boat building, Buck miraculously found himself in the perfect place to make a meaningful contribution to the Allied War effort.
Once Buck’s tour of duty was complete in The Atlantic, having participated in each of the Allied Atlantic invasions, Buck was summoned back Stateside to lead training exercises. But his stay was short-lived as he was called upon to go to China as part of another top secret group, this time in The Pacific. The Sino American Cooperative Organization (SACO), a joint operation formulated by President Roosevelt and Chinese President, Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek. Led by US Navy Captain Milton ‘Mary’ Miles and Chiang Kai Shek’s Chief of Intelligence, General Tai Li, SACO was tasked to operate clandestinely behind enemy lines in the interior of China. As the Officer in Charge of SACO Camp Six, Buck was in command of 45 enlisted men entrusted with the mission of training a force of 2,500 Chinese guerillas in ‘modern’ warfare, and lead them into combat against the Japanese incursion. One of Buck’s fellow officers in SACO was legendary Scout and Raider and fellow college athlete also enlisted through the Tunney Physical Fitness Program, Phil Bucklew, acknowledged today as the father of modern Naval Warfare, and today all SEAL Basic Training in Coronado is conducted out of what is named The Phil Bucklew Center.
SACO was referred to by some as ‘The Rice Paddy Navy’ as the Americans lived and worked integrally alongside the Chinese despite limited knowledge of each other’s language and customs.
Buck’s Camp 6 raid on Amoy Island may be credited as the first commando mission by an all Navy raider force in modern Naval history. And today’s SEALs conduct myriad missions on land many miles from the sea. Overall SACO’s 2,500 American service members are credited with the destruction of 150 enemy bridges, 66 trains derailments and 100 ships attacked and/or sunk. Over 70,000 enemy troops were killed by the 50,000 peasants, pirates and private saboteurs trained by SACO.
At the end of Japanese hostilities in the Pacific, Buck accepted the surrender of Japanese Admiral Halata, whose Samurai sword is on my wall alongside Buck’s framed WW II Citations and Medals as well as his Olympic Bronze and Pan American Games Gold Medals. For his service in China Buck was awarded another Bronze Star and the Chinese Yun Hui Cloud Banner, the highest commendation the Chinese government could bestow upon a foreigner. All these I hope someday may find a home at the new Navy Seal Museum in San Diego.
Later in life Buck was the president of one of the largest electrical contracting firms in Chicago, a business started by his Russian immigrant Father in 1915. Buck was also a co-founder of Lands’ End Stores and Catalogue. Additionally, Buck engaged in numerous civic and charitable endeavors.
My grandparents sent three sons to War. Only two returned. Older brother Bernard, a Naval officer, survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. Buck’s younger brother Dan, an officer in the Army Air Force and my namesake, was shot down over the Philippines soon after War’s end. Still stationed in China Buck got permission from his Commanding Officer to join the search for his brother’s lost plane. The mission was unsuccessful and I never had the opportunity to meet my Uncle Dan.
Links between fathers and sons and family memories are important to me. I want my four year old grandson Kingston to know the great man that was his great grandfather, Buck Halperin. Who better to tell Kingston the story than me? This past January 26th, now 40 years gone, was the 117th celebration of Buck’s birth in 1908. I lit a candle as I always do, and rededicated myself to returning to the man who gave me absolutely everything, the gift of honoring his legacy by sharing his story in the best way I know how, on film, not only for Kingston to emulate as he grows up, but to all who will see and learn what it truly is to be a Man.
Thank you.
Dan Halperin can be reached for any thoughts and movie support at dan@epiphanypictures.com or 310-749-6253
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