In Honor of Ed Freeman

You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He's coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.

Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman! Since the media didn't give him the coverage he deserves, send this to every red-blooded American you know.

THANKS AGAIN, ED, FOR WHAT YOU DID FOR OUR COUNTRY.
RIP

[Received via e-mail forward from Mitch Wofford. -Cory]

TV and the American Household

The following is part of a letter I heard read on the The Dr. Laura Show. It is a VERY sad commentary on the change TV brought to the common American household. We must be careful the Internet doesn't do the same to us...

Dear Dr. Laura:

When I was a girl, we had no television. When we got home from school and work, my mom (stay-at-home type mom) would sit us at the table and we got our homework done while she cooked dinner. When my dad got home, we ate and talked about our day. If the phone rang, we asked our callers to call back after dinner. Then the kids cleaned up the kitchen (no dishwasher, either) while Mom and Dad spent a little time together and did whatever grownups do.

In the summertime, we all went outside and the kids played while the grownups sat on the porch and enjoyed the long summer evenings. Our neighbors (who also had no TV) would often stop by and join the grownups on the porch while their kids played kick the can or Annie over.

We never were bored. There were books to read, chores to do, friends to visit, and we had "music parties" where everyone brought an instrument and played, and we danced. We had taffy pulls (bet nobody knows what that is). We rode our bicycles. We had fun!

Then, when I turned about 14, everyone in our little town got TVs. When Dad got home we ate on TV trays and watched Bonanza and Rifleman and Grand Ol' Oprey. If we tried to talk during the programs, we were shushed. Nobody came to visit any more, because they, also had TV. When they did visit, the TV was on, so nobody could concentrate on talking. ...

Thanks for listening.

Trish

http://www.drlaura.com/letters/index.html?tmpl=printer&mode=view&tile=1&id=17379