Fort Richardson soldier found dead at home

Authorities investigate soldier's death

The Associated Press

Published: September 5th, 2010

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Authorities are investigating the death of a Fort Richardson soldier at his Eagle River home.

Army officials say the soldier's wife called 911 when she found her husband unresponsive late Saturday night.

Read more: Authorities investigate soldier death

Marine's dying wish for Afghanistan's children lives on

Marine's dying wish turns to reality

By Jessica Bowman – email

GULFPORT, MS (WLOX) - Thousands of school supplies will be sent over seas to help students trying to receive an education. During the Gulfport High School pep rally Friday supplies were presented to one woman who is helping make those students achieve their goal.

Pens and Paper for Peace is the name of the project in memory of Matthew Freeman. Freeman was serving in the United States Marine Corps in Afghanistan. While there, he noticed local children were struggling for school supplies. He said they treasured those items more than anything else. After Freeman was killed in the line of duty his family wanted to carry on his compassion for helping those children in need of school supplies.

The crowd roared with enthusiasm preparing to hand over their generous donations.

Theresa Freeman said, "My husband, Matthew Freeman, when he deployed to Afghanistan, he was very impressed with how the children were hungry for education and paper. They wanted that more than food and he told his mom that the last time he talked to her."

So, Freeman's mother and his widow Theresa Freeman decided Matthew's legacy could live on through the lives of children.
read more here
Marine dying wish turns to reality

Soldier back from Iraq killed back home

Police: Fatal shooting may have been domestic dispute

SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) - Savannah-Chatham Metro police detectives are investigating a fatal shooting of an Army staff sergeant.

Police said that Staff Sgt. Michael A. Sams, 36, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq may have been shot during a domestic dispute with his wife.
read more here
http://www.wtoc.com/Global/story.asp?S=13103825

Don't just sit there, cry

Don't just sit there, cry

by
Chaplain Kathie

Living in the lightening capital of the country, the sky fills with dark clouds and you know what's coming. Soon the sky grows darker taking over the light of the Florida sun. It gets darker and darker. Then comes the rolling thunder as rain comes down so hard it feels as if your skin is on fire. Lightening strikes so fierce you cannot look away. Everyone for miles around cannot escape the fact the storm is here. They see it. They hear it. They feel it. They fear it.

We can all understand the power of the storms but what we cannot understand is what is left behind unless it happens to us. There are homes set on fire by lightening strikes but it doesn't happen all the time, doesn't happen to every home and doesn't change every life, so it's hard to know what it feels like to someone else.

Some storms are so powerful they take out electricity in neighborhoods. Since most of these storms come when air conditioners are essential, there is no way to cool off as heat penetrates the walls making it unbearable. With no way to know where the storm is, where it is going as communication ends, we don't know if it will get worse or how long it will last or when our suffering will end. We wait listening to the rain and thunder putting our lives on hold. Should the storms come at night, we light candles trying to break up some of the darkness we are surrounded by but the candles are not enough to light every part of our homes and we need to walk around with candles so that we don't trip and fall.

Then the rain stops pounding turning into a soft shower. The dark clouds move on to someone else's neighborhood. We hear the distant thunder knowing the danger has passed over us. The sky slowly turns clear again and then we know it's going to return to normal soon. The power comes back on and we get on with our lives.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a lot like thunderstorms. Everyone in the area suffers pretty much the same way but some suffer more from the same event. Some lose power for longer periods of time, so as one neighborhood returns to life as normal, another is still suffering until it is their turn to get their power back on. While most homes are spared a direct hit of lightening, some will end up seeing this storm was just too much for them and their lives were sent into turmoil. It will take a lot out of them and take much longer for them to get over this storm everyone else has moved on from.

My job is to make the journey from darkness easier to get through, to help other neighbors understand that there are people who did not see the clouds clear and their lives return back to where they were before but above all, it is to make people cry.

It may sound heartless but I am delighted when a Vietnam veteran emails me because I made them cry. It has been far too long they felt as if they couldn't. I get emails from Gulf War veterans, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and from families. Now and then I'll hear from a cop or a spouse, a firefighter and then from members of the National Guards with a blended life of being deployed into combat and then facing traumatic events right here back home as a cop or firefighter.

If I can touch a veteran and make them cry, it is because I got them to understand that what they have been feeling is not so impossible for someone else to understand and see. They don't feel so alone. It is almost as if a sledgehammer has begun to take down the wall they have been living trapped behind. If I make a spouse cry, it is because they can finally understand what someone they love has been living with and then understand why their own lives have been filled with thunderstorms.

These comments were left when I had my videos up on YouTube.

comment on em PTSD Not God's Judgment
my faith was gone...i'm in tears and want to say thanks

comment on A Homeless Veteran's Day
This brought me to tears. Damn good job with the video. It's abominable that we treat our vets like that... and the way some treat these people is even more so.

There are a lot more I save to keep me going when I want to stop. When veterans email me, most of the time they write about crying. I am happy when this happens because it means the walls around their soul are coming down. It means that the pain they had trapped is leaving them so that good feelings can enter in.

This email pretty much says it all.

PTSD and cops - my husband


The other morning around 4 am, my husband (XXXXX Police for 17 years, 3 shootings, all lethal, and a million horrible experiences later because he worked in the worst part of XXXXX for 10 years) woke me after he had only had about 1 1/2 hrs of sleep to watch your video. I believe God led him to it because he doesn't like computers and for him to even find it was a miracle. We've been married for 19 years.

He's been in treatment for PTSD for about 6 months now, and you need to know that your video mirrored our life. He doesn't feel so alone now, and I'm not so angry when he takes off for a few hours, not even knowing what triggered the event (he rarely even remembers much anyway).

He's beginning EMDR therapy, and although it will be hard, after watching your video he understands that he has to keep going to his appointments faithfully to get better. He's had suicidal thoughts and before we even knew what was happening he ended up on a mountainside with a gun in his mouth, not able to go to work. He barely even remembers it. He had to take FMLA leave, and thankfully his doctors were able to word everything correctly as to not "rubber gun" him (make him not able to use his weapon, which would basically put you somewhere in nowheresville being a policeman).

I just want to thank you for your video and if you know how I can volunteer somehow to help veterans or anyone effected by PTSD (a shelter?), I want to make a difference, as you have. I especially want the world to know that cops can be affected by this, and it is so often shoved under the table with police. I know that it is real and my husband and I have both discussed the fact that if I had ever left him, he would have quit his job and quite possibly be homeless. I am believing that someday, after therapy, through prayer and through my precious Lord Jesus Christ, our life will have some normalcy again.

Thank you so much for giving us hope.

Emails like these keep reminding me that this is the way the military and the VA need to go. They need to let everyone know what it feels like to be subjected to a thunderstorm of trauma touching everyone's life but allowing some to just go back to "normal" while changing the lives of others to different levels of darkness.

We need everyone in the neighborhood of the USA to see the clouds move in as darkness takes over. Hear the thunder rolling across the sky and feel the rain of grief. Too many are suffering needlessly, feeling alone, believing the power to get back to "normal" will not be turned back on for them and others find all they had is gone. None of what they are going through has to happen if they all understand why they should cry and begin to heal. As with thunderstorms the hard rain (hard cry) soon turns into a soft shower and then the darkness moves on allowing the sun to shine again lighting their lives.

While my videos are hard to watch they are intended to make you cry and to understand that the darkness can move away from your life. So dont' just sit there suffering. Cry and begin to heal.


The rest of my videos are on the sidebar of this blog.

But it is not just men who suffer in darkness. It is women too.



This was sent from the man who wrote the lyrics to this beautiful song. It shows that after all these years, his message is still reaching out to so many people in need and so is he.

last night I watched the "Hardest Times" video. I am honoured that the lyrics I wrote so long ago are still being used to bless others in a manner such as you describe with these women - may the Lord bless them abundantly for everything they endure in serving their country. And may He bless you as well, Chaplain Kathie, for all you do in your service to Him and to your country.

For the last three years I have been living in Jerusalem, Israel, volunteering with a ministry that helps feed the poor and homeless of the city (regardless of ethnicity). As a lay chaplain myself, and as a follower of Jesus Christ, the Scripture I use as a "signature", both in the addictions ministry I worked for six years in Canada and now here in feeding the poor, is Galatians 6:9 NIV, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Those last six words are indicative of a diligence with which you seem to have been blessed.

I may not have known it at the time, but I now believe with all my heart that while it might have been me who held the pen when I wrote those lyrics, the words that fell on the page were inspired by the Holy Spirit himself. The darkness of the "hardest times" you are so faithfully trying to expose to the Light is not the first time Wildflower has been a blessing to others - and it is my sincere prayer that it won't be the last.

It is also my prayer that the Lord will go before you in this venture, and that your heartfelt efforts will help to set captives free (Isaiah 61).

Blessings again, in Christ Jesus...

Dave Richardson

We can get the storms to pass if we all do what we can when we can, no matter how small we think the effort is. No one has to be in the darkness when there are so many ready and willing to light the candles.

Sen. Simpson, Don’t Blame Vietnam Veterans for Our Nation’s “Fiscal Mess"

Sent by email. It shows that if the American people really do care about our veterans, they need to decide. Do we owe them a debt that has not been paid or do we again ask them to sacrifice even more? How much more can our veterans be asked to give when the rich in this country want more and more? Contractors are not the military. They make money off of the men and women asked to risk their lives. They make money off war itself. Yet the same members of congress refusing to hold them accountable for one dime are now saying that yet again the burden has to come from those willing to risk their lives for the sake of this country. That is exactly what the Vietnam veterans did and after 40 years some in congress want them to keep paying and sacrificing at the exact time we have new veterans coming into the long lines of the VA wondering what their future will look like if it is this bad now! America needs to stand with our veterans or stand in front of them the next time there is a war to fight.

Saturday, September 4, 2010
A Vietnam Veteran Responds: Sen. Simpson, Don’t Blame Vietnam Veterans for Our Nation’s “Fiscal Mess”
It's Time for All State Council President's To Join John's Call To Action!

September 3, 2010

By John Weiss,

President Rhode Island State Council, Vietnam Veterans of America

(Providence)--We hear that some in Congress are calling on America’s Vietnam veterans to slow down the Agent Orange “gravy train”—this because the price tag for caring for our war-related health problems is one that some would like not to pay.One former senator is even going so far as to implicitly question our patriotism. Sen. Simpson heaps praise on Vietnam veterans for having “saved this country.” This strange and long-overdue recognition, however, is merely his preface to the admonishment that follows: “The veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess.”

Sen. Simpson’s remarks are directed at an AP news story reporting that diabetes is the most frequently compensated disease among Vietnam veterans. I sincerely hope that Sen. Simpson is not calling on Vietnam veterans to sit back and allow Congress to turn their backs on our sick brother and sisters, thus allowing our “leaders” to renege on Lincoln’s promise, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan”? When our leaders send the nation’s sons and daughters off to war, they must be prepared to pay the full price—and in this case, the price for one of the longest, most divisive wars in our modern history is high, that we don’t deny.

Though we Vietnam veterans are aging, our short-term memories have yet to fail: We remember, not so long ago, when our Congress voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorizing the Department of the Treasury to purchase or insure troubled assets as a way to save the financial institutions And we also remember when certain CEOs of these same financial institutions, bailed out by U.S. taxpayer dollars, continued to pay themselves excessive bonuses, with U.S. taxpayer dollars. We wondered then what was happening to our country. And now we know.

The projected cost of TARP continues to fluctuate over time, depending on the source. According to a report issued in March 2010, by the Congressional Budget Office, the cost of the TARP program over the next ten years is estimated at $109 billion. In August 2010, however, the Treasury Department estimated that TARP program would cost $105 billion. The ten-year projected cost of caring for our veterans suffering from the contested Agent Orange-related war wounds, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, is $42.2 billion. Let’s ask the American people where they would rather their tax dollars go. We stand with our fellow citizens in every community, all across our great nation.

We stand with our newest generation of veterans and with all veterans. Our fight is their fight. They are us, and we are them. And years down the road, how we prevail in Congress today will foreshadow how they will prevail as they age and become us. We support our newest generation of warriors for they are our sons and daughters, those whom we honor when they go off to battle and those whom we honor when they come home—you see, warriors are generation bound. A strong country relies on a strong defense. And we are your defenders. So when you deliberate, remember that our country’s future relies, not on those corporate lobbyists who flash through Congress’s halls, but on us, its citizens. And if nothing else, come election time, we will be leading our families to the polls.

Friday, September 3, 2010
Mrs. Kelley - From: Glenda Kelley (on behalf of Charles)
blogger's note: perhaps our participation in the economic ruin of our country isn't quite as malicious as seen by Senator Simpson...I think this was the part that angered me the most. Who do they think ordered the spraying of all the chemicals that were used, the same government that was told by all the scientists "do not do this" not only did they do it but mixed it in quantities far and above the recommended usage. The "miracle" turning into milk and honey is almost laughable. My husband was an engineer. He made lots more money working than he will ever make in disability payments from the VA. Do they really think these men wouldn't rather be physically fit and able to work and play and travel or maybe just live to see their 65th birthday. Yes heart disease can be a condition of old age but many of these men have been suffering from it for 20 yrs or more ...just because it is just now being recognized does not mean its because they are now old. In the ranch hand transcripts it was noted that they were not seeing increases in cancer because the men were dying of heart disease before the cancers had a chance to develop. We need to do something before these people spread enough of these lies to kill any chances we have of getting what all our Vietnam Veterans (by land and sea) deserve.Come up with a plan and count the Kelley's in.

Glenda

via Paul Sutton

Agent Orange Victims & Widows Support Network

Home Of The Agent Orange Quilt Of Tears

http://www.agentorangequiltoftears.com~Sacrifice is meaningless without remembrance~

Soldier's home foreclosed while she was serving abroad

Soldier's home foreclosed while she was serving abroad
"I couldn't believe it," Capt. Tania Garcia said. "I was in shock."
By Jeff Weiner and Gary Taylor, Orlando Sentinel

10:47 p.m. EDT, September 3, 2010
Army Capt. Tania Garcia said she was on active duty in South Korea when she got the news.

Garcia's Realtor informed her that her south Orange condominium had been foreclosed upon. Suddenly, a soldier serving abroad had no home to return to.

"I couldn't believe it," Garcia said. "I was in shock."

More shocking news was ahead. Court files from the foreclosure showed an affidavit had been filed that stated Garcia was not in the active military and that the notice of foreclosure was served on her husband.

Two problems: Garcia said this week she was on active duty — and she is not married. Now, Garcia is fighting to win back the home she thinks was taken from her unfairly.

Garcia fell victim to a foreclosure process in which the most important element is the time it takes from start to finish, said Jeff Kaufman, senior partner with KEL Attorneys.

Garcia's condo initially was bought back by Flagstar Bank and then resold, Kaufman said. But because of errors in serving notice in the case, his law firm was able to persuade a judge to throw out the sale, he said.
read more here
Soldier home foreclosed while she was serving abroad

Leo students see faces of war

Leo students see faces of war
Vietnam Memorial replica coming to school.
By Sarah Janssen
The lights switched off and a photo was projected on the wall of a group of men, Vietnam veterans, most with thick hair and mustaches.

“Which one was shot in the leg four times?” asked one student. His history teacher at Leo Junior-Senior High School, Mike Lance, pointed to the photo. “This guy,” he said.

On Friday, Lance finished the Vietnam War lecture he began earlier this week to the seventh-grade class.

Teachers at Leo have incorporated the war into English and history lessons throughout the week to prepare students for the arrival of a traveling half-size replica of the Vietnam War Memorial wall called the Wall That Heals and the accompanying Agent Orange Quilt of Tears. Both honor veterans who died in the war or from complications and injuries from the war.

See exhibit

♦The Wall That Heals and the Agent Orange Quilt of Tears will be on display 24 hours a day 6 p.m. Wednesday-dusk Sunday at Leo Junior-Senior High School, 14600 Amstutz Road.

♦The Wall That Heals will be in the south lot of Leo and the Agent Orange Quilt of Tears will be in the front entryway of the school.

♦An opening ceremony honoring local fallen soldiers will be at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

♦A traveling museum and information center will be available.

Leo students see faces of war

Staff Sergeant William Castillo, wounded in Iraq, gets new home in Orlando

Wounded vet gets new home

By Lisa Bell, Anchor
Last Updated: Friday, September 03, 2010 9:17 AM

ORLANDO --
A wounded soldier has a new place to call home in Central Florida thanks to some local volunteers.

Staff Sergeant William Castillo received a purple heart for his service in Iraq-- it was the home this soldier and his family had been hoping for.

A renovated, 5 bedroom south Orlando home, built by the hands of volunteers who thought Staff Sergeant William Castillo deserved a gift for his work in Iraq.

"Being a husband and a father this is what you want to be able to provide for your family," said wounded veteran William Castillo.

Castillo was hit with 5 bullets after an IED exploded under his Humvee in Iraq.
read more here
Wounded vet gets new home

211 Spotlights Suicide Awareness and Prevention for US Veterans

211 Spotlights Suicide Awareness and Prevention for US Veterans
pagewoodward
TCPalm
Posted September 3, 2010
September 3, 2010-During the month of September, the mental health community is highlighting the need for National and Global Suicide Awareness and Prevention. In the US an average of 30,000 individuals commit suicide yearly. In fact one person dies from suicide every 16 minutes. Veterans make up 20% of the yearly deaths, at double the rates of other populations with an average of 18 suicides per day. This has many health and human service professionals alarmed.

It is estimated that there are nearly 2 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to date, most of whom have served multiple tours. This translates into more and more veterans who are returning with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and other mental health issues. Left untreated, these elevate the risk for suicide and if coupled with substance abuse, the proverbial “time bomb waiting to go off” theme comes into play.
read more here
211 Spotlights Suicide Awareness and Prevention for US Veterans

Driver in Marine Recruit Fatal Crash Wants Lower Bond

Driver in Marine Recruit Fatal Crash Wants Lower Bond

A man accused of causing a traffic crash that killed three Marine recruits is asking the court to reduce his bond.

Williams is accused of driving the vehicle that crashed into a Marine recruiters car March 31 killing Zachery A. Nolen, Joshua A. Sherbourne and Michael T. Theodore Jr. The crash also injured three others.

read more of this here
Driver in Marine Recruit Fatal Crash

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