obit: Milo Radulovich

[PressCoverage]

important because his story signified the end of paranoid McCarthyism...

unfortunately, history has been lost on some people, as McCarthyism is reborn today by those who enjoy and/or profit off military conflict...

Milo Radulovich, 81

DETROIT (AP) — Milo Radulovich, the Air Force Reserve lieutenant championed by Edward R. Murrow when the military threatened to decommission him during the anti-communist crackdown of the 1950s, has died. He was 81.

Radulovich died Monday in Vallejo, Calif., after complications from a stroke, family members said. He was 81.

He served as a consultant on the 2005 film "Good Night, and Good Luck," which dramatized Murrow's journalistic challenge to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The movie included the Radulovich case and the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings that led to the senator's downfall.

Radulovich was born in Detroit, joined the Air Force Reserves, worked as a meteorologist in Greenland, then enrolled at the University of Michigan on the GI Bill.

In 1953, the Air Force threatened to decommission him on grounds that he maintained a "close and continuing relationship" with his father and sister. The military said they were suspect because of the father's subscription to a Serbian newspaper and his sister's political activities.

Radulovich refused the military's demand that he denounce his relatives and appealed his discharge.

Murrow's "See It Now" on CBS aired a segment, "The Case Against Lt. Milo Radulovich," in October 1953. The next month, the Air Force reversed its declaration that Radulovich was a security risk. He went on to a career as a meteorologist.