Wounded Times Year End Thank You

Wounded Times Year End Thank You
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
December 31, 2012

It has been a crazy, busy, year. In May I finished Valencia College Digital Media Certification. Not bad, ended up with a 3.1 GPA.

The top post this year as well as last year was For Those I Love I will Sacrifice with a total of 35,038 views.

In November I re-released For the Love of Jack, His War/My Battle the book I self published in 2002 trying to warn families about what they were facing with combat and PTSD.

Last month I started a new book, The Warrior SAW, Suicides After War, because of requests from families needing help when someone they love committed suicide. I hope to have it finished next month.

I need your prayers while I get through this because it is emotionally draining.

Up until I was done with college, I didn't want to ask for donations because it just didn't seem right.

In August, I finally received my tax exempt from the State of Florida and was able to start getting donations. Up until then, all the work I did, the travel, equipment, food, phone and everything else was coming out of my husband's pocket. Usually it runs between $1,000 and $2,000 a month depending on how much traveling I have to do. While this is really low for a charity, what I do does not cost much at all, but when you are talking about taking the money out of your personal budget, it hurts!

Donations for 2012

August 24, 2012

Lenny $25.00

August 25, 2012

Rofkens $20.00

August 26, 2012

Fearless $10.00

Theresa $50.00

August 27, 2012

John $10.00

August 28, 2012

Ed and Sue $50.00

Veterans Multi-purpose Center $100.00

Thomas $25.00

September 4, 2012

Ivy $25.00

Aaron $50.00

September 18, 2012

VFW $1,000

October 13, 2012

Judith, $10.00

November 2, 2012

Richard $50.00

November 12, 2012

Kim $20.00

November 13, 2012

Steve $100.00

November 14, 2012

Michael and Patricia $200.00

November 27, 3012

Brian $20.00

December 6, 2012

Lenny $20.00

December 16, 2012

Nam Knights $200.00

This is what your money helped me do and I thank you very much for your support. You helped all of these groups get some attention for the work they are doing.

Videos filmed for veterans around Central Florida for 2012

January 22
Stunt Show Motorcycle Crash
Orlando Bikers Against Child Abuse
February 3
Memorial Service for John Michael Barrett
February 7
WWII Four Chaplains Service
February 12
WWII Montford Point Marine
February 22
Veterans Walk of Honor
March 8
Memorial Service for Daniel Hurley
March 10
DAV Dinner for Wounded Warriors
March 10
Nam Knights Bike Week Party
Dannis Bish
April 12
Three Wounded Veterans
April 15
Orlando Marines Come Home
April 18
Dannis Bish Memorial Service
April 19
MOMS
April 22
Vietnam Wall Escort
April 29
Guitarists Plays With One Hand
April 29
Veterans Reunion
May 7
Medal of Honor Sammy Davis
Combat? Talk About It
Nam Knights Homes For Our Troops Fundraiser
MOH Sammy Davis Shenandoah
May 27
Ocoee Memorial Day
May 28
Vietnam War Museum Memorial Day
May 31
Glen Haven Memorial Day
June 17
Orlando DAV Volunteers
DAV Convention Candy Man
Member of the Year Award I ended up filming myself getting the Auxiliary Award
June 23
Home Depot Helps DAV
June 28
VFW Military Awards
July 18
Orlando DAV New Officers
July 22
Rebel Rider Magazine Anniversary
July 28
Funeral for Capt. Bruce MacFarlane
August 7
Purple Heart Day
August 18
Lukas Nursery Butterfly Encounter about Spiritual Healing
August 29
DAV Van Dedication
September 15
Orlando Marines Fundraiser
Orlando US Navy Chief Petty Officers
September 23
Renewal of Vows Ambush
October 18
Nam Knights Memorial Dannis Bish
Nam Knights Memorial Eternal Chapter
November 11
Healing PTSD with Horse Power
November 18
Giving Thanks for Veterans
December 8
Coast Guard Fill the Boat
December 16
Coast Guard Fill the Boat Wrap Up
December 22
Brothers in Bras

Videos created for 2012


All of these videos from this year, as well as videos done going back to 2006, were all done for free! The donations above, while deeply appreciated, were not enough to cover the cost of going to these events during the year. The editing program to turn footage into videos is $2,500. Camera equipment along with everything else is very expensive. My car is getting old on top of everything else, so if you want to see more veterans events covered next year, I'm counting on you to carry me through!

Remember, your donations are tax deductible and also cover spiritual counseling I do with veterans and their families.

New Hampshire Nam Knights welcome home Jose Pequeno

If you know the Nam Knights, they do this kind of thing all the time and I do mean "kind" so it is great to see the New Hampshire Nam Knights get some recognition for how much they really do care about the men and women risking their lives everyday. Jose Pequeno was a police chief and was wounded in Iraq. The Nam Knights are members of law enforcement, firefighters and veterans.

Former police chief Jose Pequeno, injured in Iraq, comes home
By RAY DUCKLER Monitor staff
Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Iron Mike and Rhino never saw it coming.

They never figured Jose Pequeno, the former Sugar Hill police chief, would react as he did Friday at the Concord airport. Hadn’t that brain injury Pequeno suffered in Iraq pushed him into a world of darkness? Hadn’t that grenade tossed into his humvee nearly seven years ago wiped clean his memories, his emotions, his very identity?

That’s what people like Iron Mike and Rhino, along with the others with the rugged nicknames and the biker jackets and the barrel chests, thought when they greeted Pequeno on his trip home for Christmas.

Instead, Pequeno cried.

So the tough guys did, too.

“I saw him shortly after he came home from Iraq, and he was still in and out of surgery back then, in real rough shape,” said Iron Mike, whose real name is Mike Dempsey. “It’s very personal, but I feel as if he recognizes who we are now. When we talked to him, you could see his eyes light up and his face light up. To me, that tells me that he recognizes the voice, that he gets excited and makes it known through his own way.”

Dempsey is a 51-year-old former Marine with a gravely voice and a passion for motorcycles. He rode with Pequeno’s father in the Nam Knights of America, a philanthropic organization of retired law enforcement officers and military veterans.

They raise money, and they roll out the red carpet for people like Pequeno.

Four Nam Knights joined hands to lower Pequeno down the stairs, off a plane flown by a volunteer pilot from Land O’ Lakes, Fla., where Pequeno is now being cared for by his mother and sister. His wife and three kids still live here, in the small North Country town of Lisbon.
read more here

'Spiritual Triage' Training for Military Chaplains in Orlando

'Spiritual Triage' Training for Military Chaplains
Dec 25, 2012
Orlando Sentinel
by Richard Burnett

During more than a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military chaplains often found themselves caught between heaven and hell: one moment leading a prayer service, the next dodging enemy fire to be at the side of a dying soldier.

From loss, grief and post-traumatic stress to plain old holiday blues, combat chaplains have seen it all in responding to calls for help from soldiers struggling with issues of faith and doubt, life and death.

Now, with the U.S. out of Iraq, operations winding down in Afghanistan and military spending under budget-cutting pressure, the Army is calling on Central Florida's computer-simulation training industry to create new "virtual" exercises for chaplains -- at a bargain price.

By all accounts, it is the first time the local training-simulation industry has tackled the sometimes thorny issue of war and faith. Considered the country's largest cluster of military-training contractors, the local industry is known more for high-tech weapons simulators than for counseling simulations -- much less religious ones.

Yet training-simulation engineers in Orlando are now crafting "serious-game" software to lead chaplains through a "virtual battlefield" in which they respond to injured and dying soldiers. Dubbed the "Spiritual Triage Trainer," it is based on a combat-medic training simulator that the Army has been using for the past several years.

"The Army's chaplain school really doesn't have a budget for these kinds of things, so we were looking for something we already have that we could reuse," said Beth Pettit, chief of medical-simulation training at the U.S. Army Research Lab's simulation-technology center in Orlando. "We saw this as low-hanging fruit: a low-cost system that could be turned around relatively quickly."
read more here

Formerly homeless vet finds a place in a widow's heart and home

Ken Reusser obituary in the LA Times brings a lot more meaning to this already wonderful story about his widow Trudy.

He received 59 medals during his career, and his 253 combat missions are considered the most ever by a Marine pilot.
After his retirement, he worked for Lockheed Aircraft, where he helped develop the U-2 spy plane, and then the Piasecki Helicopter Co. Retiring to his native Oregon, he was active in veterans groups.
He and his wife, Trudy, made headlines in 2004 when they defiantly refused to leave their home after it went into foreclosure. The couple had lost much of their retirement savings in a high-risk investment and then a swindle by a bookkeeper. Ultimately they were forced to obey a court order.

Now that you know the backstory on this, read what Trudy Reusser did.

Formerly homeless vet finds a place in a widow's heart and home
Published: Tuesday, December 25, 2012
By Mike Francis
The Oregonian

If there's one thing on which everyone -- activists, columnists, elected officials, cabinet secretaries, even the president of the United States -- seems to agree, it's that Americans should support military veterans.

Bind their wounds. Give them jobs. Provide them counseling. Welcome them home. Easy to say, harder to do.

This is the story of one welcoming. It involves a 73-year-old Milwaukie widow and her housemate, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran.

She was married for almost 35 years to a legendary military aviator, living in a place she and her husband built before he died three years ago.

And he is her helper, sleeping in a warm bed in her spare bedroom, out of the cold and the rain since she invited him in.

If Trudy Reusser and Norm Gotovac seem an unlikely pair, that's because you don't know Reusser.

"She is a wonderful lady," says her friend, Kay Saddler of Hemlock, Ore. "She would give the shirt off her back and the shoes and socks off her feet if it would help a veteran."

Reusser. Why is that name familiar?

Military history buffs will know instantly: Ken Reusser is the most decorated Marine pilot in history. He displayed extraordinary bravery in combat not once, but repeatedly, across decades. He is, it is believed, the only pilot to have survived being downed in World War II, the Korean War and in Vietnam. He was awarded the Navy Cross twice, the Legion of Merit with V twice, the Distinguished Flying Cross five times, four Purple Hearts and numerous other commendations.
read more here

LAPD get rocket launchers in gun buyback?

Rocket launchers turned in to LAPD apparently were from military
By RICHARD WINTON
The Los Angeles Times
Published: December 29, 2012

LOS ANGELES — Two rocket launchers turned into the Los Angeles Police Department as part of the city's gun buyback event appear to be antitank weapons from the military, experts said.

Police said the people turning them in at the buyback told officers they had family members who were at one time in the military and "they no longer wanted the launchers in their homes."

Several military experts said one of the weapons was probably a version of the AT4, an unguided antitank weapon. It's a single-shot weapon that a soldier fires and then discards the tubing.
read more here