Meet “Mo”
“Mo” Labelle is one of our longtime patients at Mills Chiropractic. His story is fascinating…
Maurice “Mo” Labelle was born in Rhode Island to French Canadian parents in 1927. This August he will be 95 years old. He grew up speaking French, but quickly gained fluency in English to such an extent that he became a reporter and editor in Miami, Florida.
Mo has been seeing chiropractors for regular visits since he was 15. We currently treat him twice a month. Mo credits these treatments, along with regular visits to the gym, for keeping him healthy and able to keep up with all the chores around his home. Mo lives with his wife, Lillian, in Euless,TX, where he does most of the cooking, washing dishes, shopping, etc.
Military Service
Mo saw service first in the merchant marine and later in the Air Force in the 1940’s. He was a helmsman on a Liberty Ship that sailed to North Africa. In the Air Force he became a technician on Microwave Early Warning Radar.
Using his GI Bill after discharge, Mo earned his journalism degree from the University of Miami where he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force ROTC and received the university’s highest leadership awards including Iron Arrow and Omicron Delta Kappa. He married Lillian Giguere, who continued to work in the UM library for twenty years.
Life as a Reporter
Among the important stories Mo covered while a reporter and editor in South Florida was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. His major story dealt with the report from Cuban exiles and refugees who claimed that some of the offensive nuclear missiles that the Soviets had agreed to remove were still in Cuba. For reporting this, Mo was forced out of his job as editor at the Miami Daily Review. Raul Castro, who took over Cuban leadership from his brother Fidel, later offered to turn over some of the nuclear missiles. As alarming as this might seem, it was later revealed by a Russian author that one hundred thermal nuclear warheads which could be used interchangeably on defensive and offensive weapons, had been left in Cuba. This was in violation of a secret and unconstitutional agreement made between President John F. Kennedy and Chairman Nikita Khrushchev. This missile follow-up story received little coverage in the US media.
Famous Interviews
Some of the world leaders interviewed or covered by Mo included the rocket engineer, Wernher von Braun, who placed the first US astronauts on the moon, General James Doolittle, leader of the air raid on Tokyo in early WWII after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s leading air ace in WWI who later pioneered civilian aviation.
Mo says, “I have been Dr. Mills’ patient for several years and I find him to be among the very best chiropractors”.