Michigan is going the the Final Four for the first time since the Fab Five played in the national championship game 20 years ago. A lot of their success can be attributed to their coach, John Beilein, currently in his sixth season.
Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel wrote an incredible story about John Beilein's family, who inspired the book "Band of Brothers" that became the movie "Saving Private Ryan." Beilein's mother, Josephine, was the cousin of the Niland brothers, and all of them grew up close to each other in the working class town of Tonawanda, New York.
Four of the Niland brothers went to fight in World War II. One of them, Ed, was a pilot, and his plane went down in the Pacific Theater a few weeks before D-Day and he was presumed dead. Two other brothers, Bobby and Preston, were sent to storm the beach on D-Day and were killed in action. The military had decided that it was not right for one mother to lose all her sons in combat, so the last brother, Fritz, was found and sent home. Fritz had also been at Normandy, but had been dropped behind enemy lines as part of the gliders along with his cousin Tommy, Josephine's brother. He was the real-life inspiration for the character of Private James Ryan, Matt Damon's character in the movie. Fritz later became an oral surgeon and lived until 1983, and Tommy also survived and lived a pretty long life. Ed Niland was later found in a Japanese POW camp in Burman and was sent back to Tonawanda and lived until he was 72 years old.
No comments:
Post a Comment