America’s Hope: Valrico’s Zach Bonner, 12, Chosen Most Inspiring
By Chandra Broadwater
Times Staff Writer
Dec. 25, 2009
VALRICO — Sully didn’t have a thing on this 12-year-old.
And those post-election protesters in Iran? Forget it.
Zach Bonner, a Valrico boy known for his money-raising treks for homeless kids, is the most inspiring person of 2009, according to Belief net.
The inspirational Web site announced Bonner as the 10th annual award winner Wednesday.
The blue-eyed red-head got more votes than protesters against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and even Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger — the pilot who safely landed a US Airways plane in the Hudson River.
“We were real excited to find out we were the recipients of the award,” Bonner said, his hands folded on a conference table in front of him. His day was packed with interviews.
And he had already been featured in USA Today.
“It’s an honor,” he said. “But all of the nominees were impressive and they all deserved it.”
It’s the dedication to his nonprofit group, the Little Red Wagon Foundation that got the editors at the site. Not to mention his age, said Laurie Sue Brockway, Belief net’s Family and Inspiration editor.
Other nominees included actor Michael J. Fox, and the couple who danced down the aisle at their wedding to Chris Brown’s Forever.
Last year’s winner was Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University known for The Last Lecture.
“What he does is very impressive, and it would be impressive if he won it as an adult,” Brockway said. “But he’s done it at 12, and what he’s done has touched our hearts in a very profound way.”
It all started when he was 6, Zach explained.
That’s when Hurricane Charley tore through Florida. He went up and down the streets of his neighborhood hauling his red Radio Flyer wagon to collect food and water.
That day would be the first of many days of service. Not long after, he began his foundation and his fight for homeless children.
Since then, he’s won several awards and walked thousands of miles to raise money for his cause. Last year, he walked about 1,200 miles to Washington, D.C.
In April, he will head to Los Angeles for a 2,300-mile trek.
Yes, all those miles make his feet sore. But usually after a few days, Zach said his body gets used to the “misery.”
“It’s not exactly misery, but you know what I mean,” he said. “It’s hard. But it’s worth it.”
Between cramped schedules — in January he will have only one day off — he attends classes online through the Hillsborough Virtual School.
Like many other 12-year-olds, he also likes to spend as much time in the pool as possible.
Zach lives with his mother, Laurie Bonner, who works in real estate from home. His father “is not in the picture,” she said.
Zach doesn’t think much of what he’s accomplished in his short life. Shrugging his shoulders, he guesses that he simply likes helping people.
His mother thinks her son just found something he enjoyed.
“Or maybe,” she said, “he was just supposed to do this.”
Source: Tampa Bay Little Red Wagon Foundation
Editor’s Note: Zach Bonner, center, says he was excited to win, “but all of the nominees were impressive and they all deserved it.”
He’s shown during a planning meeting for an event where kids will simulate being homeless to raise funds and awareness.
Chandra Broadwater can be reached at cbroadwater@sptimes.com or (813) 661-2454.
We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
US Army Hero’s Spread Christmas Cheer in Bagram Iraq
By Army Spc. Michael J. MacLeod
Special to American Forces Press Service
Dec. 25, 2009
In the dew-laden predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, Everton Bushnell jumped into Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France, with the two-year-old 82nd Airborne Division.
Twenty-five years later, his son, Ellsworth Bushnell, fought with the “All Americans” in Vietnam and spent six months as a prisoner of war.
And in September of this year, Army Sgt. 1st Class John Bushnell became the third generation of Bushnell’s to wear the All American patch to a war zone when he deployed to Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade.
For the military intelligence electronic repair specialist, it has been the golden chalice of his 13-year Army career.
Its attainment marked the fulfillment of a family tradition that at times seemed like the prize of an Indiana Jones saga.
Bushnell knows what it’s like to part of a small unit, cut off from the main body.
“It’s called recruiting,” he joked.
“Where I spent the last 45 months on recruiting duty, most people had never seen an active-duty soldier in their lives.
In the Army, they teach you how to work with people during seven weeks of recruiting training, but when you get out there on your own and are no longer surrounded by other soldiers, it’s completely different,” he said.
Bushnell proved to be an exceptional recruiter, earning his gold badge and recruiting ring while bringing an average of 5.6 new soldiers into the Army every month, nearly three times the standard of two.
Yet, having deployed as a paratrooper with the 1st Corps Support Command to Iraq in 2003-04, the four hours of daily “cold calling” from a recruiting office left him unfulfilled.
Most of Bushnell’s complaining about wanting to deploy again fell on the kindred ears of other recruiters. But one day, a man standing in a Canton, Ohio, unemployment office overheard his bellyaching to be deployed again. The man turned out to be then-U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine.
Three months later, Bushnell received a flag that had been flown over the Capitol and a letter from DeWine thanking him for his service. But no orders off the recruiting outpost.
What he did enjoy as a recruiter was the visits by local veterans. One day, he recalled, an older man came into his office asking for a couple of key chains.
The Army-branded merchandise was supposed to be given to high school students, but Bushnell saved much of it for the vets.
“Are you a veteran, sir?” Bushnell asked.
“Yeah, I was in Vietnam. I was infantry,” said the man, a Mr. Luco. He was also part of the veteran biker group, Rolling Thunder.
Bushnell gave him the key chains and thanked him for his service.
“No, thank you for what you all are doing,” Luco replied. “It’s much harder than what we did.”
“No sir, I wouldn’t be in this uniform if it weren’t for what your generation did,” Bushnell told the man. “We’ve just picked up where you guys left off.”
Then the vet told Bushnell a story. His grandfather had given his father a silver dollar to carry for luck in the Korean War. His father passed that same coin to him before he shipped to Vietnam.
One night, Luco said, the Viet Cong encamped around his unit, pinning the soldiers in a swamp for two and a half weeks. He rubbed that coin the entire time, he said.
Bushnell loaded Loco down with T-shirts, coffee mugs and other promotional items, nearly bringing the man to tears.
“This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” the man swore.
Two hours later, Loco reappeared, this time dressed in his biker’s garb. “I just wanted you to see how we dressed, and to thank you again,” he said, but when he shook Bushnell’s hand, he passed off that silver-dollar coin.
“It took every bit of discipline that I had not to break down in that office,” Bushnell said.
The first time he was “coined,” Bushnell was a young specialist. His children were conducting airborne operations from the back of the family van in the Post Exchange parking lot on Fort Bragg, N.C.
“Airborne!” Jump.
“Airborne!” Jump.
Army Lt. Gen. Dan McNeil, commander of 18th Airborne Corps, suddenly appeared. “Tell me, specialist,” he asked Bushnell, “do these young paratroopers plan to join the Army?”
Bushnell hadn’t joined the army himself until the age of 27. Raised on a 300-acre farm, he followed the rodeo circuit for a while after high school. Eventually, he married his high school sweetheart, Jenni, and took up trucking. In 1993, he heard the call to serve.
After basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., he served in South Korea, Fort Lewis, Wash., and Fort Bragg, though with the 20th Engineering Brigade and 1st Corps Support Command – never with the 82nd.
In spite of his constant pleading, the family tradition seemed to elude him.
For his indefinite re-enlistment – the one obligating his service to retirement – Bushnell traveled to his hometown of Tallmadge, Ohio, named for Revolutionary War Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge.
While on recruiting duty, Bushnell was asked to present a new memorial in his hometown square to those who had fallen in combat since the Revolutionary War. It was a pivotal moment.
“I told them, I don’t want a bonus. Just get me to [the 82nd],” he said.
In August 2009, Bushnell pinned on the rank of sergeant first class as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division.
“It was a proud moment,” he said, “but what I remember most was putting the AA patch on my shoulder in 82nd Replacement in the Hall of Heroes. Holy cow,” I remember thinking, “I am finally here.”
Don’t unpack, they told him. In his career specialty of repairing anything that receives, transmits or stores top-secret information, there were only two open slots in the entire Army for his new pay grade.
More than likely, before the current deployment is over, Bushnell will receive orders to Fort Huachuca, Ariz. In the meantime, he will serve here as a platoon sergeant with Company B, 1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion.
“I always wanted [a specialty] with top-secret clearance that would give me a bigger picture of the Army,” Bushnell said. The downside is that his rank and job restrict where he is useful to the Army.
Most of the Army’s intelligence equipment is covered under warranty should it break down, he said.
Bushnell’s time with the 82nd will be but a brief intersection. His time in service is greater than his grandfather’s and father’s combined; neither spent more than a few years with the division or the Army.
To wear the patch and to serve, and to be a part of the All American heritage, always was his goal.
“Was coming to the 82nd a good move career-wise?” he asked. “I don’t know. But yes, it’s been worth the fight to get here.
For the family tradition, for my personal motivation, to just be a part of the greatest Army division in the world – it fulfills a longstanding dream.”
Stay tuned for more Bushnell paratroopers. The kids are approaching recruitment age.
Source: Jackson NJ
Editor’s Note: Army Spc. Michael J. MacLeod serves in the Multinational Force West with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade public affairs office.
We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
Teen Finds Dinosaur Fossil
By Laura Linn
Dec. 24, 2009
It turns out that fourth-grader Gabrielle Block, 9, has an eye for fossils. She is the first person to find a dinosaur bone at the new Dinosaur Park, a fossil site in Maryland, since the park opened to the public last month.
“Usually it takes a well-trained and practiced eye to be able to pick out the fossils from the rest of the clay,” park manager Donald Creveling told The Washington Post.
On November 21, Gabrielle found a half-inch fossil believed to be a bone from the tail of a small, meat-eating dinosaur. The dinosaur most likely lived more than 100 million years ago.
The fossil is now at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where paleontologists will examine it more closely.
Gabrielle found the fossil while sifting through dirt and rocks with her parents and 7-year-old sister, Rachael, who is the true dinosaur lover in the family.
“I was really excited and happy,” Gabrielle told The Washington Post.
Dinosaur Park
A dinosaur park may sound like something you’d see in the movies, with dinosaurs roaming among humans. Rather, it is an area of land where dinosaur fossils have been found that is open for public use.
Dinosaur Park in Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a 41-acre piece of land that is open the first and third Saturday of each month, so anyone who has an interest can hunt for fossils.
Gabrielle made her big find on just the second day the park was open to the public.
Amateurs, or nonprofessionals, and expert paleontologists have been finding fossils in this area for more than 150 years.
The state of Maryland created Dinosaur Park to preserve the fossil site from being destroyed by the construction of buildings in the area.
Creveling told The Baltimore Sun that Dinosaur Park is “one of the most productive sites for dinosaur and plant fossils east of the Mississippi River.” One big discovery made there was a 5-foot-long dinosaur bone in 1991.
The fossil was later identified as belonging to a brachiosaur that was at least 60 feet long and weighed several tons. The dinosaur likely lived during the Cretaceous period, between 65 million and 144 million years ago.
From Dinosaur to Fossil
Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed over much of what is now the U.S., but the chance of finding a dinosaur fossil in your backyard is slim. Why? Many factors need to be just right for a fossil to form. Maryland’s climate and landscape during the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth varied.
Parts were steamy, volcanic lowland, while other areas were shallow, warm sea. The region was overflowing with life. The conditions were perfect for the preservation of dinosaur remains that would eventually become fossils.
The bones and shells of organisms that lived on land and in the sea were quickly buried in sediment, or tiny grains of material like ash, sand, and clay. This sediment was washed into the low-lying areas from the sea.
If the organisms’ remains were not destroyed, they eventually became fossilized.
How? As sediment accumulates, pressure causes the sediment to harden into rock. A fossil may be created that preserves an impression in the rock of bone, shells, or even plants. The remains within the sediment can also become petrified, or turned to stone.
This happens when minerals dissolved in water soak into the buried remains. Eventually, the minerals replace all or part of the organism remains, turning them into rock. The fossil that Gabrielle found is an example of a petrified fossil.
Paleontologists believe Dinosaur Park has many more fossils yet to be found. And Rachael Block hopes to follow in Sister Gabrielle’s footsteps by finding one of the dinosaur fossils that is still buried.
“I promised [Rachael] we’d go back next time [Dinosaur Park] is open,” her mom told The Washington Post.
Source: Scholastic News Online
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
Bad Posture Means Pain
by Catherine Clarke Fox
Dec. 18, 2009
Stop! Freeze right there!
Now, without moving a muscle, check out your posture. If you’re like a lot of people at the computer, you are sitting sort of slumped over, leaning toward the computer with your shoulders rounded instead of sitting up straight.
Ergonomics refers to the study of the relationship between people and their surroundings. If you are slumping at the computer, you have poor ergonomics.
It might not seem like such a big deal, but think about how much time you spend sitting at the computer. And then you might go on to spend a little more time slouching in front of the TV playing video games.
And then you get up to go to school the next morning and find yourself leaning forward to balance a very heavy backpack crammed with books.
Add all that up, and you get a lot of hours of sitting or standing with poor posture. When you don’t practice good ergonomics, that’s when the pain sets in.
James Melody of Houston, Texas, is the last person you might expect to be affected by a little thing like posture. James, 14, is an excellent athlete.
He plays baseball and basketball and wrestles. But last spring when baseball training started up, he noticed pain in his back around his shoulder blades.
“At first I thought it was just sore, but the pain gradually built up into something more,” he remembers.
The pain got so bad that his mother took him to see a physical therapist, an expert who can help with pain in joints and muscles.
When ergonomics expert and physical therapist Bill Case saw James in his office, he realized that baseball training wasn’t the cause of the discomfort. “He was in tip-top shape, but I saw his rounded shoulders right away, and asked his mom if he sat at the computer a lot.”
When James practiced pitching, the pain he felt came from muscles that were already strained by poor ergonomics.
Case wants kids to understand what he explained to James: You can end the pain or avoid it altogether with a few small changes.
He even has a computer workstation set up in his office so he can show patients how to sit correctly.
“It is just great how these problems can be reversed,” says Case. “I tell kids that when the way they sit feels good, it is probably wrong!”
He means that sitting up straight will seem weird at first, but after a week or two you will feel the benefits.
James has a tip: Make sure the chair is close enough to the computer table, or else you won’t be able to help leaning forward.
“Sometimes it slips your mind, and you fall back into the old way for a while,” he says. “But when I feel stiffness in my back, I correct for it now.”
James also learned to wear his backpack correctly. He used to find himself leaning backward because his pack was too heavy and his straps were too loose.
Lots of kids think hanging a backpack off one shoulder or letting it dangle on long straps looks cool. But there’s nothing cool about being sidelined by pain.
So besides being mindful of good posture when playing video games or surfing the Internet, James says, “Now I pack the heavier stuff closer to my body, and raise the pack on my back with the adjustable straps.”
And that’s just what the physical therapist ordered.
James has been feeling great ever since he made a few changes, and you can too. Just follow these tips:
Good Ideas for Gaming and Computer Use
- Sit up straight with your shoulders back.
- Make sure your feet are on the ground.
- Take frequent breaks; walk around and stretch.
Better Backpack Strategies
- Carry less. Buying an extra set of books to keep at home is less expensive than doctor visits.
- Tighten straps so the weight is close to your body, and don’t let the backpack ride below the waist.
- Put the heaviest items closest to your back and the pack will be less likely to pull you out of balance.
- Kids should not carry backpacks that weigh more than 10 to 15 percent of their body weight. So students weighing 100 pounds (45 kilograms) should not carry more than 10 to 15 pounds (4.5 to 6.8 kilograms) in their packs.
Source: Kids National Geographic
Editor’s Note: Photograph by Martha Melody. We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
This is the Season to Give to Others
By KNG
Dec. 20, 200
This holiday make the season a little brighter for others. Giving back is a great thing to do all year round, but the holidays tend to bring out the charitable side in most people.
Try some of these ideas with your family and make a difference this holiday season.
- Donate to a charitable organization
- Invite an elderly neighbor or someone who lives alone to join your celebration (ask your parents first!)
- Deliver a meal to a family in need
- Write a thoughtful note to someone special
- Bring your host a small gift to show your appreciation and offer to help clean up
- Donate clothes you’ve outgrown
- Donate food to a local charity or food bank
- Volunteer at a soup kitchen
- Send a care package to a soldier
- Visit hospital patients
- Foster a dog or cat
- Adopt an endangered animal through a zoo
- Shovel snow for a neighbor
- Help pick up trash at a local park
- Join a church or school group that does community service projects
Source: Kids National Geographic
Editor’s Note: Photograph courtesy Jupiter images. We would like to know what you think. And we would like to hear your story of giving to others. dan@youngchronicle.com
Kids Top Money Questions
By Dave Ramsey
Dec. 19, 2009
The lessons you teach your kids as they earn money and learn to spend, save and give will lay an influential foundation for their lives.
Find out how Dave answers the most common questions about kids and money.
Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. —Plato
Plato said it well. Parents are not just responsible for providing food, clothing, and shelter for their kids. They are also responsible for teaching their kids about life—and life includes handling money.
When it comes to kids and money, the three most common questions I get are:
- When should I start teaching my kids about money?
- Should I give my kids an allowance?
- When should my kids go to work?
Teach kids about money as young as pre-school age and no later than third grade. Just think about it: if your kids can grasp this money stuff early on, they’ll avoid many of the pitfalls later. After all, its better for little Billy to make a $10 mistake than a $10,000 mistake!
1. Start paying them a commission for chores they do around the house.
Typically, one dollar per completed chore is sufficient with a list of five or six chores each week. Remember that each child is going to respond differently. Just keep evaluating your child’s maturity level and make sure their chores are age-appropriate.
2. Do not give them an allowance.
After all, what are you making an allowance for? You don’t want to have the kind of kids who think money grows on trees, do you? Don’t set them up for frustration and unrealistic expectations. And don’t miss out on the teachable moments that come when you give them a commission instead of an allowance.
3. Send them off to work.
Child abuse is letting a kid sit in front of a TV all day playing video games and eating junk food. Kids need to understand what a little dirt under the fingernails means. Delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, or working at a concession stand are some appropriate jobs they can handle.
Guiding your children in the choices they make with money is HUGE! The lessons you teach them as they earn money and learn to spend, save and give will lay an influential foundation for their lives. Remember, if you don’t teach your kids how to handle money, someone else will.
Get Financial Peace Jr. now to help your kids learn solid money principles.
Source: Dave Ramsey
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
A Third Grader in New Jersey Told to Put Bible Away
By Fox News
Dec. 17, 2009
A third grader was told by a teacher at her New Jersey elementary school that the Bible was not appropriate reading material for quiet time, MyFoxNY.com reported.
The teacher at Madison Park Elementary School in Old Bridge, N.J., ordered the girl, Mariah, to put away her Bible.
Michelle Jordat, Mariah’s mother, said her daughter was upset and confused by the incident, MyFoxNY.com reported.
“This was injustice,” Jordat said, according to MyFoxNY.com.
“No other child has to go through this again.”
The school’s principal apologized for the incident, saying school policy does in fact allow students to read the Bible during quiet time and that the teacher had simply made a mistake, MyFoxNY.com reported.
Jordat said she accepts the apology but also wants to see something in writing. She plans to talk to an attorney about the issue, according to the site.
The town’s board of education met with parents Tuesday evening to address concerns in the community.
Click here for more from MyFoxNY.com
Source: Fox News
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
A Moral Outrage Affecting Florida’s Children That Will Make You Angry
By Leah Postelnik
YC/Staff
Dec. 16, 2009
I am writing you today about a glaring problem that no one is doing anything about.
Various state representatives have initiated educational reforms to combat some of the most egregious problems in our educational system.
Representative Dorothy Hukill, in particular, deserves high praise for her bill to ban the use of “restraining rooms” for special needs students in our schools.
Yet there is an even greater outrage that must be outlawed. Schools have taken to calling police and arresting children over classroom disruptions.
If teachers and principals cannot think of some other form of punishment, then they have no business teaching – period.
As a point of reference, here are two of the most shameful news stories on this issue:
School Arrests 6 Year Old
School Arrests 9 Year Old – Just One of Many
From the article: “According to the In 2007, Lee County’s Juvenile Assessment Center processed 19 children younger than 9 for criminal offenses.
This year, there have been nine – and 13 who were 10; 21 who were 11.”
It’s more than time for us to do something about this situation. Children can be given a host of effective disciplinary measures, all of which are more effective than the shear insanity outlined above.
Repetitive line writing has trained more than one child to follow along with the rest of the class.
Especially difficult cases can be handled by forcing the student to clean the entire schoolyard if necessary.
Both of these measures get the message through to the child and neither causes long term trauma or complete and utter hatred of school as an institution.
Arresting a child is not only dumb, it’s wantonly harmful. Is there a doubt in anyone’s mind that, by and large, those children will detest school and never again feel a desire to succeed?
Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that they will generally drop out of school at the earliest opportunity?
If we’re looking to breed a new generation criminals, then such measures are undoubtedly the way to go.
But if we’re looking to raise students, this egregious practice must be stopped.
If the situation continues, once elected, my first bill will be one to prohibit schools from requesting law enforcement for nonviolent disruptions.
But we shouldn’t wait until November and I urge you to contact current representatives throughout the state and demand that action be taken on this issue.
DCF Insanity
In other news, it has been discovered that the Department of Children and Families is allowing convicted felons to run daycare centers and to work in the field of child care.
Their excuse for this utter idiocy is that DCF believes in second chances.
Well I believe in redemption too!
I believe that recalcitrant drug felons, prostitutes and small time burglars can be given jobs in customer service, in business relations and, if need be, even be given bureaucratic jobs at DCF.
The most able of them can go on to run businesses. But I rightly draw the line at the preposterously incorrigible idea of giving them license to care for Florida’s children!
This is exactly what happens when bureaucrats are left to their own devices and I pledge to be a sledgehammer of common sense on this and other matters of importance.
Editor’s Note: We would like to know if you know of any other cases that we at the Chronicle can investigate.
We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
This is wrong: Our Children Singing about Allah
By Todd Starnes
Dec. 14, 2009
A battle over religion is brewing in central Indiana after a public school wanted second graders to sing a song declaring, “Allah is God.”
The phrase was removed just before the performance after a national conservative group launched a protest.
The principal of Lantern Road Elementary School in Fishers, IN, said they were trying to teach inclusiveness through their holiday production.
It included references to Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Las Posadas and Kwanzaa. However, no other deity, other than Allah, was referenced in the show.
“It went off…without a hitch,” Danielle Thompson told the Indianapolis Star. “Several families thought it was a nice program.”
But others did not – especially David Hogan. His daughter came home with a copy of the lyrics just days before the production.
Hogan, a Christian, told the American Family Association, a conservative advocacy group, that he was deeply concerned to learn that his daughter had been singing, “Allah is God.”
Here’s what the children were assigned to sing:
“Allah is God, we recall at dawn,
praying ‘til night during Ramadan
At this joyful time we pray happiness for you,
Allah be with you all your life through.”
But when it came time to perform the “Christian” part of Christmas, children were assigned to say:
“I didn’t know there was a little boy at the manger. What child is this?
I’m not sure if there was a little boy or not.
Then why did you paint one on your nativity window?
I just thought if there was a little boy, I’d like to know exactly what he (sic) say.
Micah Clark, executive director of the Indiana AFA, launched an Internet protest once he heard about the allegations.
“What surprised me here is that we’ve had a secular scrubbing of Christmas for so long and the school apparently didn’t see the problem with kids singing to Allah,” he told FOX News Radio.
“You won’t even mention Jesus and you’re going to force my child to sing about Allah?
In email correspondence the school initially defended the reference as a way to be inclusive of all religions.
However, once complaints starting rolling in, school leaders decided to eliminate the Allah reference.
That drew the ire of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana. “It’s unfortunate if that was removed from the program just because of Islam phobic feelings,” Shariq Siddiqui told the Indianapolis Star.
“Schools are a place where we should learn more about each other rather than exclude each other based on stereotypes and misconceptions.”
But Clark said having children bow and pray is problematic for non-Muslim families. “(This show) affirmed Islam and negated Christianity.
I wouldn’t have had a problem if it had been equal to all faiths.”
At least one Christian family approved of the Allah reference. “I’m a Christian and I was in no way offended by the program at Lantern Road,” said Judy Grasso to The Star.
Be sure to join Todd’s Twitter by clicking here and check out his book by clicking here.
Source: Fox News Radio
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com
Deployed Father Son Spend Time Together
By Cpl. Triah Pendracki
Dec. 13, 2009
One of the most stressful parts of any deployment for service members is their separation from family and friends.
Col. James O’Meara, commanding officer of Marine Aircraft Group 26 (Reinforced), was joined by his son, Chris O’Meara, for the Thanksgiving weekend aboard Al Asad Air Base, Iraq.
Chris is an Army private first class currently deployed as a field artilleryman to Joint Security Station Muthana located near Baghdad.
During Chris’ visit, the two enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at one of the dining facilities on base, watched football games and went for a ride around base.
“We took a ride in the [CH-47 Chinook] around the base,” said Chris, as he sat in his father’s office. “It was pretty cool.”
“He’s been all around the base, but mostly hangs around my office while I’m working,” added O’Meara, “like a ‘take your son to work day’ that lasts a whole weekend.”
“I like the VIP badge, though,” said Chris. “I think I’m going to keep it.”
Chris and his father spent as much time together as possible, remembering past experiences and joking as only a father and son do.
“I remember when he graduated from his basic training. It was at Ft. Sill [Oklahoma], which is in the middle of nowhere,” joked O’Meara. “Before I knew it, I had driven past the base because there were so many cows I missed the entrance!”
“It was great to see him there in his uniform though,” added Chris. “I joined the Army because, well, think about how hard [Marine Corps] recruit training would have been for me if they knew my dad was a colonel. The sign-on bonus for the Army also helped.”
During a football game, the two discussed their plans for the rest of the long weekend.
“We’re going to try to get him on a [CH-46 Sea Knight] and maybe something else,” said O’Meara.
“Maybe I can get on a Cobra,” exclaimed Chris.
“Don’t push it, kid,” joked O’Meara, with a slight grin as they turned back to the game on the television.
Source: Our Military
Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com