Patient of the Week – Brookelynn Hunt

By St. Jude
October 24, 2009

Brookelynn Hunt

2 years old

Diagnosis:

Brookelynn was found to suffer from atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor (ATRT) in August 2007.

Brookelynn’s Story:

For a week, 13-month-old Brookelynn was off balance and sick to her stomach. Her parents, Christy and Richard, took her to the pediatrician, who said Brookelynn had an ear infection. But two days later, when Richard noticed little Brookelynn’s hand shaking, he felt something more was afflicting his daughter. He was in the process of driving her to the hospital when Brookelynn’s hand shaking turned into something much more serious: a seizure, which caused her to lose movement on her left side.

At the hospital, an MRI revealed a tumor on the right side of Brookelynn’s head. Doctors suspected ATRT. Brookelynn was immediately flown to a local children’s hospital, where surgeons removed 100 percent of the tumor. But doctors wanted to wait six weeks before starting treatment. Christy and Richard were ill at ease with the doctors recommendation, and started searching for alternative options. Their search led them to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

St. Jude staff advised Brookelynn’s family not to wait six weeks, as ATRT is a fast-growing cancer. St. Jude, they said, could see her immediately. “We left that night,” Christy said. “We literally packed up and left right then.”

At St. Jude:

Brookelynn underwent four months of chemotherapy and six weeks of radiation. She regained strength and movement on her left side. After she returned home, Brookelynn received oral chemotherapy. She visits St. Jude every six months for checkups.

“St. Jude is such a wonderful place,” Christy said. The family especially appreciated the housing provided to St. Jude families. “We stayed at the Target House for almost seven months,” she said. “It meant a lot. There was so much we didn’t have to worry about – the meals, Brookelynn’s care. It took a lot of stress off of us.”

Christy and Richard are most thankful for what St. Jude has given them—their daughter. “She’s still here with us,” Christy said. “She’s doing really well.” Brookelynn, who became a big sister over the summer, is a sweet little girl who loves animals and her baby dolls.

Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

Source St. Jude

Soldier of the Week – Army Pfc. David Hutchinson

By David Hogberg
Investor’s Business Daily
October 23, 2009

Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think. dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

Army Pfc. David Hutchinson landed in Afghanistan on May 16, 2008.

It would be a short deployment.

On his fifth day a grenade wounded him — but not before he killed five terrorists and helped secure the safety of 16 fellow soldiers.

A year later he received the Silver Star for bravery. The Pentagon says he’s just the fifth Army reservist so honored.

Hutchinson was born in 1987 in Humble, Texas. He joined the Army Reserve when he was 18, joining his family’s long line in uniform.

“There was a strong sense of patriotism in the family,” Hutchinson told IBD. “That was instilled in me from the get-go.”

His grandfather, uncle and a few cousins all joined the military, mostly in the Air Force.

Hutchinson had a simple reason for not going that route: “I’m not a big fan of flying.”

Hutchinson is with the 420th Engineer Brigade. Not that he does much engineering. He mostly trains for brigade security. This involves providing safe transport for VIPs.

On the morning of May 21, 2008, members of the brigade’s security detail were in a convoy of four Humvees driving through the mountains of Afghanistan.

Riding Shotgun

Hutchinson was in the third Humvee manning the MK-19, a machine gun that fires 40 mm grenades. “We wanted to know what it was like on that route before we had to drive it with somebody important,” he said.

The ambush came at 11 a.m. as the convoy moved up a small mountain.

“Just about the time that all four trucks got into the pass, the front truck opened up with its 50-caliber machine gun,” Hutchinson said. “At that point I couldn’t see anything, I could just hear the shooting at the front. I immediately started looking around, and two or three seconds later I saw several insurgents pop up on the right side of the convoy, which was my sector of fire.”

Roughly 20 of the enemy attacked the convoy with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-fired grenades. From 200 feet away terrorist snipers tried to riddle the convoy.

Hutchinson was in the Humvee’s turret and opened up with his MK-19. Despite the crash of battle, he aimed methodically. “There were several positions I could see fire coming from, so it was a matter of assessing which position had the most fire coming from it,” he said.

A machine gun nest at the top of a hill, from which the terrorists were firing a Russian-made PKM, gave the enemy fire superiority. Other terrorists were popping up from the nest, firing AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

“To me, it was very obvious that one position had the most amount of fire coming from it, so I focused my firepower on that spot,” said Hutchinson. “Once that was destroyed, I started assessing other spots that had fire coming from them, and I adjusted and fired at those positions.”

By all accounts his MK-19 shots were the main reason the Americans held the terrorists’ ambush at bay, letting the convoy move out of the line of fire. He was so effective, the enemy turned its focus on him.

The terrorist barrage hit him hard, with Hutchinson’s fellow soldiers later counting 100 bullet marks in the turret.

Hutchinson answered with his own onslaught for a few minutes. He emptied an entire can of ammunition before two grenades struck his Humvee. The force of the blast knocked him out of the turret and into the crew compartment. Shrapnel had gashed his right leg.

“When I landed down in the truck, I couldn’t feel my legs,” he recalled. “Actually, I couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. At that point, I couldn’t get back in the turret.”

Hutchinson had landed in the lap of 1st Sgt. David Gusberry, who was in the rear passenger seat. As the private rolled over, he saw that Gusberry was seriously injured.

“His entire face was covered in blood, his armor was covered in blood,” Hutchinson said. “Since I couldn’t get back up into the turret, obviously the next best thing I could do was treat his wounds and try to control the bleeding as best I could.”

Gusberry, who was scanning for the enemy and improvised explosive devices that day, recalls Hutchinson’s cool.

“He never panicked. He did his job, then worked on my injuries,” said Gusberry. “He stayed by me to make sure I didn’t go into shock.”

As the attack subsided, the convoy moved out of the mountain pass and met up with a medical helicopter. Hutchinson refused treatment, insisting that the medics tend only to Gusberry. As injured soldiers must be secured on a stretcher before getting on a helicopter, Hutchinson’s decision shortened the time the chopper spent on the ground.

Hutchinson credits his training, which he received at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, from a couple of sergeants first class, Jimmy Snell and Robert Parsons.

“They told us at the beginning that the training would be long and hard, 14 to 16 hour days,” Hutchinson said. “But if we stuck it out, we’d be part of the security detail.”

The training involved practicing ambush scenarios in which Hutchinson and his fellow soldiers were outnumbered six-to-one.

“That taught us to not freak out, that there was always a way to get out of those situations,” he said. “That hard and very realistic training they put us through contributed to everyone coming out of the situation (in Afghanistan) alive.”

Gusberry says training really took with Hutchinson. Why? “His can-do attitude,” said the first sergeant.

Since returning from Afghanistan, Hutchinson, 22, has been promoted to specialist along with landing more medals: a Purple Heart, an Army Achievement Medal and an Army Good Conduct Medal.

He also is recovering from his wounds. For that he thanks the medics on the ground, plus the doctors, nurses and physical therapists at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. “They are all top-notch,” Hutchinson said. “It’s very obvious they know what they are doing.”

Step By Step

“I can walk for longer distances without a cane,” he said. “I’m also getting back the ability to jog, and May was the first month I had gotten back on a bicycle in over a year.”

Gusberry is also making his way back, although he suffers from partial blindness and will be medically discharged from the Army in a few months. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

As Hutchinson heals between Reserve jobs, he works as a retail sales consultant for AT&T . He could be called back to Afghanistan as soon as he’s made a full recovery. He sounds ready to help: “One of the things I noticed while I was there were the people building their own freeways. A lot of the roads are just dirt and hard rock. It was actually inspiring to see these asphalt roads being built, making travel between various cities that much faster.”

Source: Investors

Officer of the Week – Police Officer Ronald Kloepfer

 
Remember September 11, 2001
Angels Among Us

Police Officer Ronald Kloepfer
Shield 22403
ESS-7
11/22/2001

Police Officer Ronald Kloepfer
Shield 22403
ESS-7

Within the tight fraternity of the New York City Police Department is an even tighter fraternity ‹ the 25 men, from officers to lieutenants, who wear the blue jerseys of the department’s lacrosse team. Ronny Kloepfer, 39, a sniper with the Emergency Service Unit, was their leader. He was founder, coach and midfielder of the six-year-old team, which had a 4-2 record in the annual charity game against its arch-rival, the New York City Fire Department.

Officer Kloepfer, who played for Seewanaka High School and then Adelphi University, somehow fit the team into a schedule that included his elite police position, a side job as a contractor and the demands of a young family. His wife, Dawn, and three children Jaime, 11; Taylor, 9; and Casey, 5 were always on the sidelines, as Officer Kloepfer was when his two daughters played their games. Casey was still too young, Mrs. Kloepfer said, but had his own stick from the day he was born.

From March to May, the team practiced two or three times a week, from 5 to 7 p.m., at an abandoned junior high school near Officer Kloepfer’s home in Franklin Square, N.Y. Now that he is gone, three teammates will run the team, a task Officer Kloepfer managed alone. “We don’t know how he did it,” said Detective Craig Carson. “We took him for granted almost.”

– The New York Times 11/22/2001

Source: NYP Angels

Firefighter of the week – Battalion Chief Battalion 9 Edward F. Geraghty

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
October 19, 2009

‘His Talent Was His Mind’

Several years ago, Battalion Chief Edward F. Geraghty was put in charge of the Fire Department’s training school on Randall’s Island. On his first day, he gave the new recruits a pep talk, telling them what he expected. After he was done, he turned around to find the school’s instructors staring strangely at him. “What did I do wrong?” he asked. One replied, “You’re not supposed to be nice, you’re supposed to scare the hell out of them.”

That would have been difficult for Chief Geraghty, said his wife, Mary. “I was married to Eddie for 17 years and I saw him in a bad mood twice.” Even last year, when her father became terminally ill and had to move in with them, when they found out their middle son, James, 12, had juvenile diabetes and when they had a fire in their house that displaced them for several weeks, he kept an optimistic outlook and his sense of humor. She said, “He would always say, `Life doesn’t get any better than this.’ ”

Chief Geraghty, 45, oversaw five firehouses on Manhattan’s West Side, all of which responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

Mrs. Geraghty used to go downstairs every morning and find her husband already reading and studying. “His talent was his mind,” she said. Now, when she rises, she sits at the bottom of the stairs as the sun comes up with a picture of him and tells him, “Good morning.”

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on March 10, 2002.

Source Legacy

Firefighter of the week – Battalion Chief John J Fanning II

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/GCC
October 13, 2009

Editor’s Note: Our Firefighter of the week was  Battalion Chief Haz-Mat Operations John J Fanning II .

We would like to know what you think. dan@youngchronicle.com

 

Naming the Future for Him

A few months after the terrorist attack, Maureen Fanning realized that her 14-year-old son, Sean, was still staring out the window looking for his father to walk up the driveway.

So she bought a new minivan to break the association brought on by the car Sean’s father used to drive. Still, Sean, who is autistic, didn’t seem to understand that his father wasn’t coming home.

“I showed him pictures of his father and the towers on fire,” Mrs. Fanning recalled, her voice barely audible. “This is smoke,” she told him. “Bad smoke. Daddy got hurt.”

Sean screamed and hurled his body about.

Explaining to her younger son, Patrick, 5, about his father’s death has been just as hard. Patrick, who is also autistic, has never spoken. One day, a firefighter friend came to their house in West Hempstead, N.Y., wearing a jacket similar to Patrick’s father’s and the boy began to cry inconsolably.

John J. Fanning, 54, also had three children from a previous marriage, Ryan, Jeremy and Jacqueline. A member of the New York Fire Department since 1969, and the chief of the Hazardous Materials Unit, he saved lives for a living.

He had a plan for what he’d do with the lottery jackpot if he won. “We’d buy a group home and you’d run it,” he told his wife. His family hopes to open the first Jack Fanning House for autistic youths next year, financed by donations they received after Sept. 11.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on September 10, 2002.

Source Legacy

Officer of the Week – Police Officer Robert Fazio

 
Remember September 11, 2001
Angels Among Us

Police Officer Robert Fazio
Shield 6667
13 Precinct
3/24/2002

Police Officer Robert Fazio
Shield 6667
13 Precinct
(recovered)

At 41, Robert Fazio Jr. was still single. People would ask him when he was going to marry. But the pressure of society’s conventions, said his sister, Carole Lovero, could not affect his decisions.

“He was a happy person, he was happy within himself,” she said. “He would have gotten married if he had found the right person, but he was happy doing what he was doing.”

What he was doing, outside of his job as a patrolman for the New York Police Department, was working on motorcycles, cars, boats and houses for anybody who needed a hand. “Half my neighbors, he fixed their cars,” said Officer Fazio’s father, Robert Sr. Shortly after he got his driver’s license, Robert Fazio Jr. could be seen on the weekend in front of the family’s house in South Hempstead, on Long Island, hoisting engines in and out of cars with the help of a sturdy tree limb.

He had worked for the Police Department for 17 years and was called from his precinct in the East 20’s on Sept. 11 to help people out of the shopping plaza beneath the World Trade Center. He had less than three years to go until retirement, his father said, and planned on setting up a motorcycle and car repair shop somewhere near his home in Freeport, N.Y., with a friend from junior high school, Gino Lanza. But though he had no children of his own, he spent as much time as he could baby-sitting for his nephew, Michael Lovero, and friends’ children, who nicknamed him the Tickle Monster

– The New York Times 3/24/2002

Source: NYP Angels

Wish of the week – Eric

By MWF/PIO
October 16, 2009

Source Make A Wish Foundation

Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com

Soldier of the Week – Army Pfc. James Arellano

by Dan Samaria
Publisher/YC
October 15, 2009

Editor’s Note:
Home State: Wyoming
Awarded: Bronze Star.

We would like to know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com

 

Pfc. Arellano was deployed to Iraq in November 2005 with the 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Division. While on a foot patrol south of Baghdad on Aug. 17, 2006, Arellano encountered insurgents using IED and small-arms fire. Arellano stepped on an IED; the explosion severely injured the soldier. He died from injuries sustained from the blast.

For his work while in Iraq, Arellano was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart and the Combat Infantry Badge on Aug. 30, 2006.

 

Source: Our Military

Patient of the Week – Joshua Solomon

By St. Jude
October 14, 2009

Joshua Solomon
5  years old

 

Diagnosis:

Joshua was found to have a brain stem glioma in August 2008.

Joshua’s Story:

Joshua is a sweet-natured boy. He has an engaging smile and he loves to give hugs. An only child, Joshua is the apple of his parents’ eyes. “He makes our day, every day,” said his mom. When Joshua suddenly fell ill during a family trip in late August, his family immediately rallied around him.

During the trip, Joshua developed neck pain and started to vomit. His family rushed him to a local hospital where the emergency room doctor ordered a CT scan and, when the results came in, sent the family to a larger hospital with a pediatric intensive care unit. “We didn’t really know why he was sending us there. We were kind of in a daze, and just praying,” Joshua’s mom remembered. At the larger hospital, doctors ordered an MRI, which revealed devastating news for Joshua’s parents: their boy suffered from an inoperable brain stem glioma, a type of brain tumor.

But there was hope on the horizon. Joshua’s parents were familiar with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and asked his doctor for a referral.

At St. Jude:

Joshua underwent chemotherapy and 30 rounds of radiation. Throughout it all, St. Jude provided Joshua and his family everything they needed. “The doctors are first class,” Joshua’s mom said. “The care and concern St. Jude gave us was amazing.”

Joshua’s parents are astonished by the generosity of people who give to St. Jude. “Because of them, St. Jude provides care for all children,” said Joshua’s mom. “Whether families have insurance or not, the patients get first class care. I know Danny Thomas is looking down from Heaven and smiling.”

Joshua finished his treatment in November, and he returns to St. Jude every three months for checkups. He is in preschool and he loves Thomas the Train. Recently, Joshua went horseback riding for the first time. “He loved it,” his mom said. “He can’t wait to go back.”

St. Jude Editor’s Note: We regret to inform you that Joshua passed away on August 14, 2009.

Source St. Jude

Firefighter of the week – Battalion Chief Division 3 Dennis L Devlin

By Dan Samaria
Publisher/YC
October 8, 2009

Her Cheerleader

For 29 years, Dennis and Kathleen Devlin were man and wife, parents to four children. In a house on a small hill in upstate New York, they watched sunsets and laid plans to grow old together.

But Dennis Devlin, a battalion chief for the New York City Fire Department, is gone now, leaving Mrs. Devlin to try and hold on to their bond.

So, Chief. Devlin’s hobbies have become her hobbies. Every morning, she’s out on a three mile run, a habit she never cared for when her husband was alive, but one she hopes now will prepare her for a coming race that she is planning in his honor.

“I can hear him sometimes telling me not to get tired, pushing me,” she said.

It is also because of her husband that no day passes without Mrs. Devlin thumbing through one of the 23 photo albums Chief Devlin labored over, for decades, meticulously labeling and dating each photograph. (The last photo he ever entered, taken three months before Sept. 11, was one of him in a helicopter flying over Lower Manhattan, staring at the World Trade Center.)

“We complained about him taking so many pictures, everywhere we went,” she said. “But having those albums now is such a joy. We all look at them and think how blessed we are that he took the time and that we were a happy family.”
Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 9, 2001.

Dennis L. Devlin, 51, a 23-year resident of Washingtonville, New York, a New York Fire Department battalion chief of the 3rd division in Manhattan, died at the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Visitation is scheduled for Friday, September 28, 2001, 5-9 p.m., at David T. Ferguson Funeral Home Inc., 20 North Street, Washingtonville. Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday, September 29, 11 a.m., at St. Mary’s Church, Washingtonville. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations are appreciated to Uniformed Firefighters Association of New York, Widows and Children’s Fund, 204 East 23rd Street, 5th Floor, NY, NY 10010 or Engine 75 Ladder 33, World Trade Center Fund, 2175 Walton Avenue, Bronx, NY 10468. Arrangements entrusted to David T. Ferguson Funeral Home Inc., Washingtonville, New York.

Source Legacy

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