ain't no stoppin' us now!!!

When the Two First Posts Planning Committee met on Wednesday, the sight in the ballroom was amazing!

Our Building Manager for 5511 Montgomery Street, Eric Bolden, had set up all the event tables and chairs for this coming Saturday.

That will be the 80th anniversary of the American Legion Post 500 of Georgia, brothers with Post 36 in this venture.

Doesn't it look fabulous???

Eric has been there every day, as far as I know.

He's had to put together more than 100 of those Lifetime banquet chairs and twenty of the Lifetime banquet tables over the past two months.

He's had to open and close the building as the new wall was built.

He's been there to open and close for the two new entrance doors to be installed for the building to comply with code.

 

At that meeting, the doors were in place and finished!

That was good as the Fire Marshal was due at 11 AM on Friday.

Well, that inspection went swimmingly!!! 

The Fire Marshal has marked us good to go!!!

Hallelujah!!!

We finally have the Certificates of Occupancy for both the event ballroom and the canteen areas!

On Monday, June 15, the inspection will take place for the Health Permit.

Mike and Kat were at the meeting on Wednesday and they know exactly what is involved for that, so I expect Whiskey Tango Foxtrot BBQ to pass with flying colors... whatever those hues may be!

We are all so excited that an opening is nigh!

By 'we', I mean Doug Anderson, John Parker, me, Kat Hancock, Mike Kajik, Larry Jackson (by phone), Eric Bolden, and Brenda Pough.

Thanks to Brenda, we'll have own own colors!!!

She's quite creative and just look at the sign she has designed!!!

All four branches of the US military are represented, as well as a family group there in the lower right corner!

Doug was so thrilled!!!

I like that penultimate line: "It's Your Turn To Get Served!"

How about that!!!

She has also designed a logo for our business cards and stationery!

I'm so excited about all of this!

Mike and Kat had a couple of changes to make for the contract, but that should be ready to be signed at next Wednesday's meeting.

And we are all going to try to be at the City Council meeting on the first Wednesday of July, looking sharp and wearing our American Legion insignia.

That meeting will concern our liquor license, so it's very important!!!

Now, I wonder where my American Legion pin is?

(smile!) 

 

military luncheon at a cinema?

That's partly what it was.

The promise of a free meal is always a draw, 'alays kadhalika?

Or perhaps I should have said "intor nist?" for part of the event?

Whether in Arabic or Persian, the meaning is the same: n'est-ce pas?

If I'm being honest, I came for the luncheon, the movie, and the promise of a blank journal.

Even though I blog, I keep an old-fashioned paper diary, too.

I liked the idea of getting one from the Gary Sinise Foundation, especially as I'd just seen (parts of) "Forrest Gump" recently.

(smile!)

"Brothers After War" was a follow-up to Jake Rademacher's 2009 documentary, "Brothers At War", and both had the director interacting with his two brothers, Isaac and Joe, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the information disbursed, the 4-hour film and workshop "offers a safe, engaging environment where participants explore themes of service, sacrifice, moral injury, and resilience through guided conversations, interactive sessions, and community support", all in the comfort of the NCG Cinema.

From my front-row seat, I found all of that to be very true.

Chase Millsap, a ten-year veteran of the Marines, was there to help field questions and and lend support during the 2-hour workshop following the film.

Yes, that's correct: a 2-hour workshop, using a workbook with some tough questions for us - the active duty military, the veterans, the first responders, and any of their family members who came - to answer, honestly.

I was surprised how many veteran women were there!

Some of them even spoke up and shared their answers during the discussion.

I was not one of those.

Still, I want to share the answers I wrote for the four questions - out of 13 in the workbook -that were selected for this session.

"What part of the film did you most relate to? Why?"

The woman who had served with them & been "one of the guys". I was a CTM in the Navy and was "one of the guys," too. I related to her getting ticked off when the new guy focused on her being female instead of her job capabilities. Totally related to that.

"Have you ever had a friend think about suicide? Have you thought about suicide? How did you navigate it?"

My cousin David committed suicide after the death of Gwen. She had breast cancer that returned & he stayed right beside her during all her treatments the first time around, then again 4 years later. That second time was especially hard for him. He had called me while I was on vacation with family to talk about it & trying to get her to eat. He knew I had tried to help my mother-in-law, his Aunt, when she had stage 4 cancer and was dying. I talked with him for about an hour, under the stars in TN, and he definitely felt some relief from our talk. Still, she died 2 months later. He was dead by his own hand withing 6 months. He had tried to set up a friend to find his gunshot body, but his son did instead. It's still heart-breaking.

"What's it like to live with a veteran? If you are a veteran, what's it like to live with you?"

I definitely have my own way of doing things. Now that I have been retired for 7 years, I notice that I have a schedule, though it isn't one that others can really see. I do try to keep weekends open for family interaction, but the rest of the time I'm doing only what I want to do. Some days I don't even get dressed, and that started during the pandemic. If I don't get dressed, then it was okay to stay at home.

"What is your most positive memory or experience from your service? Why?"

We made friends quickly!

We all knew from the moment we arrived at each duty station that we needed to "find our tribe" - in the current vernacular - because we were going to need friends for our time there.

Quickly!

And we were all in the same situation, mostly. We were all going to be there for 1 /2 to 2 years. That isn't much time to find bonds with others. That's okay, we were all in the same situation. We could spend our time stationed there alone, or we could live and get the most from that different cultural experience.

So we joined the local film club, we joined the squaredance club, we joined the theatre troupe - we joined - quickly! 

 

 - - - - -

I liked the order of the questions. 

Those were not sequential in the workbook.

Those were on pages 1, 19, 15, and 13.

Why those particular ones and in that order?

They were chosen to lead us from more serious matters to lighter ones, so that we would be leaving on a positive note.

I can relate to that.

After all, I have a 40+-year-old mixtape that does that same thing.

(smile!)

Now, time to shift gears before my first niece arrives!

(smile!) 

military: past, present, future, kinda sorta

I hadn't woken up with the thought to have "military" as a theme for the day, but that's certainly how it's been.

The past was represented by the movie, "Warfare", which I've abstained from seeing until now.

I happened to catch a panel discussion with the writer-directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland as well as a couple of others.

It's not technically a documentary, as it wasn't filmed during the actual events on November 19, 2006, but it is real and it is intense.

I've spent enough time around folks who have been in combat to know.

That's why I had not gone before, and what I saw reminded me of how terrifying that situation is.

Civilians don't have a clue.

The first twenty minutes are the 'waiting' part, with everyone in position and on guard for any signs of a jihad in the making.

Waiting, waiting, waiting... a big part of being in the military, whether it's Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines, or Coast Guard, whether it's US forces or those of any other country.

Then, everything changes, and the madness of engagement with the enemy takes over and goes on and on and on, relentlessly, with the screams of the wounded and the smells of blood and explosions and spent ammunition all around as it goes on and on and on.

Every single one of our lawmakers need to see this.

Every single one of them.

 

The present was represented by those of us from the American Legion Posts 36 and 500 who attended the special meeting at Two First Posts this afternoon.

Located right outside the Montgomery Street gate of Hunter Army Air Base, this club is still under construction.

We had all hoped to have it open for Memorial Day, but, nope.

The other four of us there today are hoping for completion by Flag Day or possible in time for the Fourth of July.

Honestly, my estimate is Veterans Day of this year.

 

The hood for the canteen is in place, but not completely installed, as that would entail cutting a hole in the roof.

As that action would void the 30-year roof warranty, it's imperative to get the company that issued that warranty to do the work.

Lawyers, right, Doug Andrews?

(A little joke, as we all are aware he is a lawyer and knows this stuff.)

The construction crew is also still waiting for the roof in the women's bathroom to be repaired, as that is something the original roofers must do.

That's not the only snafu gumming up the works.

 

The construction crew is still waiting for the approval of the anti-fire water sprinkler system so they can install that throughout the building.

The construction company is still waiting to install the flooring throughout after the walls are spray-painted, but need the sprinkler installed first.

The construction company is still waiting to install ceiling tiles throughout after the walls are painted, but need the sprinkler installed first.

The construction crew has had all of the wiring and plumbing and HVAC lines approved by the City of Savannah, but the final inspection is awaiting the actual completion of the cosmetic stuff... but none of that can be done until the sprinkler installed first.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, the soldiers at Hunter have to party in the city's establishments, as they have no place to do so on post.

 

The future was represented by the Philo Cafe discussion at Foxy Loxy downtown this evening.

The title of our philosophical topic was "Right and Wrong and War".

I was the only veteran there.

Our little group was rounded out by Dan Baisden, Don Jarvis, and Roberta Hopkins, whose topic this was.

As usual, we strayed off that theme repeatedly, having started with an AI-generated 4-page summation that was garnered from all over the internet.

That's how those things usually are, though many are inclined to accept them at face value instead of seeking original works.

That led to a discussion of several themes: AI-art; search engines and their increasing reliance on AI to gather info; whether WWII could be called a 'just' war; the situation in the Ukraine and Russia; the situation in the Middle East; what defines the right reason for war and who defines the wrong party of such.

Of course none of those questions could be answered in the space of an hour, but that's not the reason for these gatherings.

Discussion is the point.

I just wish the topics were a bit lighter.

 

Still, it was good to see Dan, Don, and Roberta again.

It was also good to see Doug, Byron, and Billy again.

It's been quite a while since I've seen any of them.

Hopefully that will change.

how I marked the 13th year

This past week has certainly been a time of remembrances of my days in the military. Ever since last Friday, when I discovered, to my horror, that the Naval stations I had spent my young adult years at were (long) gone, I have had the impact of the military on youth on my mind. During times of peace, the effect is minimalized, primarily manifesting as an increase in structure and responsibility. That's all to the good. Regardless of the reason a person volunteers for service, that time elisted can bring happy memories and long-term friendships.
Today was not to mark a time of peace. This country has been deeply involved in war and peace has been absent for thirteen years.
In honor of this great country I call home, I attended two events at Armstrong State University today.
The first was a fun learning experience. Titled "Star Spangled Banner", the lecture explored the origins of several patriotic songs, not just our National Anthem. One piece in particular caught my attention: "America The Beautiful". Based on the poem "Pike's Peak", written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893, the lyrics give praise to the World's Columbian Exposition, better known as the Chicago World's Fair. She was a 33-year-old single woman, a teacher from Massachusetts, who had traveled to Colorado for a summer teaching job and stopped in Chicago along the way.
Why did this hold such importance for me?
Well, it appealed to my alter ego, Fliss of Kickstarter! In particular, the reference in the song to "alabaster cities", in conjunction with the knowledge of her trip to the Fair in 1893, immediately placed her in the context of the musical I had backed on kickstarter. 'Wait a minute!', I thought, 'I know that story about the Fair!' Indeed. Thanks to "The Dreamer and The Devil", I am rather familiar with the architect of that White City of which she speaks. I can certainly understand an intelligent young woman being quite taken with Daniel Burnham's gleaming dream, especially after the city grime she knew.
How fortunate for us all that she did not opt to stay at the hotel built by "Dr. H.H. Holmes" during her visit to the Fair. That establishment, self-billed as "World's Fair Hotel", came replete with dungeon, gas chamber, and moratorium, and was the site of at least 27 murders (possibly as many as 200). Had she rested her head on one of those pillows, we might not have ever had this paean to the beauty of America's diverse vistas.
Brrr! Did you just catch that chill?

The second event I chose to mark time in America's history was this evening.
The Armstrong Masquers performed
"A Piece of My Heart", the play written by Shirley Lauro. Her work was adapted from six stories of the twenty-six women in the 1986 book by Keith Walker. The six stories selected cover a broad range of women who served in Vietnam, during their time there (in the late 1960's) and up to the completion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (in 1984).
Some of these women were so young! Martha, a daughter of a career military man and Army nurse mother, and Sissy, who had just looked for escape from her Pennsylvania hometown, were 18 and 19 years old when they enlisted.
MaryJo, a Texas entertainer in her early 20's, thought a contract to entertain the troops would advance the careers of herself and her band. That was the story her agent told her.
LeeAnn was a hippie and a war protester, thinking that being a military nurse was a way to help folks - especially as she had been told she would be going to Hawaii.
Whitney, in her mid-20's, was an idealistic Ivy-leaguer, volunteering as a nurse for the American Red Cross.
They all believed the stories on the radio, on television, in the newspapers and magazines. America was winning the war over there, but could still use help.
The only one who truly knew what was going on was 35-year-old Steele, a 17-year intelligence specialist in the US Army. Of course, she found out that being a black female was not going to get you too far, regardless of the information you brought to the general's attention.

Yes, I cried.
I wept when the young nurses were thrown into the horror pit of war, forced to learn how to start an iv through OJT. Add to that scene the sound of helicopters,
the endless screaming and noise, and the sight of men, their age and younger, missing limbs and bleeding out before their eyes.
Horrific.
I wept when a dying young man gets to talk to his mom for Christmas.
I wept when the veteran in the group tries to stave off the Tet offensive and failed.
I wept when they all sought solace at the bottom of a bottle, both in Vietnam and back at home again.
Their return to the States was met with more tears, because I know the greeting they received from the civilian world here.
I am so grateful to be a supporter of the Armstrong Masquers.
Keep up the good work, y'all.

Barton: A hero's final flight | savannahnow.com

Barton: A hero's final flight.

"By Tom Barton
Posted Aug 17, 2011 at 1:22 AM

Want to know what sheer terror feels like?
It feels like falling.
It feels like one long blast of cold air rushing against you. It feels like you don’t have a prayer, as the ground that’s thousands of feet below you is coming up fast.
Your only hope of salvation is a tenuous one - a jumbled up wad of nylon and rope. But it’s all you’ve got. So you give it your biggest bear hug possible.
This pile of fabric and string was once a neatly folded parachute, Not anymore.
As you crawled through the fuselage of your crippled B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber, where you served as a ball turret gunner in missions over Germany during World War II, the chute pack had worked itself open. About 20 feet of parachute had unraveled inside the doomed aircraft.
Several of your buddies had already jumped. Now it’s your turn. But you can’t repack your chute. There’s no time.
So you do the next best thing. You gather it up in front of you, much like grabbing a big armful of heavy linen from the ground. But you can’t push yourself through the tornado that’s rushing through the open door. You don’t have extra hands. So you ask one of the last guys on board to give you the boot.
Then you’re falling into the abyss. You’re wondering whether your handful of chute will sprout into angel wings when you finally let go.
“At about 10,000 feet, I decided, let’s have done with it,” Frank Barry said.
“I threw up my hands. It blossomed like a balloon. It was the prettiest thing I ever saw.”
I hadn’t heard Frank’s war story until Tuesday. That’s when I finally listened to the DVD he gave me several months ago. The disk contained interviews that Barry and another World War II vet from Savannah, George DeLoach, a former B-24 pilot, had given at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler as part of its oral history program.
God bless the museum for this project. Stories of bravery, service and sacrifice never grow old. But if you don’t write them down or record them, they’re gone forever. A terrible loss.
I came to know Frank through Blessed Sacrament Church, where he was a member. He always sat in a back pew, usually at the 8 a.m. Sunday Mass. He was small in stature, walked slowly with the aid of a cane and typically was by himself. In the winter, he kept his head warm with a jaunty tam-o’-shanter. A flat-top haircut didn’t do the trick.
We’d occasionally meet for early coffee at the McDonald’s on DeRenne Avenue near his house. We’d talk college football (he was a huge Georgia Tech fan, his only failing), current events (he devoured the newspaper) and family (he knew my daughter through one of his grandsons). But he seldom talked about himself. Or the war. He was that kind of guy. Humble. Unassuming. Gracious.
As it turned out, his dullest stories trumped my best every time.
I did learn from Frank that he was a Depression-era child who grew up in an orphanage in Washington, Ga., then moved to Savannah to live with a sister when he was 14. He joined the Army National Guard in 1939 when he was 17. The few extra dollars were a godsend. After Pearl Harbor, he tried to become a pilot and washed out, but was sent to gunnery school to learn how to shoot from a ball turret. He had the perfect build for that cramped and dangerous quarters.
What I didn’t learn from Frank I picked up Tuesday on the DVD. I learned he shot down a German fighter on his first mission. I learned his own plane was shot down on his third mission after the bomber dropped its payload on Berlin. I learned he landed in a pig pen on a farm somewhere in northern Germany, and angry civilians carrying shotguns, axes and pitch forks captured him.
This may be the scariest part.
I learned he and hundreds of other allied prisoners spent 86 days on a forced march from one prisoner-of-war camp to another during the dead of winter with no food. The only thing they had to eat was what the guards would let them scrounge from roadside farms. Barry said his weight plunged - from 165 pounds to a skeletal 85.
“I was never so cold, so hungry in all my life,” he told his interviewer.
He was liberated from the camps after 15 months. But when his saviors offered him a sandwich, he couldn’t eat it. The same went for cereal. “I was so hungry I was nauseated. I gave it away.”
Like many servicemen who returned after the war, Frank went to college on the G.I. bill. He earned a degree in industrial management at Georgia Tech and went on to a long, successful career at the Union Camp plant in Savannah. He got married and had kids. He retired from his job in 1986.
Last November, Frank attended the dedication ceremony for the World War II monument on River Street. It wasn’t easy for a slow-moving, 89-year-old man with a cane to negotiate the cobblestones. But he had to be there. It was a proud moment.
Francis Ignatius Barry died Saturday. He will be buried with full military honors today in the Greenwich section of Bonaventure Cemetery.
It’s a pretty place. A much better landing than a pig pen. I’m guessing his soul was again snagged by an angel.

Tom Barton is the editorial page editor of the Savannah Morning News and blogs on savannahnow.com. tom.barton@savannahnow.com."

I had heard these stories from Frank's lips, so I know them well.
Still, it's good to see them in print and know that his words, and his voice, will carry on.
A balm to my aching heart, as was the graveside military entourage and salute yesterday.
My gratitude to all.