9ea23e2a156441c4bbfa3c5bc67e9ea4

The Midwest

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 15:24:35 GMT

One day, in the middle of the afternoon, I stopped for gas in Iowa or Missouri or Kansas or Nebraska (I forget which), went inside to tell the manager about my work.

The woman standing behind me in the line interrupted, “you do what for Gold Star Families?” There was a sadness in her eyes.

“Are you a Gold Star Mother?” I asked, hoping that she wasn’t.

“No,” she said. “Where are you going next?”

I explained and excused myself to pump my gas.

She came out a moment after me.

“It’s really a great thing you do,” she said, a little shyly.

“Thank you.”

“Nobody did that sort of thing when I was in,” she offered.

“Thanks for your service to our country. When were you in?” She had my full attention now.

“I was in in seventy-eight. My daughter was in for two and a half years and my son is still serving over in the Middle East.”

“Forgive me for asking, but your daughter was in for two and a half years?” The number seemed strange to me.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, her eyes moistening, “she’s one of the twenty-two.”

I immediately understood. Twenty-two is the official number of veterans who take their own life every day. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry to hear that. That makes you a Gold Star Mom in our book. I’m so sorry.” My eyes were getting moist, too.

“The Army didn’t see it that way.”

“We are not the Army,” I said, using the words to enforce some stoicism, which in hindsight seems completely unnecessary.

“Thank you,” she said, pausing and looking away a little. I could see she was looking for words.

“I’ve got something I’d like to share with you,” I said, putting the hose back into the gas pump. I walked around the bike and opened a saddle bag, retrieving a plaque. “You don’t know me,” I offered, “but when I meet a Gold Star Family, I leave them with this plaque. If you’ll accept it, I’d like you to have this.”

“Okay,” she said, a little shocked.

…but I cannot refrain from tendering to you…

She wiped a tear from her eye, then reached out to accept the plaque I offered to her.

“You know,” she said, not taking her eyes from the plaque, “so many people need just a little help. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask for help.”

“I think that is totally correct,” I said, fumbling for words.

“I wasn’t sure what I would do; I was on my last ounce of strength,” she paused. “Then, when I couldn’t deal with it anymore, I went to the VA.”

“Are you service connected?” I wondered out loud.

“No, but I missed my daughter, and I served in the Navy, so I went to the VA.”

“And they were able to help you?” I asked.

“They,” she stumbled over the words, “Well, they helped a little,” she spoke like someone who was still hurting. “But the bravest thing I ever did was find the strength to call them and ask for help.”

“It’s not something we like to do.”

“No, it’s not, but when it was done, after I went to see them, they were able to help me cope a little; it wasn’t so bad. I don’t know why it was so hard to do,” she explained the feelings of depression and sadness that so many veterans and Gold Star Families know about.

“I’m glad you found the courage to do it.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” she said.

“It saddens me. I hate hearing about the twenty-two a day. It’s really a lot more than that, but one is too many. I understand how horrible it is to lose a child, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“I’m so glad I stopped to talk to you,” she said, “but I have an appointment. Can I hug you?”

“Of course,” I said. We gently embraced. Then she turned and opened her car door. I waved as she drove away, then turned to get back on the bike.

I never did learn her name, but she knows mine and she’s welcome to call anytime.

I’m not sure about this story but here goes. I was riding something like thirty-two days in the peak of summer when I arrived at a restaurant to meet not one, not two, but three different Gold Star Families. I was surprised to see local news cameras waiting for me in the parking lot. Just to make it official, I circled the lot once or twice to make sure they could film something with me on the bike.

Kickstand down, I pulled myself off the bike, and in a good mood, well rested (which was highly unusual), I walked toward the camera and a small group of people who looked like they were waiting for me. I stole a line from Bill Murray in the comedy classic Stripes , saying as I walked, “What? A surprise party! Whose idea is this?” I don’t think anybody understood the joke.

We greeted each other warmly, everyone anxious to know everyone else. The Gold Star Brother had not met the Gold Star Mother and neither of them had met the Gold Star Son. After the introductions we went inside to a table that had been waiting for us.

We sat around a large table and the camera operator did his best to make sure we could all be captured and heard, and the dialogue rolled along casually.

“What do you think you’ll have?”

“How was the ride over here?”

“What’s your favorite part of the country?”

You get the idea. That sort of talk continued for a while. The waiter delivered our lunches and everyone was chewing and wiping the crumbs of food from the corners of their mouths, when the Gold Star Mom looked at me directly. “I just don’t know,” she said as her eyes glistened with the formation of a new tears, “why my son would take his own life.”

The people at the table, the camera operator, and the people at the surrounding tables, all fell dead silent.

I’d like to share with you how I thought about what to say, but I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say, and to this day, I have no idea from where this came, but I acted and spoke without hesitation, and without a crackle to show my nervousness. I placed my right hand on top of her left hand and just let it lay there. As I looked at her eyes, I could see the blank sadness that comes from wishing you knew why something very sad had to take place, but you just can’t figure it out. I moved my lips and allowed words to fall out of my mouth. It was unscripted, unplanned, but altogether quite natural. “He didn’t take his own life,” I said, quite matter-of-factly, “it was a sniper’s bullet from seven thousand miles away.”

It was as if I had reached across a sink and turned the water on. I can‘t recall ever seeing a pair of eyes moisten and drop tears so quickly and easily. I felt the tears trickle down my own cheeks as well. After a moment or two, when I thought it seemed okay, but before anyone spoke, I glanced around the table and realized there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Out of respect, we all stayed quiet for another moment.

Then, someone said, “These mashed potatoes are so much better than I thought they would be.”

As quickly as it had changed, the conversation changed back. We were all happy to be there. We finished our meal, made jokes about the waiter mixing up the drinks, asked the camera operator when it might be on the news, paid the bill, and walked out to the parking lot.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” the Gold Star Mom shared. She seemed like she was still a little shy about talking with me.

“I didn’t either,” I quipped. It was true. I never know what to expect when I meet a Gold Star Family.

We thanked each other, and we parted ways. I climbed back onto my motorcycle and started it up. The first few minutes of riding after meeting a family are always the most surreal. Nothing seems like it should. Going sixty miles an hour feels like fifteen miles an hour. Ten miles of highway feels like two.

I rode south to the next state, turned west to the next Gold Star Family – another Mom, then I rode west some more and some more. After a few days, I turned north to ride to other states, cover more miles, meet other Gold Star Family members.

After about a week of riding, nursing sunburn, trying to live through heat exhaustion, I showered in the cheap motel and found this in my email from the best friend of that Gold Star Mom:

I wanted to share with you that your visit to us was very special. After you left, she tore up her own suicide note .

I couldn’t see the computer screen through the moisture that formed on the surface of my eyes involuntarily, so I buried my face in my hands and allowed myself to weep for a short time.

People are...

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 01:20:41 GMT

(Insert your favorite adjective here)

People are weird. People are hypocrites. People are strange. Here’s a story about people.

People won’t donate to help a charity, unless that charity has proven itself to be a success. Only the charities with 95% of the money going to help the actual people they say they are helping. Or will they?

That’s what people say.

A quick study of Goodwill Industries (we’ve all heard of them, right?) shows that just one of the 100's of regions served by that massive multi Billion (yes, with a B) dollar organization showed that $78 million was generated in 2016, and $77 million went to expenses.***

Makes you go hmmmm.

On a national level, that wonderful organization pays the top dog $454,000.00 annually**, as a base salary. And the people they help? Those people with disabilities who work in the stores? Some are paid as little as $.32 per hour.* That means they have to work more than 3 hours to earn a dollar. The founder of the Gold Star Ride Foundation has a daughter who qualifies to work there.The curiosity is whether the top dog there also has such a child?

Wow. But who among us hesitates to say that Goodwill is a good organization? Or who among us says they will never donate an item to Good Will? Who among us will ever say that they are corrupt, or that they stole money?****

The Gold Star Ride Foundation started with nothing, and quite frankly, no one cared. We started with all volunteers, and still no one cared. We started with our top dog earning a salary of zero. Nada. Nothing. Completely voluntarily. And that’s true for all the board members, officers and honorary board members. But still no one cares.

No one cared about us, no one donated to us, and no one cared that we would ever be able to fulfill our mission of taking care of families of our nation’s fallen heroes.

(That’s not completely true. In full disclosure, GSRF has received about $100 in cash donations from people on social media, although $30 of those donations came from the board members.)

Who cares about Gold Star Families anyway? One email we received said we shouldn’t bother because our military is completely voluntary and they all signed up for it, so if they get killed, we should all just move on.

Really?

We went one day, with about 100 people, to visit a young girl. At 22, she was a single mother with two children under the age of 3. But that’s her fault, right?

She married her high school sweetheart (“awe, isn’t that special?” you may ask…) who, along with his best friend, signed up to defend our country. Sure, they married young, but they had plans. Have kids, educate them while he works, then change the plans when the kids were older, she would go back to college and live out her dreams and they would enjoy this life together.

He was patrolling, protecting the country, when his best friend was killed while standing right next to him. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this personally, but that sort of experience will leave a mark on your brain. The 22 year old husband was diagnosed with PTSD***** by the VA hospitals in the States, were he was hospitalized for 2 months.

All good and fair, right?

Then the VA told him they couldn’t do anything else for him and sent him on his way.

A week later he was dead.

An estimated 22 people every day end their lives with similar stories. Personally, we at the Gold Star Ride Foundation think that number is closer to 65 people a day, and every one of them should be prevented.

Where does this leave the 22 year old single mother? No education, two kids to feed, a home that needs payments made on it, and no more income. Not only no more income, but our government, in its infinite wisdom, says that suicides aren’t covered and there are no military benefits for this single mom or her two kids.

Now what?

She supported her husband by taking care of the home front. She did it with love and courage. Her husband, and her children’s father, is now dead because he volunteered to do something that 93 percent of all living citizens of these United States don’t do.

She has no choice but to leave her home, move into project housing, receive food stamps and other social assistance, and hope her children survive to adulthood.

That’s fair, right? That’s what she signed up for, right?

We don’t think so. This is just one example of what we do. There are no two stories the same.

So, we showed up at her door, a hundred motorcycles strong, and we helped her go back to college. That was 8 years ago. She’s now a productive member of her society, and still proud to be an American, still loves her country, and tries to teach her children to love it, too. She explains that their father is a national hero.

Who else started working for people whose families protect us?

We know you’re too busy.

That’s what we do, all day, every day.

Lately, some people have decided to say bad things about what we do. There has been talk that our people are stealing the money, or that we’re not reporting the money, or that we’re not helping the people we say we are. Well, we work pretty hard helping people, but if there are people out there who want us to stop what we’re doing so that we can pay attention to those false accusations, we will stop what we’re doing to pay attention to those false accusations.

Everything we do is available for anyone to view and study. In fact, if you happen to be a CPA and would like to volunteer your time, the way all of us volunteer our time, you can fill out these reporting forms for us. We’d love to have you.

The fact is, we started with nothing more than a principle that Gold Star Families have been ignored long enough, our government does nothing for them, and if it weren’t for them, we would likely be either living in a communist country or we’d all be speaking Arabic as a national language, if we were alive at all.

Think about that. If it weren’t for them, we would have nothing to protect us from those that don’t want to conquer us, but from those who want to kill us. If we didn’t have a military to fight back after 9/11, those hateful groups would not have stopped until each of us was either dead or converted.

Pause.

Our enemies just want us dead. And those enemies do not care if we wear a military uniform or not. They want us all dead.

To be certain, this letter is not written for the 7% of families who donate a person to go defend our great nation. And it is a great nation.

This letter is written for all of those people who walk around every day working on their own goals and dreams, and just assume someone else will make sure they are safe in their bed at night and safe on their streets in the morning and safe in their place of work all day long.

We’ve been accused of not paying our bills. Not all of them, just one. First and foremost, all the money that we spend comes from a handful of donations and money that comes primarily from the board of directors. No one is paid – we are all volunteers. And no one is complaining that our bills are unpaid, except one person.

Who?

That person was a volunteer a year ago, who stopped volunteering because money wasn’t coming in as fast as work was going out, and a comment was made to this person that a very small amount of money would go to them as a thank you when our organization was solvent.

There are two words for what that volunteer did with libelous comments toward us in public - “bully,” and “coward.”

Most certainly, neither of those words will ever be used to describe a Gold Star Family. And it’s accurate to say that if you defame us, you defame all the families we support. You defame them, and everything they stand to uphold.

We are able to do what we do not because we were founded by someone with money like Bill Gates. We were founded by people who believed we needed to do something for these families.

We are fortunate to have had conversations with people who can help us, like the local marketing staff of Jim Beam Suntory and Grumpy’s Bar and Grill. There has never been any money leaving Jim Beam to come to the Gold Star Ride Foundation, however, we have worked together on a number of events and projects designed to raise awareness of what we are doing, and we’ve had some success with that. So drink smart.

Grumpy’s did write us a check for $725.00 which was a wonderful gift; although we had more than $1,000 in expenses to prepare for that one single event. It was wonderful, but a net loss of more than $250.00.

Remember, people are weird. In order for us to ask you to make a donation, we first have to promote all the donations that we’ve already received. Then, we don’t receive any additional donations and we are accused of stealing the money we didn’t get in the first place.

Yep, people are weird.

To reiterate, our organization is run by humans, and we humans make mistakes. Perhaps we should have not said anything to that volunteer, or perhaps we should have found a few dollars out of the pocket of a board member. But the truth is, that volunteer never approached us before libelous comments were made in public. That person never called us; never sent us a text or an email; no private message on FaceBook or any other social media asking us for that money; just libelous comments in public.

So, if we need to ask a volunteer to stop calling restaurants, gas stations, hotels and radio stations – which is what we do every day – so someone can spend the time to draft a letter like this one, then that’s what we’ll do. And if there is ever an additional public comment that is libelous in any way, we’ll ask one of our volunteers to go drive for one of those app-based transportation services for two weeks to generate enough money for us to hire the lawyer that will take this sort of thing to the next level.

Or, if you’re a good defamation attorney, and you’d like to volunteer for our organization, we’d love to hear from you.

Because in order for us to help a 22 year old single mother – or any other Gold Star Family member – we must first waste our time and money on people who love to hate.

Thankfully, we have partnerships with organizations that provide us services so we can continue, not money. Weston Choppers, for example, is our longest sponsorship relationship. We have never once received so much as a nickel in cash from Weston Choppers. We have received other things that keep us moving forward.

Our website is easy to find, and while you’re there you can see all the other organizations that help us get our job done. Only one has given us money, all the rest have given us services to get the job done. We are very thankful for these organizations.

All tax records are a matter of public information as per IRS rules. However, if you think we are fraudulent in our reporting, seeing what we report won’t change that. If you think that way, we invite you to bring to our attention any item, story, scuttle- butt, evidence, or disgruntled beneficiary of our services or disgruntled volunteer so that we can provide you with our side of the story. We will find the time to respond to all inquiries.

Or better still, we publish where we go. Why don’t you come and see us? Not only will you have a chance to learn the truth about us, you’ll get to meet some incredible people known as Gold Star Families.

Even if you don’t have a beef with us, come and see us anyway. No one pays to Ride with us, and we never charge anything to the families that we visit nor do we ask anything from them in any way, except to let us visit.

And if you are a Gold Star Family member, and you’d like to know more about what we do, apply for benefits, or schedule a visit from us, we’d love to hear from you as well.

After all, we do this all day, every day, only for Gold Star Families.

We guess it’s because we’re strange. People are strange.

**"Top Dog" salary based on information from Forbe's web site.

***Information about one location generating $78 million and having $77 million in expenses provided by that Goodwill locations website.

* Hourly wage information was found on Forbe's website. Please write to us in PM or email and ask for the link.

**** Our board members also donate to Goodwill. We are not using any information here to change anyone idea about that organization specifically, only to illustrate that money is a necessary tool for all organizations, charitable or otherwise.

***** Most authorities now refer to this as PTS; because it is not considered a "disorder" but rather a normal condition of the human experience.

From Chapter Nine:

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 17:37:51 GMT

Smaller, But Significant Stories

After forty-eight days of grueling Riding; heat, rain, wind, and extremely long hours every single day, I found myself rolling down the east side of a mountain in Colorado. A song kept running through my head:

Somewhere along a high road
The air began to turn cold
She said she missed her home
I headed on alone

Stood alone on a mountain top,
Starin' out at the great divide
I could go east, I could go west,
It was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin'
And my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin'

If you’ve ever been there, it’s one of the most remarkable scenes around the Rocky Mountains. You come down the hill, and the mountains just disappear. Nothing but flat fields of grain as you roll east from that line.

I knew the song was pretty cool running through my head – music has that sort of power. I also knew it was wrong. I didn’t have a choice, really, about going east or west. I was going east. Well, northeast. It may have been up to me to decide, but that decision was made a long time ago.

As I got close to sea level for the first time in two weeks, I turned north and enjoyed the summer Ride. It was wonderful here, but very lonely. I managed to Ride north into Montana and South Dakota. Part of me was thinking how close I was to home, and how I was excited to get there. Part of me was thinking it was a wonderful day to Ride in some remote locations. After Riding north into Montana, I turned east and rolled passed a sign that said;

NEXT GAS 72 MILE

and I knew I was in desolate places. I double checked the gas gauge, which said I had plenty, and rolled that throttle on.

Excerpts from Yours, Very Sincerely and Respectfully

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

From Chapter Four: A Few More Issues

From Chapter Four:

“Been on the road long?” I asked, “You look tired.”

“Yeah, I started in North Dakota,” the old man driving the old truck spoke with a raspy voice. For the record, the closest point in North Dakota to the spot where he and I were sitting is about fifteen hundred miles. “We love this motel,” he continued, “we stay here every time we come down.”

“No rooms,” the woman said, returning to the truck and jumping back in on the other side.

“They have at least one,” I offered, “I’m leaving.” The old man chuckled. We began talking about the Gold Star Ride Foundation, and he shared that he had spent time in Vietnam. I told him about the bottle of Cuban rum I keep in a saddle bag, but he wasn’t interested in it. He did thank me for the offer, but, as he said, “haven’t had a drink in nearly two decades.” That earned a little more respect from me. I know how hard it can be, and I immediately imagined the challenges that this man has had to endure to stay alive this long.

While we spoke, the young person in the back seat jumped out with enormous amounts of energy, investigating this and that. The dog came out with him.

“That’s Schnook,” he said, introducing me to the dog. “He’s a full bred wolf.”

“A wolf?” I asked with a little shock.

“Yes, I’ve had him since he was a pup. He’s thirteen now.” This incredibly beautiful animal which, I’m guessing, weighed about one hundred pounds, and when he put his paws on the shoulder of the boy, the wolf wasn’t even trying to stretch to his available height. He could have put his paws on the shoulders of someone seven feet tall. He was a very impressive creature.

We talked a little about the wolf, and the boy told me the story of winning his black belt in Karate and Judo. He said he owed it all to his grandparents, who have been raising him.

I felt honored to have met them. They went to the next motel on the street, and I rolled west all day.

There was a time on this road, and I’ll use no exaggeration in the telling of this, when I was rolling toward New Mexico, when the only things you could see were cacti. Not the big beautiful ones you see in books, these were short; most only a foot tall. There was no ditch along the sides of the road, only flat land that rolled out into the fields of cacti. Every now and then, there was a mountain in the distance, but mostly it was flat, dry, and very hot. During one sixty minute period, I did not even pass or even see a car on the road.

I had plenty of time to not be distracted by anything. I was able to speak to God in complete sentences. Not all of those were filled with flattery, but they weren’t filled completely with complaints either. I think I’ve already mentioned that God and I have had differences in opinion along the way.

There’s something indescribable about being alone for that long. About being that alone. I mean, we’ve all had moments when we were alone. Hopefully, it happens every time you go into the bathroom; but this is different. This is so alone, that there is not a living person within fifty miles, and you can feel it. You can feel the fact that even if you wanted to come in contact with another human being, you’d have to travel a long time to get there. Distance adds something to the alone factor and it’s palpable.