Welcome Colorado Veterans

I received an email last night from Melissa's older son. He attached a picture of a motorcycle jacket that he took somewhere near Durango, Colorado.  The jacket had a picture of a bike on the back that was surrounded by the words "Vets Don't Forget". The picture shows a few bikers riding down the road. Behind them there were Huey's flying in the background.

It started a thought process for me and I wanted to mention it now.

First of all, I wanted to extend a "Welcome" to all the Veterans in Colorado and provide a suggestion that the new guys contact more Veterans and give them this blog address. That invitation is for all Veterans. Most of the guys I served with are still in contact with many of the men they served with and many, through other Veteran Associations, are in contact with many more. I only hope that they pass the word to their buddies and that many more will sign on here and begin reading some of these thoughts.

Recent studies I've made provided the population numbers from the Veteran's Corp. Believe it or not, there are 22.7 million of us out here. That's a huge, huge number of people but more importantly, it constitutes a group of Patriots that stood up to the plate and answered the call to duty. When you think about the caliber of men and women who've done that and compare them to the nare do well assholes who are here to derail everything that we fought for, it makes a really big difference.

I don't know how many Veterans are active in various military sites but I did discover that 30% or more belong to the VFW and the American Legion. It may be more than that but memory seems to bring up 30% as the number I read about.

I don't belong to the American Legion or the VFW. I've had an invitation to join both but I'm not comfortable with making commitments to attend anything at any specific time and that's only due to my current physical condition. For those of you who do not know, I underwent emergency brain surgery to remove a brain tumor that proved to be malignant Glioblastoma. The brain surgery was most traumatic as the tumor was as big as a golf ball. I don't know how thick it was but it was thick enough to force them to remove some of my right temporal lobe.

I elected to engage in chemo therapy and radiation treatments as I was told that without that, I had 3 months to 12 months to live. That was in July of 2009. I just passed my 4th year catscan that shows no further growth and the prognosis is excellent. Despite that, I've lost my right eye and I'm not anywhere near the "back to normal" condition most of us try to achieve after any kind of surgery.

Having said that, and being the kind of guy I am, I still wanted to be active in anything that would be a benefit to the Veteran population. I can do a pretty good job from this computer but that can only go so far.

I've had some suggestions to change the name of the blog as most Veterans who might search the web for Veteran based web sites would never type in the word "Church" to begin their search. For the new readership I wanted to explain that I used the title "Churchofwhatshappninnow" as an analogy to demonstrate a couple of things. The first demonstration was to advise everyone that "If you don't attend the Church of What's Happenin' Now, you may end up being transferred to the Church of the Painful Truth".

Now that time has marched on, I can see that the message is more appropriate now than it was when Tim Jr and Melissa agreed to that name and created this blog. Four years later, let me say that I paid attention to the things that were happening in my life NOW and by making the choice to take chemo and radiation, I saved myself from a transfer to the Church of the Painful Truth.

I guess that's it for today and I hope that the message will be spread to more and more Veterans. I have lots of details here, especially details about the Vietnam War that you guys will find most informative. Comments are appreciated. Welcome aboard.