Being a part of an organization that gives back to the military is an honor! Our society today is so much into the material that it is easy to forget that freedom is not free. There are many that have paid with their lives for the freedoms that we all have today.

As a small boy, even before I started school, I remember placing a flag during a Memorial Day celebration on the grave of a soldier in our community that had been killed in World War II. I had no idea who this man was, yet I knew he had done something very honorable.

Two years ago, I lost a very good friend of mine by the name of Robert Murphy. Robert did three tours in Viet Nam, and on his third tour, one of the guys in his platoon stepped on a bouncing Betty. Sergeant Murphy's legs where shattered, his abdomen was ripped open, his face was blown off and his hands were riddled with shrapnel.

The first diagnosis was, he would not make it back to the Mash units, but Robert Murphy lived. The next diagnosis was that Murphy would have to learn to do life in bed. After18 months of living in hospital beds, through countless skin graphs, and operation after operation, the Sarg took his first step. For the next thirty years Robert Murphy was in and out of I.C.U. units because of his injuries that he had sustained in Viet Nam. Not once did I ever hear him complain or express anything but gratitude for being an American. His total focus was a semper fidelis attitude of helping other people in his life, what a blessing he was in the lives of those of us that knew him.

On June 7, 2002 a warrior to the end Sergeant Robert Murphy died from his wounds in Viet Nam. So, for me to give whatever I might to those that fight, I feel it to be a duty and a privilege.