Getting Our Life Priorities in Order

By Terry Orr

(Source: Posting on Linkedin)

Sure is a lot of truth in these words. 

Each of us ought to take a few minutes and examine our own priorities in life and ask that hard question – do we have ‘our life priorities in order’?

I Was Raised!

By Terry Orr 

• I didn't just grow up.  
• I was taught to speak when I enter a room.
• Say please and thank you, to have respect for my elders and to get off my lazy butt and let the elder in the room have my chair.
• Say 'yes sir' and 'no sir', lend a helping hand to those in need.
• Hold the door for the person behind me, say 'excuse me' when it's needed and to love people for who they are and not for what I can get from them.
• I was also taught to treat people the way I want to be treated.

(And my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents refreshed my memory if I had forgotten any of the above.)

Voting in America

Opinion: 

“This is not the United States I grew up in. No matter whether you are rich or poor and Republican or Democrat, our leaders in Washington have failed us miserably and American voters have only themselves to blame.”  (Source: Jim Richards - my cousin) 

General Petraeus on the military today

By Terry Orr

(Sharing an interesting and insightful email)

Some may agree and some may disagree with the General’s comments but there is a lot of truth in this article.

General Petraeus on the military today.

 Thanks to my fellow veterans:

 I remember the day I found out I got into West Point. My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class.

She was bawling her eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. She wasn't crying because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was crying because she knew how hard I'd worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend, and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer.

I was going to get that opportunity. That same day two of my teachers took me aside and essentially told me the following:

"David, you're a smart guy. You don't have to join the military. You should go to college, instead."

I could easily write a theme defending West Point and the military as I did that day, explaining that USMA is an elite institution, that separate from that it is actually statistically much harder to enlist in the military than it is to get admitted to college, that serving the nation is a challenge that all able-bodied men should at least consider for a host of reasons, but I won't.

What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attending West Point is going to be bad for his future then there is a dangerous disconnect in America, and entirely too many Americans have no idea what kind of burdens our military is bearing.

 In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four (4) years.

 During the Vietnam era, 4.3% served in twelve (12) years.

 Since 2001, only 0.45% of our population has served in the Global War on Terror.

 These are unbelievable statistics. Over time, fewer and fewer people have shouldered more and more of the burden and it is only getting worse.

Our troops were sent to war in Iraq by a Congress consisting of 10% veterans with only one person having a child in the military. Taxes did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not regulated. In fact, the average citizen was asked to sacrifice nothing, and has sacrificed nothing unless they have chosen to out of the goodness of their hearts.

 The only people who have sacrificed are the veterans and their families. The volunteers. The people who swore an oath to defend this nation. You stand there, deployment after deployment and fight on.

You've lost relationships, spent years of your lives in extreme conditions, years apart from kids you'll never get back, and beaten your body in a way that even professional athletes don't understand.

Then you come home to a nation that doesn't understand. They don't understand suffering. They don't understand sacrifice.

They don't understand why we fight for them. They don't understand that bad people exist. They look at you like you're a machine - like something is wrong with you. You are the misguided one - not them.

When you get out, you sit in the college classrooms with political science teachers that discount your opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can't understand the macro issues they gathered from books, because of your bias.

You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and the violent strain at that.

Your Congress is debating your benefits, your retirement, and your pay, while they ask you to do more.  But the amazing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your country will never pay back what you've given up. You know that the populace at large will never truly understand or appreciate what you have done for them.

Hell, you know that in some circles, you will be thought as less than normal for having worn the uniform.  But you do it anyway.

 You do what the greatest men and women of this country have done since 1775.

YOU SERVED.  Just that decision alone makes you part of an elite group.

"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." -Winston Churchill-

Thank you to the 11.2% and 4.3% who have served and thanks to the 0.45% who continue to serve our Nation.

General David Petraeus

West Point Class 1974

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world.  But the U.S. ARMED FORCES don't have that problem."

Steve M. Kurtz, retired

Wonderful Old Pictures

By Terry Orr

(Sharing a nice email – Thanks Nancy)

Teenagers and their first car 1950's

Muhammad Ali looking dapper

Audrey Hepburn at a premiere on September 14, 1953

The Beatles before they were famous

Clint Eastwood with actresses Olive Sturgess and Dani Crayne in San Francisco 1954

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip at the horse races 1968 

Ellen O'Neal, the greatest woman freestyle skateboarder in the 1970's

The Original way to 'text' in class 1944

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

National Root Beer Float Day

National Fresh Breath Day