Inspiration. Courage. Hope.

Support the Burn Pit Registry Act

We need your help! We have put together a let­ter that can be sent to your Con­gress­men or Sen­a­tor in sup­port of the Burn Pit Reg­istry Act of 2011. You can down­load the let­ter here. For more infor­ma­tion please read this arti­cle. Thank you for your support!

Monthly archives for November, 2011

Page 1 of 212

Meeting with Brian Lawler

Nov30th
2011 3 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer
Meet­ing with Brian Lawler
Meeting with Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler

Today, Novem­ber 30, 2011, I met Brian Lawler (pic­tured above), a lawyer with Pilot Law P.C.  out of San Diego, CA. Har­monie and I want to thank him for tak­ing time out of his busy sched­ule to come up to Las Vegas and visit with us.

We had a great lunch that Har­monie made and then we sat down and dis­cussed my sit­u­a­tion in detail. Just watch­ing me try to get into my motor­ized chair and get to the din­ner table, Brian got an under­stand­ing of how dif­fi­cult a day in our lives really is. He was very under­stand­ing when it came to the trou­bles I faced dur­ing my time on active duty service..

This meet­ing was remark­ably easy because of Brian’s mil­i­tary ser­vice. Speak­ing to a fel­low vet­eran allowed the con­ver­sa­tion to flow unin­ter­rupted. When attempt­ing the same con­ver­sa­tion with a civil­ian, it requires many stops and starts because of their lack of knowl­edge of mil­i­tary terminology.

Brian and I share the same con­vic­tions when it comes to want­ing to raise aware­ness on what burn pits are doing to mem­bers of our mil­i­tary. Just sit­ting back and let­ting it hap­pen is just not an option. Obvi­ously we have to go about things very dif­fer­ently (he’s a lawyer and I’m a blog writer) but I believe we met for a reason.

I look for­ward to work­ing with Brian in a fur­ther capac­ity regard­ing burn pit related matters.

* If you are a vet­eran who may be suf­fer­ing from adverse med­ical con­di­tions that you believe were caused by burn pits, please go to Brian’s law firm web­site PilotLawCorp.Com and con­tact him.

Blog, Personal    , , ,

Life in the United States Air Force — Part 3

Nov29th
2011 6 Comments Written by Daniel Meyer

Life in the United States Air Force

Wel­come to part 3 of my Blog Series Life in the United States Air Force. I am shar­ing many of my expe­ri­ences from serv­ing almost six years in the Air Force. I have many pos­i­tive things to say, but also some very neg­a­tive things that will be shared along the way. In this part I will be cov­er­ing what it was like being the “new guy” and how the Air Force is becom­ing too polit­i­cally cor­rect. This is only my por­trayal of what I expe­ri­enced and every­one has a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive of this time in the service.

The New Guy
Life in the United States Air Force

A1C Daniel Meyer

At first, being the new guy in the 763rd main­te­nance squadron was like being a jan­i­tor. Here’s the story why:

When I got to the squadron in August of 2006, the shop I worked in had not got­ten a new Air­men fresh out of tech school in a few years. Not only that, but the squadron as a whole did not have many Air­men in it. This meant that the few new Air­men were respon­si­ble for clean­ing the build­ing, oth­er­wise known as “hangar cleanup duty.”

Hangar cleanup meant instead of learn­ing my job, I was assigned to clean­ing toi­lets, tak­ing out trash, mop­ping, sweep­ing, and a wide array of other details through­out the build­ing. I fully expected hav­ing to do these things, so I didn’t let it bother me. There’s noth­ing main­tain­ers hate more than a com­plain­ing new Air­men. The detail was only a week long, so I sucked it up and went about my business.

That was until a week turned in to almost two months.

As week seven of hangar cleanup began, peo­ple started to think that clean­ing was my actual job. Nobody had seen me do any­thing else so it started to get very frus­trat­ing. I asked our sec­tion chief to bring me back to the shop and he agreed.

As I started to learn my job, I had a great time get­ting to know my co-workers. One day I was ask­ing about squadron activ­i­ties and if we had a bowl­ing team. I use to bowl a lot, so it was some­thing I was inter­ested in doing. This led to a nick­name that I was known by at work for years to come:

Mun­son

The nick­name was in ref­er­ence to a char­ac­ter in the movie King­pin played by Woody Har­rel­son. He was a bowler who became very unsuc­cess­ful in life. I didn’t mind the nick­name and began to embrace it. This is an impor­tant les­son for new peo­ple enter­ing the Air Force in air­craft maintenance.

Air Force Has Gone “PC”

Being the new guy any­where can be extremely dif­fi­cult. This is espe­cially true for flight line main­te­nance in the Air Force. The key is to not let the small things get to you. The expe­ri­enced peo­ple in the shop will poke and prod try­ing to find your break­ing point. If you don’t these things bother you, they are less likely to con­tinue it and you will fit in great in this harsh work environment.

I fit in fairly quickly because of my abil­ity to shrug off the small things. Unfor­tu­nately, I watched many oth­ers not able to fit in. The men and women within a unit like ours become our friends and fam­ily. Due to deploy­ments, tem­po­rary duty assign­ments, and long hours, you spend more time with your co-workers than you do with your own fam­ily. So it’s impor­tant to try and have a good rela­tion­ship with every­one. Here are a few exam­ples of what I noticed dur­ing my time in the military:

  • Many peo­ple snap when it comes to get­ting picked on. Under­stand­ing who can han­dle it and who can’t is impor­tant, but hav­ing thick skin is the key.
  • The Air Force, has become overly “PC” or “Polit­i­cally Cor­rect.” I’ve been told mul­ti­ple times that jok­ing around the way we use to is now con­sid­ered inap­pro­pri­ate in the “New Air Force.” If you can’t even yell at Air­men for doing things wrong any­more, our nation’s Air Force is going down­hill fast.
  • If you can’t han­dle the main­te­nance career field and you don’t have respect for those who have come before you, then it’s time to find a new career.
  • If being yelled at or picked on hurts your feel­ings, the mil­i­tary is not for you! We are sup­pose to be the world’s super­power when it comes to our mil­i­tary. The Air Force has begun treat­ing new Air­men like babies, not an elite fight­ing force. It’s really sad to see.
  • The “New Air Force” is cre­at­ing a gen­er­a­tion of dis­re­spect­ful Air­men. The mil­i­tary is com­pletely based on rank and struc­ture, yet rules can’t be prop­erly enforced any­more. This cre­ates a mind­set for new recruits that they don’t have to respect any­one because they can just get them in trou­ble if their feel­ing are hurt. It’s an abomination.
Rem­i­nisc­ing

Dur­ing my time as the new guy, I dealt with a lot. Here are a few examples:

  • In the pitch black night of Iraq, I had the heli­copter spot­light shined in my eye from point blank range. It caused me to lose my vision for about 4–6 hours. (Thanks Mike Withem!)
  • I was watch­ing how to take a com­po­nent out of the heli­copter and was bum rushed, tak­ing a knee to my upper leg. I col­lapsed with the worst feel­ing “char­lie horse” I had ever expe­ri­enced. (Ahem.. a cer­tain new LT)
  • I was rou­tinely cov­ered in soapy foam dur­ing air­craft washes.

I could write mul­ti­ple arti­cles on every­thing I was picked on about. Things like these were com­mon on a daily basis, but it brought us all closer together. I believe these things were all enter­tain­ing and that it’s some­thing all new Air­men should expe­ri­ence. It’s too bad they prob­a­bly never will.…

Thank you for read­ing part 3 to my Blog Series Life in the United States Air Force. Check out the Blog Series Info page for fur­ther updates.

Military, Personal    , , , ,

Mankind Disconnected

Nov28th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Glen Cole

There is noth­ing in life more admirable or com­mend­able in life than to devote one’s life to the ser­vice of oth­ers.  Though this type of life grants an abun­dance of merit, we have removed our­selves from the human­ity and humil­ity of being human.  As time has unfolded, our ide­olo­gies have changed in regard to our less for­tu­nate broth­ers and sis­ters.  Why?  I sub­mit that we have become too involved with mate­r­ial sat­is­fac­tion than the sat­is­fac­tion of sat­is­fy­ing the oblig­a­tion that God has placed within each of our lives; to be a com­fort to one another in time of need.

So much of what we do on a daily basis con­cerns only what makes our­selves happy or com­fort­able. We do not take time out to search for voids to fill in the lives of oth­ers. Even the voids that can be imme­di­ately filled remain void because col­lec­tively we have grown to have a bla­tant dis­re­gard for one another. The worth of human­ity has plum­meted. This is a sad fact of life that many of us do not read­ily real­ize. Our dis­con­nected ide­olo­gies about life and sur­vival place us in a race with those around us.  Con­tin­u­ous self-absorption soon allows the drops of human­ity that we are born with to evap­o­rate. The only way to cure this tragic soci­etal dis­ease from con­tin­u­ing to spread is by sub­merg­ing our­selves into the ser­vice of oth­ers. We all have to come into the real­iza­tion that this change will inevitably have to take place if mankind is to raise the worth of human­ity back to its tow­er­ing peak of yes­ter­day. Some­how we must incor­po­rate this change in dra­matic fash­ion sooner rather than later.  For if we wait to act, we will be dig­ging wells that are dry. But if we act now, we will be able to sal­vage the streams of human­ity that run shal­low through our soci­eties and trans­form them into bot­tom­less rivers that flow into deep­en­ing seas.

We all must do what we can to strengthen the fibers that make the fab­ric of mankind. Each of us are indi­vid­ual threads that are woven together with a com­mon nee­dle that we know as life expe­ri­ence. Though the expe­ri­ences we have as indi­vid­u­als do not directly affect any­one out­side of our­selves, they do indi­rectly affect every­one else. Our des­tinies are inter­twined in a webbed net­work of indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence. In one way or another, sooner or later, some­thing that I do or expe­ri­ence will indi­rectly affect you, and some­thing that you do or expe­ri­ence will indi­rectly affect me.  Until we head in a direc­tion of indi­vid­ual ser­vice and col­lec­tive atten­tion to the issues that are plagu­ing our soci­eties, the mutual dis­con­nec­tion we now stand amidst will con­tinue to be a widen­ing gulf.

Blog, Glen Cole, Inspirational, Personal, Philosophic, Political, Self Help, Volunteering, World News    , , , , , , , , ,

A Love Story for the Ages — Part 1 — Wife

Nov23rd
2011 6 Comments Written by Harmonie Meyer
A Love Story for the Ages — Wife

Hello all and wel­come to my first com­pan­ion piece to my husband’s Blog Series, A Love Story for the Ages. I will attempt to mir­ror Dan’s arti­cles from my per­spec­tive. Hope­fully I don’t ruin it for all of you!

Had some­one told me that I would be on Match.com only a few months prior I would have laughed and then cau­tioned them about ser­ial rapists. I NEVER thought I would resort to online dat­ing, but I guess I’m get­ting a bit ahead of myself.

It is impor­tant to note that I grew up in Vegas. I have been here pretty much my whole life.   After I grew out of my awk­ward tomboy phase in high school and actu­ally started wear­ing makeup, I real­ized I wasn’t half bad look­ing.  Mix that with my poor atti­tude, my abil­ity to drink like a sailor, as well as curse like one, and it cre­ated a recipe not inclined for suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ships. As my good friend Denise always said “my man picker was broken.”

Now, let’s fast for­ward to a few months before I met Dan. I had just ended a three year, on and off again rela­tion­ship, with some­one who was less ready for adult­hood than I was. Sure, I could go meet a guy at a bar with­out a prob­lem, but as I men­tioned ear­lier, my man picker was bro­ken. Plus, bars don’t usu­ally spell mean­ing­ful relationship.

One night, alone in my apart­ment, I threw cau­tion to the wind and set up a Match.com pro­file. This led to a flood of creepy men con­tact­ing me, sim­i­lar to those I had been dodg­ing in bars.  I met a cou­ple of nice peo­ple, a cou­ple of not so nice peo­ple, and had to report and block one extremely crazy per­son that I knew bet­ter than to meet in person.

I must say, I was not a love at first sight type of per­son. My life hadn’t been filled with too many warm cud­dly moments up to this point and quite hon­estly I was not really much of a roman­tic. My father was my sole par­ent after the age of 6 and I had never been much of a girly girl or fan­ta­sizer. All I really wanted was some­one I could stand. I was ready to set­tle for some­one who could han­dle his liquor and didn’t irri­tate me, but I never would have con­sid­ered marriage.

Then, this Air Force guy writes me on Match.com. He only had one pic­ture up and it was A Love Story for the Agesvery “Face­book like.” He had sun­glasses on and his head pointed to the side. How­ever, I thought he was cute. I saw that he was in the ser­vice, but unlike most women, I never really liked a man in uni­form. Don’t get me wrong, I have always appre­ci­ated any­one who has served our coun­try, but the uni­form spelled jerk to me. I had never dated any­one in any sort of uni­form, nor had I ever intended to. There was some­thing dif­fer­ent about this Air Force guy though. He didn’t use any sort of cheesy lines and didn’t act like a weirdo, so I gave him my number.

Our first date was set and ready to go, the only prob­lem was, I came down with bron­chi­tis and became hor­ri­bly sick. I never called into work for being sick, always drag­ging myself to the office no mat­ter what.  This lung infec­tion com­pletely took me out of ser­vice.  I didn’t leave my apart­ment for a week and had to can­cel my date with Dan. He seemed sad, but under­stand­ing and he gave me a rain check.

Finally, we resched­uled for break­fast at IHOP. I straight­ened my hair, put on my granny sweater, and headed to break­fast.  I am a crazy per­son who is always early, so I got us a table and waited. I spot­ted Dan walk­ing up the side­walk, com­plete with uni­form. He walked in, glanced around, and spot­ted me.  I waved and smiled at him as he made his way over to me.  We instantly clicked. We were hav­ing a great con­ver­sa­tion and smil­ing at each other the entire time. I didn’t even over­re­act when there was a giant, dis­gust­ing hair in my food. Run­ning out of rea­sons to stay at IHOP, we made our way to Star­bucks for some cof­fee and more great conversation.

The morn­ing was par­tic­u­larly cold, but we still sat out­side for some pri­vacy. My hair was blow­ing in my face the whole time and I started recon­sid­er­ing my choice to wear a granny sweater since I actu­ally really liked this guy. He seemed like a really nice guy and he got my strange sense of humor. We sat there until he was almost late for work; he gave me a quick hug, and bolted to his car.

Shortly after leav­ing the park­ing lot, I received a very sweet text. I was elated and couldn’t wait to see him again.  Luck­ily, I would only have to wait until that night to have din­ner with him.

Check out the Blog Series Info page for fur­ther updates or to read Dan’s side of the story.

Personal    , , ,

A New Blog Series

Nov20th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Daniel Meyer
A New Blog Series

Talk­ing with my phys­i­cal ther­a­pist this week, a great idea for a new blog series has been formed. The new Blog Series will mimic the already pop­u­lar series A Love Story for the Ages. This time it’s going to be from my wife’s per­spec­tive, Har­monie Meyer. We think this will add a unique twist that read­ers will greatly enjoy. The feel­ings and emo­tions will be felt from both sides and I can’t wait to hear the feed­back on the new series.

She is going to do the exact same titles that the cur­rent series fol­lows. Due to me being on Part 10 already in the series, I’m going to slow down a bit on releas­ing new parts so that she can catch up. I hope every­one is as excited about this as I am. Look for the new series to begin this week.

Thank you Heidi for the great idea and to Har­monie for agree­ing to do this!

To catch up on my side of the series, please check out the blog series info page.

Blog    , ,

DanielMeyerBlog Expansion Update

Nov19th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Daniel Meyer

DanielMeyerBlog Expan­sion Update

DanielMeyerBlog Expansion Update

I am excited to bring you the first DanielMeyerBlog Expan­sion Update. This is our offi­cial announcement:

Daniel Meyer Dis­abled Vet­er­ans Orga­ni­za­tion was incor­po­rated on Novem­ber 7, 2011. The pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion will be to bring prod­ucts and ser­vices at dis­counted prices to dis­abled vet­er­ans who may not oth­er­wise afford them. Being on a fixed bud­get as a dis­abled vet­eran is dif­fi­cult and this orga­ni­za­tion wants to help pro­vide the extra things that may other wise be unattainable.

We have just one step to go and that’s file for tax exempt sta­tus. Unfor­tu­nately, Har­monie and I can’t do this on our own. We need your help! It’s $800 to file for tax exempt status.

 

We are still offer­ing a DanielMeyerBlog.Com T-Shirt for any dona­tions $30 or more. We have sold out of M’s, so please choose L or XL.

Help us to gain offi­cial tax exempt sta­tus so that I can begin writ­ing to com­pa­nies and try­ing to work out part­ner­ships to help dis­abled vet­er­ans. Your dona­tion will help get a great non-profit off the ground and operating.

Thank you very much and God Bless,

Daniel Meyer

Blog    , , ,

BurnPits360 Legislative Update

Nov16th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Daniel Meyer

BurnPits360 Leg­isla­tive Update

We have received some impor­tant infor­ma­tion, mean­ing it’s time for a BurnPits360 leg­isla­tive update.

Sen­ate Update

A reli­able source has shared a tip regard­ing the sta­tus of the Open Burn Pit Reg­istry Act of 2011 on the Sen­ate side. S. 1798 may be head­ing to the floor for a vote sooner than expected. This is great news for BurnPits360.Org. Espe­cially com­ing on the heels of last week’s storm­ing of Capi­tol Hill. The many hours spent walk­ing from office to office has proven fruit­ful in the push for leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect our vet­er­ans from toxic burn pits. It seems our elected offi­cials have taken notice to our cause.

Also, this past week, Sen Ron Wyden [OR] and Sen John D. Rock­e­feller IV [WV] signed on to co-sponsor the bill. That brings the total co-sponsors to 9 in the Sen­ate.

All of this is great, but fur­ther work is needed. To ensure the pas­sage of the bill, it is imper­a­tive we don’t get lack­adaisi­cal. The bill is cur­rently being intro­duced to two com­mit­tees; Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee and Vet­er­ans Affairs Com­mit­tee. This means the mem­bers of these com­mit­tees first and fore­most need to sup­port the bill. We have put together a list of Sen­a­tors who are on these com­mit­tees and not co-sponsoring the bill yet. Here they are:

Joseph Lieber­man (CT)
Jack Reed(RI)
Ben Nel­son (NE)
Joe Manchin III(WV)
Jeanne Sha­heen (NH)
Kirsten Gilli­brand (NY)
Richard Blu­men­thal (CT)
James Inhofe (OK)
Jeff Ses­sions (AL)
Saxby Cham­b­liss (GA)
Rob Port­man (OH)
Kelly Ayotte (NH)
Susan Collins (MN)
Lind­sey Gra­ham (SC)
John Cornyn (TX)
David Vit­ter (LA)
Sher­rod Brown (OH)
Jon Tester (MT)
Mark Begich (AK)
Johnny Isak­son (GA)
Roger Wicker (MS)
Mike Johanns (NE)
Scott Brown (MA)
Jerry Moran (KS)
John Booz­man (AR)

It is vital to gain the sup­port of these mem­bers of Sen­ate. They are on the com­mit­tees that will vote on the bill and if it doesn’t make it out of these com­mit­tees, it won’t make it to the floor. If you are a con­stituent of any of these Sen­a­tors, please down­load this let­ter and send it to their office. You can find a list of Con­gres­sional con­tacts here. If you aren’t sure who your Sen­a­tors are, you can use this great web­site to help.

If you’re not a con­stituent of any of these Sen­a­tors, please do us the favor of shar­ing this on any and all social media sites. At the bot­tom are links for shar­ing this post. The more peo­ple we reach, the more likely the bill will pass!

House of Representatives

We don’t have press­ing news on the House side of the bill. There are cur­rently 21 co-sponsors for H.R. 3337. Please con­tinue to con­tact your Rep­re­sen­ta­tives at their local dis­trict offices. We will release any news we get on the HoR side as soon as we get any.

BurnPits360.Org, Political    , , , , , ,

Inspiration Courage Hope

Nov15th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Daniel Meyer

Inspi­ra­tion. Courage. Hope.

Lately, I’ve had some peo­ple ask me the true mean­ing of my blogs slo­gan “Inspi­ra­tion Courage Hope” I thought about it for a few days. Ini­tially, I started won­der­ing “Had I just thrown some words together?” I prayed about those words and what their true mean­ing meant to me. There may be some tears involved writ­ing this expla­na­tion, but here it goes.…

Inspiration Courage Hope

Inspi­ra­tion

My his­tory behind this word: Through­out my time in the mil­i­tary, I would always strive to be the best at what­ever I was tasked with. After com­ing up in the ranks and prov­ing myself time and time again, a new Air­man approached me and asked me the fol­low­ing ques­tion, “What inspires you to work so hard and be great at your job? Do you really think your actions alone are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence?” As a new NCO (Non-Commissioned Offi­cer), I felt I needed to give an amaz­ing answer to put this Air­man on the right path. I thought about it for a few moments and responded.

“My inspi­ra­tion has two ori­gins; First, my father inspired me to never set­tle for medi­oc­rity. As the say­ing goes, it’s bet­ter to be amaz­ing at one thing, then mediocre at 10 things. The sec­ond, is the rea­son I joined the Air Force in the first place. I didn’t join for free col­lege tuition, or because I was unem­ployed before join­ing, or for any other of the perks that recruiters use to entice peo­ple to sign up for the ser­vice. Instead, I joined because I was inspired to do some­thing for our coun­try that had been trag­i­cally attacked on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. My con­tri­bu­tion was to serve an hon­or­able career in the Air Force and hope that in a small way, my actions would help keep our coun­try safe.”

I think my short speech made a huge impact on this Air­man, and last time I checked, they were suc­ceed­ing far beyond my expectations.

Now, let’s fast for­ward to today.

My blog is now my plat­form to hope­fully inspire peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing from major ill­nesses. Many peo­ple who are fac­ing chal­leng­ing dis­abil­i­ties give up, and my goal is to show them that’s not the answer. Never in my life have I felt like I pos­sessed the abil­ity to truly inspire oth­ers, but that has quickly changed. I may be fac­ing some debil­i­tat­ing con­di­tions, but I refuse to be defeated by it. Going through all this has taught me that any­thing can be over­come and I want to be some­one who shares that with the world.

Inspi­ra­tion can change lives.

Courage

My his­tory behind this word: I always thought courage meant not being scared of some­thing. I’ve gone through my life try­ing to prove that I wasn’t scared of any­thing. I always thought I was coura­geous, but in real­ity I wasn’t. I was scared. Scared to fail, scared to lose, scared to be scared. I didn’t actu­ally know what courage truly meant.

Until now.

Courage is believ­ing in a higher power. Courage is hav­ing the strength to ask for help when you’re down. Courage is stand­ing up for some­thing you believe in. Finally, courage is fac­ing adver­sity head on.

I want peo­ple who come to my site to leave hav­ing the courage to face what­ever may come their way.

Hope

My his­tory behind this word: For a major­ity of my life, I would always hope for “some­thing.” I would hope for more money, mate­r­ial objects, and love. None of these were things I should hope for, they were objects I wanted. When I started to get sick, I began to hope for bet­ter health. Now, the word has changed some more.

Now, I hope I can help peo­ple. I hope that God keeps me strong, no mat­ter what life may bring. I hope that peo­ple cher­ish their health.

I hope that I can give hope to the hope­less. Show them that life is worth living.

My favorite rea­son for the final word in my blog’s slogan:

My wife’s name is Har­monie Hope Meyer.

 

Blog, Inspirational, Personal    , , ,

A Love Story for the Ages — Part 10 — Reunited

Nov13th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Daniel Meyer

A Love Story for the Ages

Wel­come to Part 9 of my Blog Series A Love Story for the Ages. This series is the jour­ney my wife and I have taken get­ting to the great life we enjoy together today. Now the continu­a­tion of the story.…

Reunited

Dur­ing our flight from Atlanta to Las Vegas, I tried my hard­est to get some sleep. I tossed and turned in my seat, strug­gling to get com­fort­able. Typ­i­cally, I can sleep fairly well on flights, but not this time. Adren­a­line was pump­ing through my body. The antic­i­pa­tion was intense. I was finally going to see my lovely bride.

My mind was rac­ing. I had dreamed of this moment every night in Afghanistan. Every pos­si­ble sce­nario about how this day might go was swirling through my mind. Just then, the pilot made an announce­ment, “Ladies and gen­tle­men, please return to your seats and fas­ten your seat belts. We’re begin­ning our descent into Las Vegas.”

I was over­come with joy. I couldn’t believe I had only known my wife for three weeks before I had to deploy and now I was almost home. As we got closer and closer to the ground, the famous Las Vegas sky­line came into view. The excite­ment was becom­ing unbear­able. Just get us to the gate already! We all wanted to see our spouses so badly, espe­cially after one of the most drain­ing deploy­ments ever. We finally got off the plane and all of a sud­den, I had to use the restroom. “Can I hold it?” I thought to myself. “Nope, sure can’t,” so I went into the bath­room and tried to move as quickly as pos­si­ble. Now it was time to catch up to my unit as they were board­ing the tram that takes us to the bag­gage carousel.

I made it to the tram just in time. As we took the short ride back to the main ter­mi­nal, I started get­ting ner­vous. I’ve been mar­ried for almost five months, but I barely know my wife. “I hope she is excited to see me,” I thought to myself. We got off the tram and made the short walk to the famous esca­la­tor in McCar­ran Air­port. Every vet­eran who comes home through McCar­ran knows that at the bot­tom of this esca­la­tor stands all of our loved ones, wait­ing to catch a glimpse of who’s com­ing down the esca­la­tor next. As some of our unit got to the bot­tom, cheers start­ing erupt­ing. As I got to the bot­tom, I couldn’t see Har­monie. I pan­icked. “Did she not get the mes­sage to be here at this time?”

Then, I looked over and noticed my wife fran­ti­cally look­ing for me. I called out her name and she ran over, giv­ing me the biggest hug and kiss ever. It was bet­ter than I could have ever imag­ined. My wife was in my arms and it felt like we had been together for all our lives. Nobody could have known we had only been together just a few short months, know­ing each other just a week longer than our marriage.

Being reunited with loved ones after deploy­ments is one of the most amaz­ing feel­ings mil­i­tary fam­ily ever experience.

The adren­a­line rush was now wear­ing off and the exhaus­tion of trav­el­ing began to set in. I had lost almost 30 pounds in Afghanistan which was caus­ing me to wear down much faster. I now only weighed 140 pounds and Har­monie noticed it imme­di­ately. She whis­pered in my ear, “Let’s get you home so you can relax.” We grabbed my bags and headed to the car.

Now, we could finally start our lives together as a mar­ried couple.

Lit­tle did we know, this would be my last deploy­ment. Things would never be the same…

Thank you for read­ing part 10 to my Blog Series A Love Story for the Ages. If you have missed any parts to this series, please catch up on the blog series info page.

Inspirational, Personal    , , ,

Operation Contact Media

Nov12th
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Daniel Meyer
Oper­a­tion Con­tact Media

As I indi­cated yes­ter­day on my Face­book page, I need help with a project I’ve decided to call Oper­a­tion Con­tact Media. The goal is to con­tinue spread­ing the word about the Open Air Burn Pit Reg­istry Act of 2011. The bill is known on Capi­tol Hill as H.R. 3337 and S. 1798. We need to con­tinue get­ting media cov­er­age for the bill to ensure it doesn’t fall out of view of our nation’s representatives.

Along with BurnPits360.Org, we have put together a let­ter which is avail­able for down­load at the top of this page or you can down­load the let­ter here. Please fill out the nec­es­sary items on the let­ter and then find your rep­re­sen­ta­tive on this site. The site is extremely help­ful and includes a list of Con­gres­sional fax num­bers and con­tact forms. After con­tact­ing your rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Con­gress, next is time to con­tact your local media.

This is where Oper­a­tion Con­tact Media comes to light. Every­one who sup­ports this piece of leg­is­la­tion and what it will do to help sup­port vet­er­ans affected by toxic burn pits needs to con­tact their local media. This entire oper­a­tion is to inform as many Amer­i­cans as pos­si­ble about this bill and what is hap­pen­ing to so many of our vet­er­ans. Here are a few options of how to imple­ment this plan:

  1. Down­load the afore­men­tioned let­ter and email it to your local media out­lets, ie. news­pa­per, tele­vi­sion, Internet.
  2. If you don’t feel com­fort­able talk­ing directly to your local media, please email them and ask them to con­tact Daniel Meyer and I will share the infor­ma­tion about the bill with them.
  3. If you have any friends, fam­ily, or acquain­tances who work for a media out­let, and would be will­ing to help out, please have them con­tact me and I will share the infor­ma­tion about the bill.

What mat­ters the most is that the infor­ma­tion about the Open Air Burn Pit Reg­istry Act of 2011 is dis­sem­i­nated to the largest audi­ence pos­si­ble. We would love to have every Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tor on board when this bill goes up for a vote after the new year. If you have any ques­tions, please con­tact me and I will help in any way possible.

We can’t do this with­out the help of all Amer­i­cans, so please share this with as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble. Thank you for help­ing and remem­ber, this is what you’re supporting:

Burn Pit Video

BurnPits360.Org, Military, Personal, Political    , , ,
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