Needles California - trying to outrun the dragon

We are really boogying to try to outrun the very hot temperatures which are coming here this week...predicted to be 110 by end of week. We drove 350 miles today...normally we would call it good after 200 to 250.

I am a very visual person so that's where the title of this blog came from...feel like we have a fire spewing dragon right behind us and we are trying hard to outrun the heat from it.

Mission Accomplished...now let's go home

Our month here in Tucson has been very productive.

We like to see things to completion so it felt so good to get the TOP office moved, desks reassembled and even the pictures rehung. Our friend Jess, president of TOP, has developed such a trust level in us that he just let us "do our thing" even down to the placement of all his pictures on the walls. It was actually fun.

Let me back up a little though to the most fun day...moving day. We started out on a day predicted to go into triple digit temperatures. We were just going to make one quick trip with one load from the old office to the new one.

On the way we stopped out of curiosity to see how much a U-Haul truck would cost for the day. The sign in the window of the truck said $19.95...WOW, what a deal!

Actually we learned a valuable lesson about marketing techniques...Yes, the truck is "Just 19.95" but then you add in 58 cents a mile, pay for fuel $31, insurance $14, and the extra accessories. They have a hand truck in the back of the truck...it is ny tied to a bracket and if you break the ny tie showing you used it they charge you an extra $7. Get down to moving and decide you needed blankets to pad things...no problem, they have a bag of blankets hanging on the wall...ny tie on the zipper. If you break the seal showing you used them they charge you accordingly. As I said great marketing.

Well even at the end cost of $113 it was still a deal and we got the whole office moved in one trip. Jess had been worried about any of us carrying any of the heavy stuff as we are all nearly eligible for senior citizen discounts. Well outside the old office there were two negro men and one woman...obviously down and out on their luck and looking for money for food. We paid them $20 and they carried everything out and into the truck. Great deal.

At the other end when we got to the new office the handyman (a middle aged mexican man) came out with his hand truck and helped us with most of the off loading. No aches or pains for us...we were lucky to draft lots of help.

The best part of the day was hearing that Jess did not get our phone message about moving the office and he stopped by the office to get a load in his pickup. He said he almost had a coronary when he opened the office door and everything was gone. All we had left was a phone sitting on the floor. He was definitely surprised but pleasantly surprised and pleased.

Tonight Jess gave us a thank you letter and I will share a few lines of it with you...

"The time and effort you devoted to TOP, throughout this month was a priceless donation, unquantifiable in dollars. We are most grateful for the unconditional time, effort, and the personal expenses associated with your volunteer stay in Tucson. TOP was able to make some leaps during your visit, directly as a result of your involvement."

Tomorrow morning is time for our departure. We will finally find out if our motor home wheels are still round after sitting here for a full month. This is the longest we have "planted" ourselves in one spot to date. It has worked well but mainly because we had so many things going on to keep us occupied.

Weatherwise we are leaving just in time as they predict that the temps will be up 107 or so by the end of the week. All I can think of right now is walking in the cool rain at home.

We originally were going to venture on to Arkansas and Branson before we go home. Based on weather patterns, storms and our energy level, we have decided instead to just head home.

As Dorothy said in the wizard of oz..."There's no place like home"...that we will find out real soon.

Linda

Tucson = Hot, Dry, Dusty, Smoky

Yes, it is hot here. Finally hit 100 degrees yesterday and at the same time we got a bit of rain...here they call it rain even though we saw the few water droplets on the patio for only about 5 minutes. The prediction for today is for high winds and blowing dust. Many of the plants are blooming so this kicks up allergies for everyone.

Yes, we are very close to the fires. The biggest one is "9 miles north of Tucson" and just north of the old office location on Oracle road. We are not in danger though and I understand the fire is moving north not south. The entire town of Tucson is between us and the fire.

Lease negotiation finally were successful last week and we are starting to set up the new office. So very nice to have it less than a mile from our motor home. Should have just a couple more trips out to the old office this week to get the move completed. We plan to do it early morning to beat the heat if we can.

Friday night we joined our TOP friend, Jess, his wife and three grand daughters at a small local "fair" which was held on their church grounds as a fund raiser. Located in a very small community just East of here, it was a true taste of small town Arizona. The locals were out strutting their stuff with line dancing, amateur bands and singers, carnival games (throw the artificial cow dropping through the hanging toilet seat), jousting rings, bungee runs, etc. It was all entertaining and fun. All the little kids were up dancing and it was a perfect people watching opportunity.

Saturday night we used a gift from Jess and went to see the new movie, "Da Vinci Code" at a local shopping mall theatre. It had been quite a time since we had been to a theatre and we really enjoyed the experience. Pretty nice now to understand the hub bub surrounding that movie and the issues involved. It was a good movie and a great one to experience on the big screen.

My dog tag online research has gone well. I have over 100 letters out now on over 88 dog tag matches. We have had 8 dog tags sent back to their families since I arrived. One of these days all those other contacts will call in and we will really have our hands full.

We have made several visit to the large air force base here in Tucson. Gary's disability gives us access to all their facilities and we have found them very complete. Gary even got himself an official military hair cut the other day...all for a bargain price of $7.

Nuff for today,
Take care all...
Linda

The Faces Haunt Me

The research moves on, one by one, as I search them out. Many have pictures with memorial pages but often not much current information to make the family search any easier. Many times the posts there are by their military buddies recounting the final minutes of life as they held their buddies dying bodies in their arms. So sad. Many feel guilty that they lived and recognize how close they came to losing their lives as well.

The faces haunt me, driving me on in the quest to find their families and return home the precious dog tags they wore around their necks.

I felt compelled to share with you these two pictures which I pulled up tonight. Such sweet young men who never got a chance to come home...who will be 19 or 20 years old forever in our memories. They gave so much for our country...what I do now is just a token of the respect and thanks they deserve from us.

Seek out a veteran near you and tell him how much you appreciate his sacrifice for our freedom. Freedom is not free and they have paid an awesome price for us.

Hugs and tears,
Linda

Taking a Dog Tag Phone Call in the TOP office

Carefully Filing of Dog Tag Envelopes

Baking in the Arizona oven

Arizona has decided to demonstrate to us just why we do not live here. Temperatures have been hovering near the 100 degree mark every day. We are learning to get up really early and get anything done we need to tend to and then "chill out" in the air conditioned interiors during the middle of the day.

Most of the "snow birds" have left and headed north for cooler temperatures, and I can see why. If we did not have our hearts in the dog tag projects and other causes for TOP Vietnam Veterans, we would be "outa here" too.

I will try to attach a couple pictures...one is me sorting and filing through the entire inventory of 1400 dog tags. Wow, what a job but we got it done and moved the tags from large glass display cases into a tidy system of marked "coin" envelopes filed alphabetically. Also did a good inventory of all the tags. We have had nightmares about notifying someone that we have their veteran's tag and then not being able to find it. No more nightmares like that with our new system.

Since that I have been doing extensive online research finding additional families and then mailing notification letters to them. The calls back have been slow at coming in but when they do it is quite moving.

I will attach also a picture of me taking one of the calls. I find that I really enjoy it...but as Gary and Jess keep warning me...I have not had an irate caller yet. Sometimes the subject of the war is so sensitive to people and also some people are suspicious that we are into identity theft and trying to get more information on them.

One tag we succeeded in returning last week went to a family with three sisters that I had sent letters to in November. They thought it was a "scam" of some sort so they did not call back. Finally I sent them e-mails as I had found them via posts they had done to a memorial page for their brother.

When they got the e-mails, they finally checked out the website for TOP and realized we were genuine. Now it seems that they cannot say enough good things about us and of course their brother's dog tag is on its way back to them and delivery to their mother. Hope it made it by mother's day.

Timing seems to be magical on some of these dog tag reunions. One daughter called me on Friday to say she had just received her father's dog tag back. She was very emotional and mentioned she was getting ready to leave to go participate in the Cancer relay/walk. Knowing that her father had died of cancer (3 years ago) I encouraged her to take his dog tag out of the fancy velvet box we send them in, put it on a pretty ribbon and wear it around her neck for the walk. She just sobbed...I think she just needed someone to give her "permission" to do that. I felt so good to be the one !

We took most of the day "off" and made an early visit to the space building at the Pima Air Museum. This museum is awesome but very big. We ended up buying a membership and just keep going back so Gary can take it a couple hours at a time...which is just about the limits of his endurance on his feet. He is actually doing much better with his mobility. He hasn't had his crutches out in a couple weeks and seems to be building some small but noticeable amounts of strength as well as flexibility. Being 35 pounds lighter helps him as well.

Nuff for now but know we are busy and productive and feeling good about the difference we are making here. Hopefully Jess at TOP can get his lease negotiations complete this next week so we can move the office before it is time for us to leave here. It will cut his commute to the office by 30 miles each way.

Take care all,
Be on the lookout for areas where you too can make a difference in the lives of others...It is the best anti-depressant there is !
Linda

Emotional Work for a Good Cause

Since our May 1st arrival in Tucson, we have totally focused on things we can do to make a difference for TOP (Tours of Peace) Vietnam Veterans and their many programs.

Top on the list was to find a new office so Jess, the president of this small non-profit corporation, would no longer have an 80 mile (round trip) a day commute to the office. He works a lot at home as well but needs to tend to business in the office at least 4 days a week and with the current gas prices we could no longer keep the current office on the far Northwest side of Tucson.

The first day when we drove down the freeway and prepared to take our turnoff to our favorite deluxe RV park (Voyager RV Resort), I spotted a sign across the highway saying "Office Space" and thought "Could it really be this easy???" I drove over there to check it out and found that the building used to be the world headquarters for a very large gas and oil corporation. It is a huge building with long corridors and numerous offices. The brothers who have purchased it are gradually renovating it and renting it out. They usually require a rental space of 1,000 sq ft minimum but when I went to visit them I told them of all the good works of TOP and they were convinced to bend the rules even to the extent of giving them 320 sq ft for the same price as 200 would have been. The fact that they had a brother (now deceased) who was a Vietnam Veteran did not hurt any. WOW, day one and I had the top item on my "to do list" done...and we had yet to have our meeting with Jess to take over the operation of the office and our projects for the coming month here.

On Tuesday when we met with Jess, we were presented with the second item on our "to do" list. It was a very innocent looking shoe box that was very heavy. Inside was the precious treasures that the TOP participants brought back from Vietnam in March. It took my breath away when I gazed upon 367 dog tags strung on a heavy string snaking through the center of the box. These tags had been "rescued" from the street vendors in Vietnam rather than have them sold as tourist trinkets. It is our mission to inventory and sort through these, and then place them each safely in a small coin envelope, labeled with the name and identification numbers of each veteran.

We were not totally prepared for the range of emotions that came over us as we handled these mementos of lives injured and in many cases lost. TOP tries to preserve the condition of the tags as we found them. They are cleaned only to the point of making them as readable as possible. Therefore most are caked with mud, clay and yes, blood. So sad, so sad and then thoughts again of all those families out there...affected forever by the events of war and their sacrifice.

So we took over the entire process of double checking the data and facts from each tag to our newly established data base for them. Very tedious work but yet so rewarding when we finally find the families and reunite them with their veteran's tag.

There were already 1100 tags in the TOP inventory and we ended up working with them all (nearly 1500 in all) to place them into the new coin envelope filing system and safely into small trays for ease of handling and reference when the phone calls come in.

Today as we worked I was particularly struck by a couple tags that had bullet holes in them...my research will later show if the veteran died or survived his wounds but nonetheless it was very moving and an emotional experience.

Tomorrow I will start fielding calls from family members that I have sent inquiry letters to. We work hard to assure that we have found the correct family and respectfully returned the tag to the proper family member. The calls I took last week demonstrated to me the way each family had a different story but the same need to share it...to finally rehash the facts and try to find some closure with the new discovery of these personal effects.

Recently I have been quite involved in giving moral support and guidance to Vietnam Veteran's wives seeking disability ratings for their husbands. I am very careful not to tell them what to do or actually do it for them but rather to share my own experiences in that area and the valuable resources I was able to discover online.

I have found such a new range of purpose in my life with this Vietnam Veteran related work and feel so fortunate to be able to do it. Life is good in my little corner of the world!

Linda

April 30 Visiting with siblings

On our way to Tucson we were able to stop off in Casa Grande and visit with my sister, Karen and husband, Dalton. They graciously invited my brother Dick and his wife to come down from Phoenix so us three siblings could spend the day together.

It had been years since we had been together so we had a special time catching up on what we were each doing. There are five of us kids and Daddy had always said we were going to grow up and move away from him. Well we did scatter so it is difficult to bring us together very often (especially since all of our parents are now deceased). Today was a special time and very much enjoyed.