and I am totally freaking out! I kept thinking that I need to do something BIG but short of a marching band on the corner to announce the arrival, I decided I had to do what I can do best...TALK. I could tell you so many things, volumes, on why I think everyone should jump on the DAVE bandwagon from a personal perspective...he's a great dad, he makes the best chicken fried rice on the planet and makes me feel better when my day doesn't go so well. He's the funniest guy I know and he's not perfect, which means he fits in pretty well with the rest of us. There are too many stories I could tell you about how great he is, but I finally decided what I would do is copy the Republicans...this is my 9/11 story.
The phone rang at oh-dark-thirty so immediately I knew it wasn't good. Whether you have any military experience or not, you know that if the phone rings in the middle of the night, when most normal folks are sleeping, it's never for a good reason. I got to the phone in the dark, not quite awake, to be greeted with my sister screaming, "Turn on the TV!" I don't know how much time passed...I remember trying to find the remote in the dark, waking up David and watching CNN. We were on the phone for a while; I think we were both crying. She worked in the county courthouse but they were not sending them home yet. Here I was, in Hawaii, and one of the first people on the island awake with the news. I was supposed to go with a friend to the gym at 4:30 AM so I called to tell her and she came to the house to watch with us. None of the local stations were even on air with anything yet so we watched the scrolling banner at the bottom of CNN, and we watched the second plane hit. I don't know what it was like for anyone else at that moment, but for me, it was a nightmare. The plane hit and the banner across the bottom starts to detail the fate of two more doomed flights. OMG, I start into freak mode, where is my UNCLE? Initially in that crazy first hour, they did not disclose the carrier and I didn't know his schedule...my Uncle flies for Delta. By now, the lines are all tied up, in and out, but planes keep going down. I am trying to reach my grandfather in Alabama to find out if my Uncle was in town or in the air and I can't get through. By the time I reach him, two hours later, they had given out the carriers name but I called anyway. Who would have thought this would ever happen? I just kept calling until it would ring and someone would tell me that he was fine. Panic continues to flood over me as I dial...a report goes across the bottom that a government building in Manassas, Virginia is on fire...OMG that is my dad and step mom's building! No one is answering there either, how is this much happening to my family in one day? Later they say that report is inaccurate but I still can't find Dad and I realize, my brother's company was working out of the Pentagon, where is he? It took me eight hours to find him via the phone, by that time, my mom had called, they had evacuated the Federal Building in Texas where she worked because of the potential threat. Where is my little brother? In between calls, David is now getting calls because he was a company commander at the time and they immediately are put on high alert. He got dressed and had to leave and he was worried. We didn't talk about it at the time, but we both knew what this would mean. He kept calling to check on me all day...in the middle of planning how to take care of an entire state full of people, he was most worried about me.
Everything that was non-essential on post shut down for a couple of weeks. Concertina wire went up on top of all the fences, armed guards patrolled the perimeters and Dave's unit did guard rotation on all the posts on the island. My brother decided to come stay in Hawaii to get away from the insanity that was now Washington, DC and I was grateful to have one family member where I could see them at the time. The kids were a little scared but we tried to keep them busy and several groups of wives spent the days together to pass the time. The days that followed the attack on the World Trade Center were some of the worst I could ever imagine. I had never really thought about how my family was so caught up in jobs that could be dangerous or so connected in a time of tragedy because it's all I have ever known. I had thought at the time that I would never feel that kind of panic again, until of course, Dave was sent to Iraq.
We spent the next year trying to get out of the Army because we knew what was going to transpire, one way or another. We bought a house near my mom, I found a job, got ready to move, and they held up his release. We contacted our Representative who refused to assist in any way. That is part of the reason Dave is now running against that same disinterested Congressman. Ironically, the help he received came from another Republican in Texas that intervened so he could come home. He got a job teaching Military Science at the local university and we finally had him home in October, a year and a month after our 9/11 story began. He was home for three months until his reserve unit was called up and we began an uphill battle that even now, doesn't seem like its over.
I am asking you to Follow Dave because I know that he can fight the hard fight. He believes that we have to return military leadership to Congress in order to save the military that has done so much for him. He believes that most things that are worth it are rarely easy, and he is willing to hang in there and fight, even when it's unpopular. Our politicians have gotten so accustomed to fighting each other that they have forgotten they were supposed to go to Washington to fight for the constituents they were elected to represent. Please consider going here and supporting him or sending his link to the people on your email listing. We have to tell Washington that they cannot use our military as a diplomatic tool and the best way to support our troops is to send a Vet to Congress!
