Topus, Richard I. (12156045): Difference between revisions

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 == Biography ==
-Richard I. Topus was born on 15 March 1924 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants. Growing up in Flatbush, he learned pigeon racing from rooftop loft keepers—two of them World War I Army pigeoneers—though his parents would not allow him a loft of his own.
+Richard I. Topus was born on 15 March 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants. Growing up in Flatbush, he learned pigeon racing from rooftop loft keepers—two of them World War I Army pigeoneers—though his parents would not allow him a loft of his own.
 Topus enlisted in early 1942 at eighteen and was assigned to the Army Signal Corps Pigeon Service. At Camp Ritchie (Class 24) he joined a small cadre of pigeoneers who trained soldiers and birds for combat messaging: care and feeding, capsule handling, air drops, and airborne jumps with pigeons carried in specially made vests. The team also bred for speed and endurance and conditioned birds to mobile combat lofts.