Knee Deep in the Hooah!

Here’s a little post-Christmas story that will bring a smile to your face. I found it at Right Nation. When our Wounded Warriors who served in Iraq and Afghanistan needed an off-site facility to serve their needs and the needs of their families, the American people dug deep and gave.

While our Congress is busy writing checks from your tax dollars to fund failed businesses — businesses who failed because of bad and some outright unethical business practices — the American people were supporting those who needed funding because they have been wounded fighting for this Country.

I am willing to bet that 4-million dollars would barely cover the raises our Congress gave themselves recently — you know the raise they gave themselves when America is in a financial crisis with a recession looming overhead. How long will we let this go on?

Enough of that. I hope this article compels you to give every chance you get to our Wounded Warriors.

You Helped Heroes: Wounded Warriors Get New ‘Home’

By RALPH PETERS
NY Post
Excerpt:

December 26, 2008

A YEAR ago this month, the Post ran a week-long series of columns on the courage and grit of our wounded troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Their medical treatment was state of the art, but the “off duty” facilities serving them and their families were a shame.

Those who gave so much asked for nothing for themselves. Fortunately, others stepped in.

Brooke Army Medical Center staffers and benefactors in San Antonio, Texas, saw that the local one-room Warrior and Family Support Center that helped prepare badly wounded vets for their return to the “real world” was overwhelmed.

A need was there. The money wasn’t.

Always patriotic, San Antonio’s citizens decided to do what government would not: Build a transition facility worthy of our troops.

But doing it right meant raising $4 million. That’s small change in Washington, but not for citizens trying to pay their bills.

The help-our-vets effort proposed a stand-alone center where our troops could learn or relearn skills, take college courses, undergo counseling – or just relax, readjust and get to know their spouses and kids again (while families learned to deal with the needs of heroes badly burned or missing limbs).

A network of local contractors contributed their services, but the funding still fell short. Construction began, but the project’s backers lacked the money to finish the job.

That’s where you came in.

When those profiles of our wounded warriors ran last December, you stepped up with contributions great and small. Post readers came through with about a million dollars – a quarter of the funding.

Despite the financial demands we all feel every holiday season, you gave to those who had given so much to us.

The result? On Dec. 1, military authorities received the keys to a magnificent 12,500-square-foot facility.

Instead of one crowded room up a flight of stairs, our wounded vets have a beautiful building specifically designed to meet their needs. The quality is impeccable – this “home” will be there for generations of vets. For once, our troops received a worthy thanks.

Congress, tax dollars and war profiteers didn’t give it. You did.

So many people have been involved in this nonprofit effort that no column could begin to acknowledge them all, from the Huffman Brothers – the prime contractors who donated all of their services – through the thousands like you who helped any way they could, to Judith “Mom” Markelz, the human heart of the Warrior and Family Support Center through the lean years.

Always there for our troops and their families, Markelz has lived to see a dream fulfilled with the new center’s opening. And she has a message for everyone who helped:

“I promise you we will fill this building with laughter, joy, excitement and caring as a tribute to our wounded warriors.”

Our wounded heroes don’t want pity, of course – they scorn it. They want respect. And they’ve earned it. Those who haven’t had the privilege of meeting these splendid men and women just can’t appreciate their courage and moral decency. READ MORE