the vet connection...dle coins, shirts and bricks, i was delighted. he has continued to im-prove and...
TRANSCRIPT
M y Fellow Veterans,
we are now half-way through the year and I would like to say thanks to every one of you! Each week we continue to complete our missions in fine fash-ion, but without fanfare as we serve those in need. Several hundred veterans in need, both men and women are in furnished housing be-cause of our efforts; More have been fed a special, personally pre-
pared and served meal; Over the course of the past months we have al-so provided clothing to 1,300 veterans as part of Arizona StandDown; Every week we clean our street and help our neighbors; and we have fed children at risk.
These are our mis-sions and we do them well. While we have started to generate some publicity, we turn the attention back to our missions and ask that our at-risk recipients be the beneficiaries of that in-
terest. This is how we give back and serve our veterans in need. Well Done Shipmates!
We could not have done many of these mis-sions without the help of
the fine men and women of Luke Air Force Base as coordinated by Rich-
ard Brown. He spends countless hours in this coordination, but I ex-
pect his wife does count those hours! At our
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“The Vet Connection” is
a monthly newsletter for
the members of the Trilo-
gy Veteran’s Club. If you
have an article that you
would like published,
please send to Scott Duke
Dates for monthly meetings (Meetings start at 4:00 pm)
From the President Page 1
Madison Street Outreach Update
Page 3
Luke AFB Vols—2 Year Anniversary
Page 4
Adopt-A-Street Page 6
From the Vice Page 7
Financial Report Page 8
Veterans Furni-ture Center
Page 8
Meet a Vet Page 9
Membership Re-port
Page 10
Humor in Uniform Page 11
Executive Board Page 13
Veterans Take a Hike
Page 14
Last Chance Sale! Page 15
Agenda Page 16
In this Issue...
The Vet Connection
June 2017 Volume 1 Issue 5
From the President
Hank Lewis
June 27, 2017 October 31, 2017
July 25, 2017 November 28, 2017
August 29, 2017 December 26, 2017
September 26, 2017
meeting, he will be presenting
those airmen with 20 or more volunteer days with TVC special volunteer shirts and dinner.
Let’s celebrate with our distin-guished Luke volunteers and let’s do it all again for the next
six months.
Your Board of Directors real-izes the work that has been done by everyone, but there are some among you who are tireless in their efforts to serve. As a result, the Board will be bringing some recognition programs to you for your consideration and approval. We will vote on these programs next month and upon your nomi-nations and board consideration, we will recognize these volun-teers at our October 28th get to-gether, coordinated by Bob Meizinger. In the meantime, Don Borland needs our help feeding some hungry vets each month and in our VFC missions. Bill Conner will be at our meet-ing to provide an update on the VFC operation as those board members seek to improve service to our veterans in need. Scott Duke could use some more hands out on the street, and he will also ask us to assist in a golf tournament for the “Food for Kidz” program. In addition to keeping us all informed, he is also looking to add new opportu-nities to serve in addition to our current missions. He will brief all about a recent meeting with the leadership of the Corte Bella vet club. Mike Ponting contin-ues to lift the heavy end of the sofas as well as maintaining our
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membership rolls. As for Mark, Grindle, Les Kessler, and Jim Long, they also work in many other roles but also do their own jobs very well. When Mark volunteered at the beginning of the year to han-dle coins, shirts and bricks, I was delighted. He has continued to im-prove and streamline our process as we serve our members!
Finally, I want to thank all of you as members for showing up, staffing these missions and answering our many calls for help! It has been a true honor to serve with you this year and I know we have a lot more success to come!
We have a lot of work to do so let’s get started!
We want to hear from you! Each issue, we will add a “sound off” section that will come from a member of the club. If you have an issue/complaint/compliment that pertains the club and its op-eration, you will now have
space to voice that viewpoint. Send your “sound off” article to [email protected].
T he work continues in support of the Madison Street Outreach Program. During the month of June another set
of volunteers headed down to Phoenix, armed with crock-pot cooked meals for our homeless veterans. Led by the mission leader, Don Bor-land, the team was simply outstanding and each of them will tell you, seeing the gratitude and smile on the face of less fortunate military veteran, as you serve him a hot meal is on of those moments that stay with you for the rest of your life.
If you feel like this core mission of the club is something you would like to do, please make contact with Don (e-mail above) and see what you can do to help.
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Madison Street Outreach Pro-
gram
Don Borland
Luke AFB
Volunteers- 2 Year Anniversary
Richard Brown
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T his month marks the two year point since I first went to Luke AFB to ar-range for Luke personnel to support our furniture mission.
Many have asked me how’d we get Luke per-sonnel to assist us with the furniture pickups and deliveries. Being that this month marks the 2-year anniversary of this cooperative effort being launched, I felt it a good time to provide a bit of the history behind what has become a major oper-ation.
Back in March, 2015, our then TVC President Bill Conner volunteered our club to assist with furniture pickups to stock the Veterans Furniture Center and to do the furniture deliveries to once homeless veterans who were transitioning back into society. This was an ambitious but most worthwhile mission for our veterans club to take on. I went on a couple of the early furniture missions and observed our club mem-bers (at least some of them) struggling to get 3-piece so-fas up multiple flights of stairs. These efforts not only involved carry lamps and pillow, but also all of the heavier furniture needed to furnish a complete apart-ment. Many heavy furniture items needed to be moved to accomplish this task. I felt that the will was there from all club participants, but for many of the club members, the task was daunting, and somewhat dangerous.
Now, the truth be told, I talked about this with my wife over dinner and she commented “Why not ask for Luke support?” She remembered that back in my ac-tive duty Air Force days, doing more than just your pri-mary job was important for advancement, and a volun-teer mission like this one, not only supporting the local community, but also our needy and at-risk veterans, would be an ideal way to help these airmen with pro-motions, awards and decorations, Airmen / NCO of the quarter awards, and so forth It would provide excellent material to be included in the Luke airmen performance reports.
Given the idea, I discussed doing this with Bill Con-ner and he asked me to give it a shot. I investigated the structure of Luke Air Force Base and learned that Luke is a Fighter Wing, commanded by a Brigadier General, and one of the Groups under the Wing Com-mander is the Mission Support Group, commanded by a full colonel. This Colonel is often referred to as the “Base Commander”, and interestingly, in any Air Force Wing, the Base Commander is not the most senior indi-vidual on the base, the Wing commander is. Anyway, I wanted authority to obtain Luke volunteers as a first step, thinking having this would facilitate getting vol-unteers (which it has, in a big way). So I briefed the Base and Wing Commanders on our club’s endeavor and the assistance we needed to help needy veterans and they quickly approved my using Luke personnel resources and tasked the Wing first Sergeant to get me started in the right direction. This was massively im-portant and helpful.
Luke is a sprawling base with 7500 military and 4000 civilian personnel in 18 different units (Flights, Squadrons, Groups). It was most helpful for me to have a senior NCO to guide me to the right commanders, first ser-geants, and various com-mittees to allow me to gain some traction, and obtain some initial volunteers to support our furniture mission . I had the authority, and this enabled me to put that authority to use, and obtain the support we needed in a practical sense.
This was back in May-June 2015 time, and during July, I started getting volunteers and adding names to
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my data base. They first sup-ported us, primarily with deliv-eries, in August 2015. At that time I had 8 volunteers. But our club members had the young airmen to help get furni-ture to our needy veterans. It was an exciting time. I only had a small number of Luke personnel assisting us in the ear-ly days, but I could sense they liked providing this support, they appreciated our club’s mis-sion to help needy veterans.
The program grew rapidly, as one briefing to a squadron would recruit multiple volun-teers. I briefed first sergeant’s meetings, commander’s calls, the LEAD committee (Luke Empowering Airmen Develop-ment), and the Airmen Leader-ship School graduating classes Luke folks found this volunteer-ing exciting, they loved helping needy veterans, enjoyed seeing the pleasure on their faces as their apartments got fully fur-nished, and they liked hanging out with us older veterans, en-joying our many stories. Be-tween the presentations, the use of Points of Contact, and word-of-mouth, the Luke volunteer coordinator program exploded in magnitude.
From the start with only 8 participants, today this Luke coordination program involves 16 commanders, 13 Points of Contact, and as many as 233 volunteers (138 active). And this includes three officers. To date Luke has assisted our club with 640 deliveries and 695
(Continued from page 4) pickups, for a total of 1,335 mis-sions. What is their value? Ask-ing those in the club who frequent-ly go out with the trucks, in a word, their value is immeasurable. Some feel our VFC mission would have ceased had Luke not joined in as they did.
We help the Luke volunteers as well. They enjoy our complimen-tary lunches and, by the end of June, 150 Luke personnel will have received Letters of Appreciation and Certificates that I send directly to their commanders so they are recognized at the highest level in their unit. I send copies to their supervisors, hoping this might help them getting time off on Fridays to support us. Twelve airmen have received our club challenge coin signifying that they’ve sup-ported at least 10 times, and one has re-ceived the club’s distin-guished volunteer shirt, signifying twenty missions. Two more will receive shirts in June, and of course, the complimentary dinner at V’s. I suspect that three more will be so recognized in July.
While coordinating all of this is time consuming, without question, it’s a good feeling going down to Luke and briefing a group of uni-formed Airmen, hearing their reac-tions, having discussion with them, joining them at the chow hall and learning about today’s Air Force vis-à-vis my Air Force days I’ve learned that the technology, of course, is far more advanced, but the rest is pretty much the same. You still need to do more than just
your primary job to advance, and this helps me get support for our VFC missions.
With our club currently being off-the –hook for supporting the VFC office work, I’m hoping I’ll now have sufficient time to get out on Fridays and Saturdays more often and meet and interact even more with these fine young men and women.
When Hank Lewis took over as President and learned I had no backup person for the Luke vol-unteer coordinator function, he and Mark Grindle immediately requested an overview briefing of what I do and how I do it, which they received, and every 2 weeks I email to them the important working documents that I use for this function, so they’re in a posi-tion to keep the operation going if I were unable for any reason, or had to go away for an extended period. I truly appreciate Hank for requesting this and following thru with it. If our club is to con-tinue to obtain and deliver furni-ture to needy veterans transition-ing back into society, the support from Luke personnel must contin-ue.
I take great
pleasure to have
started this pro-
gram and to see
how it grew.
Luke personnel
deserve our ap-
preciation for
how they’ve stepped up to the
plate and provided us with over
800 man-days of support.
C lean-up continues to take place each Monday at 0730, outside the members gate.
El Mirage looks beautiful (see picture below) and only adds to the beauty of Trilogy at Vistancia.
We also picked up a new volunteer, Ken Johnson (Army), who grabbed a bag and his stick and helped clean up El Mirage with Bruce Murray and Larry DiGiovanni (see pictures below). Between the four of us, we were able to take care of both ends of El Mirage (total of 2 miles) during the month of June.
While we are cleaning up El Mirage, another Veteran, Paul Bernard has “adopted” another segment of the area. He walks out the main gate and picks up litter along Vistancia Blvd. and then El Mirage to Blue Sky.
Any veteran can help clean up El Mirage and you don’t have to wait until Mondays to do it. Just grab a bag and some gloves and hit the street. If you do, please send a note to [email protected] and let me know, so we can call off the Monday crew from heading out for that week.
Do you know who this is?
He is a member of the Trilogy Veterans Club and served in the Marine Corps.
Answer can be found on page 16.
Adopt-A-Street
Scott Duke
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W elcome to summer here in Trilogy! Even though the weather is getting hotter, the Veterans Club contin-ues to stay busy and support all our missions. Our
website, http://tvaveteransclub.weebly.com, has been updated to re-flect changes to the brick and shirt ordering forms. Prior to the chang-es, members would fill out a form and submit from the website. There
was a disconnect on when orders were submitted versus check payment being made. To make the ordering process easier for all members, the Shirt and Brick pages of the website have been updated to allow mem-bers to download the form. We are asking members who do so, please download the applicable form, fill out the form, and send the form with the appropriate payment to the following:
Les Kessler
12726 W. Crestvale Dr
Peoria, AZ 85383
Prices for shirts, bricks, and coins can be found on page 15.
From the Vice!
Mark Grindle
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I thought maybe some of the Air Force guys, and others
as well, might find the this story interesting. It is a
brief biography of my uncle, a WWll pilot, MIA over the
English Channel. It was always a mystery as to how he
went MIA. No one, including my family, knew. After much
research, the author, Colonel Don Henry Ret, my uncle's
cousin, solves that mystery.
Editor’s note: This is an amazing story and you can download
the biography from our website at:
http://tvaveteransclub.weebly.com
Memorial Day
Remembrance
Bob Henry
R eminder that until further notice, we will not have to support the VFC office as we have for the past almost two years. We have six club members
who have worked the office and are qualified, and there are six personnel who have volunteered to start. These are Ron Gabaldon, Paul Bernard, Denise and Scott Carty, Seth Ea-
sley and George Stevens.
We may have to resume supporting the office work, if our
President deems we should With 12 personnel, no one will have to go down very often. If we do resume, as
originally my plan, I shall take the new people down and conduct the training. Hopefully, this will not be nec-
essary.
If anyone has furniture to donate, please go to the following website:
www.veteransfurniturecendr.org
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I n my article last month, I explained our surplus was due to several years of dues, which we would be deciding on which veteran charitable organizations to assist. Of course,
with the membership approval.
Over the last several months, we have added to the list of both charities and recognition programs that we wish to assist with both funds and awards. This includes shirt and coins for our Air-
men at Luke AFB who have completed the proper number of missions as well as taking them to lunch. In ad-dition, we would like to expand our help and support to the Food for Kidz organization.
In that light, the executive board has discussed an increase in annual dues for 2018 to $10 per member. This is a small increase to say the least, but the additional funds will give our club the ability to carry out these additional and expanded programs.
We will bring this issue up to the membership at the June meeting and anticipate your support and affirm-ative vote.
Many thanks and have a wonderful 4th of July!
Financial
Report
Les Kessler
Veterans Furniture Center (VFC)
Richard Brown
M eet retired MSgt Scott “OX” Duke. Scott is our Director of Com-munications for the
Trilogy Veterans Club.
Scott was born in Zweibrucken, Germany in 1956 and entered the Air Force in Radcliff, Kentucky in 1974. He completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, TX, and the Air Traffic Control Apprentice Course at Keesler Air Force Base, MS. His ATC career began at Camp-bell Army Airfield Control Tower, Hopkinsville, KY in 1975.
During his career , he completed two (2) Associate Degrees (Air Traf-fic Control, Instructional Technolo-gy) from the Community College of the Air Force, and a Bachelor of Sci-ence Degree in Occupational Educa-tion from Southern Illinois Universi-ty (SIU). He graduated from the Airman Leadership School in 1977 at Keesler AFB, MS, NCO Academy in 1986, RAF Uxbridge (where he was awarded the Commandant’s Award for Excellence), United Kingdom, and the Senior NCO Academy in 1991 in Minneapolis,
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MN.
He was the Air Force’s Air Traffic Control Advisor of the Year in 1987, the Air Force’s Training Achievement Award winner in 1988. His awards and decorations while in the Air Force include Air Force Meritorious Service Medal (4), Air Force Commendation Medal (4), Air Force Achievement Medal (4), and the Air Force Special Recognition ribbon for winning the Air Force’s Tops in Blue Talent Contest in 1985.
He retired from the Air Force in 1994, beginning a new career with the Department of the Air Force as a civilian, overseeing air traffic control operations for the Air National Guard. Over the next 22 years, he rose through the civil service grades and retired for a second time as a GS-15 (military equivalent rank of Colonel) as the Chief, ATC, Airspace & Ranges at the National Guard Bureau, Joint Base Andrews, MD. He became the highest ranking civil service Air Traffic Controller in the Air Force. During his retirement cere-mony, Scott was awarded the Air Force Outstanding Civilian Career Service Award (equivalent to Legion of Merit) serving a total of 42 years in the service of our country. Scott is also a Master Mason with Sun City Lodge #72.
He is married to the former Nancy Salzwedel, who served 5 years
in the Air Force (1980-1985) as a Financial Specialist, and retired
from Delta Airlines in 2016 after serving 29 years in the aviation
industry. They both love living in Trilogy and all the wonderful peo-
ple that reside there.
Richard Brown wants to pass on the fol-lowing information concerning the Luke AFB Volunteers.
Just want to let everyone know that if I receive a request for additional Luke Air-men support AFTER WEDS AT NOON, the likelihood of finding people is quite low.
The latest I can receive requests will be every Wednesday by noon. I’ll be monitoring my email, or will strive to be, around that time.
If something urgent does pop up after that, please call me, don’t rely on email. I may not see it until late Thursday.
I already have an agreement with Bill Conner that If I don’t receive a request for Sat pickups by Weds, noon, that there will be no missions on Saturday, or at least not with Luke support.
I will be introducing a new member at our next meeting. I was con-tacted by this individual via email, so our website, My Trilogy Life (MTL) and word of mouth seems to be working in our favor!
Also at our next meeting, one of our newest members will be talking about his recent volunteering at the Veteran’s Furniture Center. This was truly a moving experience for him and I look forward to having him share it with the club.
Without taking his thunder, this is what it means to be a member in our club. Our core mission is to serve those who have served. This is most easily accomplished by assisting those veterans who are at risk or simply need a helping hand. Please consider volunteering for one of our missions, whether it is once a week, once a month or a couple of times a year. Any time you are able to set aside for this will be rewarded in ways you might not expect. Try it! You’ll like it!
Veterans Club
Membership
124
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New Membership
Mike Ponting
HM Royal Navy
Canadian Air Force
I t was a wonderful presentation during the May meeting of the Trilogy Veterans Club when Richard Brown (Mission Leader for the Luke AFB Volunteer Program/Veterans Fur-niture Center) presented the club’s challenge coin to A1C
Antonio Kaminski.
A1C Kaminski received the coin and recognition for volunteer-ing 10 times to help pick-up and deliver furniture in the Phoenix area, supporting our homeless military veterans get back on their feet and obtaining housing.
Special thanks to Richard Brown, who volunteers his time on a full-time basis to set-up Luke volunteers to support the Veterans Furniture Center.
A guy had been badly mauled by a bear at the local Okina-wan zoo and needed immediate surgery. He had lost a lot of blood and would need a ton of stitches. It was safe to
say his active duty days were over. I asked how this happened and it seems the guy wanted his picture taken with the bear, so he climbed over the safety fence and went up next to the bear while his buddies took pictures. He got up to leave, but the bear obviously had other ideas. It was probably well past 1 AM by the time we had him on the table and under anesthesia.
It was now up to the surgical team to try and piece back together what was left of his left side. As I circu-lated around the room, getting supplies, blood etc., it suddenly came to me that this was a "Grisly sight" and I mentioned that to the surgeon. He laughed and continued stitching. "Looks like were going to have to grin-and bear-it" came from my lips a few minutes later. He just looked at me. This was "Un-bearable", Not my idea of a "bear-hug". Finally the surgeon said, "Carty, one more word and this scalpel is coming your way". I quickly moved behind the anesthesiologist and said "Good thing he's here or he would be in termi-nal hibernation". I had a few other "appropriate" comments, but always made sure I was behind someone or something when I said them. When the guy woke up in recovery, his first words were, "Did the pictures come out?" Story submitted by: Scott Carty
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PRESIDENT
Virgil “Hank: Lewis
VICE-PRESIDENT Mark Grindle
SECRETARY
Jim Long
jimlong13058@
gmail.com
Communications Director Scott Duke
Membership Director Mike Ponting
VFC/Luke AFB Liaison Richard Brown
Social Director Robert Meizinger
Madison Street Outreach Donald Borland
Member-at-Large Will remain vacant until next election of board members.
TREASURER Les Kessler
kesslerleslie@
yahoo.com
Some members of the Executive Board of the Trilogy Veterans Club travelled to Sun City to meet with the Corte Bella Veterans Club. Led by our President, Hank Lewis, we engaged with their team, led by Larry Leighton (President).
There was good discussion and we gave a PowerPoint briefing on our club and the programs we support. They also presented what their club is doing in support of a variety of events and programs they are involved with.
Both clubs agreed to keep in touch and where we could, team up in supporting our military veterans and those at-risk military veterans that need support. We have extended an invitation to them to attend our meeting this month or next.
The Vet Connection Page 14
T wo members of the Trilogy Veterans Club headed north for Memorial Day, armed with two important items; The USA and POW flags.
It was the mission of Hank Lewis and Bill Gar-ling to carry those flags across the Grand Canyon. Bill carried them from the South Rim to North Rim and then on Memorial Day, Hank carried them from the North Rim to the South Rim. What is amazing is that Bill has done the Rim to Rim over 28 times!!
One of the most gratifying aspect of their hike was the people they met along the way. So many of them stopped Hank and Bill to talk to them and ask about the flags on what they were doing. It gave both veter-ans the opportunity to speak about our military, our veterans, and those that didn’t return home from com-bat.
T rilogy Veterans Club (TVC) shirts, bricks, and coins are for
sale. Prices are below. All items may be ordered at our monthly
meeting.
This will be your last chance to purchase these items at the prices
below. Effective 1 October, you will see an increase to all items, except
the coin.
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Customized Brick Club Coin
Polo Shirt Tee Shirt
H ere is a look at the agenda for this month’s meeting of the Veterans Club. We hope to see you there. Please take note of our new time for all future meetings….1600 or for some of you...4:00 pm.
Meeting comes to order at 1600
Pledge of Allegiance
President’s comments
Financial report
mission Leader’s rePort
OLD business
New business
Good of the Club
Adjourn
Answer to question on page 6 : Jim Long
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