God Bless America

It's been eight years. It feels like yesterday. It's a day I will never forget. I hope you won't either.

Let's move forward with hope -- hope that we as a people will learn from tragedies like this not to hate. Hope that we will all work together for the good of mankind. Hope that our children and future generations will not fear one another.

Please always remember what happened on September 11, 2001 and never forget those who died, the families affected by this tragedy and how we came together as a nation.

Never forget the heroes that emerged -- those that died, those that survived, and those that continue to fight for our freedoms.

God bless America.

Jeremy

I hadn't been at work more than about 30 minutes or so when I learned about what happened to Jeremy and his brothers.

My phone rang. I didn't recognize the name on the caller id. It ended up being a guy who works on the SC Runners Web site, is an area cross-country runner, and is a journalist with one of the major dailies in the area.

Jeremy and his brothers Dan and Ryan had just been visiting some family in North Dakota and were returning to a summer mission program in which they were participating in at Yellowstone.

There had been a very serious accident. Dan and Jeremy were thrown from the car. Ryan had suffered minor injuries.

Jeremy was airlifted to the Bozeman hospital. That night an article ran in the Bozeman paper that there had been a traffic fatality in that wreck.

Obviously there was a bit of a misunderstanding as to Jeremy's condition. The authorities admitted to that.

Some tests were done which indicated that Jeremy didn't have any brain activity. He was put on life support.

His family talked to his high school cross country coach. His coach relayed news of Jeremy's accident to the person who called me on the phone those 30 minutes or so after I got into work.

He wanted us to know - and to let Jeremy's college cross country coach, Mike, know.

I sat back in my chair as I heard the news. I took a deep breath. I asked what had happened. I asked how Jeremy's family was doing. I told him to let Jeremy's family know that he, his brothers, and their entire family were in our prayers.

As I got off the phone, I took a minute to take everything in. I was still in shock. I said a prayer for Jeremy and his family.

Jeremy went through surgery the next day to relieve the swelling on his brain. They did another test which showed Jeremy did have brain activity. He's been on a respirator since. But there have been some positive signs.

He has responded to some voice commands. There have been some movements also. He has opened his eyes slightly.



I didn't know Jeremy very well when he was a student-athlete on our campus. He ran cross country and set numerous school records which still stand. I had talked with him a few times though.

The first time I ever met Jeremy was a brisk Saturday morning before our team was to run the annual Eye Opener race in Spartanburg. He and his teammates were all smiles. They were hyped up to run. I introduced myself, shot a few photos with him and his teammates, and then shot their races. Jeremy came in 6th in our division.

I interviewed him for a profile story in our alumni magazine a few weeks prior to his graduation.

Jeremy is the type of guy who always had a smile on his face. He's the type of guy who always had friends around him. He's determined. He's strong. He's a fighter. He's a role model. And he's a very strong Christian.

I learned a lot about him in the hour or so that one day when we talked. His coach, Mike, always talked highly of him. His teammates always did. He became a brother to his teammates as they all became brothers and sisters to him.




Getting back to the morning of that call.... so I'm sitting there at my desk after hanging up the phone. I look up our cross country coach's number and dialed what probably is the hardest phone call I've ever had to make.

I told him about Jeremy. I listened as he stumbled for words. He was in disbelief. I still was too. Then I sent out an email across campus to our faculty and staff telling them about Jeremy.

It's been six weeks now.

Jeremy has shown that he's a fighter. He's shown he's not yet done. God is keeping him here for a purpose. We may not know right now what, but God is watching over Jeremy.

I pray he recovers. Nobody knows for sure what will happen. Only God does.

It's been a shock for the tight knit family that I work with. It's been weeks of prayers. From friends, from family, from alumni, from students - from our entire community.



I never thought when I took this job that I would become friends with so many of these students. Part of me at first was like, 'That's really not my job to be friends with them. Sure I need to be cordial. But it's probably not a good thing to be friends with them.' The other part though, 'Well, if you want to be effective in your job you have to get to know the students to be able to tell the news media and the alumni what these students are doing and about the things going on on our campus.'

I never knew that I would know so many of them by first name. Become friends with some of them on Facebook. See them on campus and ask how their day is going - or what they think of Kim's SMC 101 class. That's what makes this job so fun.

But you really can't help but establish friendships with them -- and want them to succeed. When they do awesome things, you get excited for them. You're taking photos of an athletic game and all of a sudden you're yelling for them and cheering them on. They get injured in an accident late one night on campus and you say a prayer for them.

Then at the end of the year you say goodbye to one group, wish them the best of luck, and three months later welcome another group to campus. There are some that I've even stayed in touch with as they've gone on to places like Clemson, Southern Wesleyan, Winthrop, Florida Atlantic, College of Charleston, or even Syracuse.



Again, as I mentioned earlier, I don't know Jeremy very well, personally. But I know his character. And I know what kind of an impact he has had on our campus - with his friends, his teachers, our coaches, our staff -- with his extended family.

But for his real family -- there is no way I could possibly begin to talk about what they're going through let alone even imagine it. We hear through Jeremy's CaringBridge Web site how he and his family are doing. We hear from his friends. We hear from his former teammates.

And we continue to pray that he recovers.

Jeremy is in an acute care facility in Spartanburg now, as his family talks to a facility in Atlanta. His brother Dan hasn't totally recovered either. He has a long road ahead of him also. But he's been released from the hospital and is going through outpatient physical therapy in Bozeman.




Earlier this week, our director of student activities and leadership development, Kim, suggested, after talking with one of Jeremy's family members, that we do a run / walk fundraiser as part of our upcoming Family Day / Homecoming activities. So she and I and a few other folks from our staff met a couple days ago and got the ball rolling on that.

The Jeremy Vangsnes 5K Benefit Run will be held at the Spartanburg Methodist College campus on Oct. 3. The money raised from the event will go to a fund already set up to help assist his family with medical costs involved in their care of Jeremy and his brothers.

We're excited about this. We're excited to be able to help out part of our extended family - to help out Jeremy's family. We pray that he will recover. Only God knows what the ultimate outcome will be. But we're looking forward to contributing our little part to His plan.

We're hoping for a few hundred people to participate. It would be awesome if we could get many hundreds of people to participate.

In my time as a journalist, I covered various fundraisers, charity work, service work, etc. It's always great to be able to cover those kinds of stories. But to be on the other side and actually be part of the team that is there to bring about the result of the project is a totally different experience.

Sept. 12, 2001 was one of my proudest days professionally -- not for myself, but for the efforts of the entire team of coworkers that I worked with at WYFF. The station put on a telethon fundraiser to aid the Red Cross' relief efforts following the terrorist attacks of the day before. If I recall correctly, in 24 hours we raised over $300,000.

I know this event for Jeremy and his family is one that I and my coworkers are going to be tremendously proud of. But we're not in this for any reward. At the same time, if we can say that this event, that Jeremy's and his brothers' stories, that his dedication and/or his character will have brought someone closer to their family, to God, and/or to their purpose in life, then that will be a great thing.

At the same time, we'll be helping part of our extended family alleviate some of their financial burden and lifting them up in their time of need. And we'll continue to pray for them, for Jeremy, and for their entire family.

And if you're interested in participating in the Jeremy Vangsnes 5K Benefit Run, just let me know and I'll get you some more information on it.

Fighting the Fight

It didn't really hit me until I was on my way into work today.

I knew it was coming up, but in the rush of work and other things, I didn't realize that the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks was today until someone on the radio station I was listening to mentioned it.

Where were you that morning?

My wife and I were in the car on our way to work, listening to the radio when one of the DJs announced that an commercial airliner had just struck a tower of the World Trade Center. We listened as they were reporting what was coming over their wire.

Nobody knew what was going on - even when I got into work a few minutes later.

You would think at a TV station where people are supposed to be on top of things that someone would know what was going on. But things were happening so fast.

We watched as the second plane struck the second tower; as reports and video came in of a plane hitting the Pentagon; of another plane crashing in a field in Pennsylvania; and then as the Towers collapsed.

All you can think is "My God. All those people."

Throughout the morning false reports of bombs were flooding the national airwaves; phone lines and cell systems in New York and DC were overwhelmed.

When I heard of a suspected bomb at the State Department, my first thought was "Where's Tim?"

A good friend of mine who works (in Argentina right now) for the State Department was working in DC at the time. I hit the phone and started dialing. I kept trying to reach him all day. "Gotta find out if Tim's OK."

I finally talked to his wife around lunchtime and she said he was OK and that they were both at home, safe. Thank God. That was one of the biggest weights ever lifted off my chest when I heard her say that.

In our newsroom, you could see the reactions -- how people felt -- on their faces. But we had a job to do also. We did our job. We reported on how this tragedy was affecting our area of the country, our counties, our towns, our schools, our churches, and families --- how shocked, hurt, and angry we were.

All those emotions compounded on top of each other -- after the tears and holding your loved ones, watching the same footage over and over, you can't help but feel numb.

I felt that way for days afterwards.

They say each generation has one day that will define them. Some have more. For my parents' generation it was the day JFK was assassinated. I would venture to guess that the day we first set foot on the moon was one also.

For years, I thought that Jan. 28, 1986 would be the one that defined my generation - when the Challenger exploded. I know it had a tremendous impact on my life. I still don't like to watch that video.

Sept. 11 was defining moment in history - not only for the the youth of this generation, but for every American and the entire world.

We saw more flags, more patriotism, more support for one another, and probably the largest outpouring of sympathy and community that this country had probably seen since the attack on Pearl Harbor. I wish that all that would have continued on as strong even to now. But alot of the flags have since become faded or torn or put up in a closet; many of the yellow ribbons have been taken down or lost.

A few weeks later my wife and I were at a NASCAR race. Halfway through the race, they just stopped it.

Over the loudspeakers, the announcers say that it is being reported that our military forces have begun a bombing campaign in Afghanistan. You wouldn't believe the volume of cheers, applause, and screaming of "USA, USA" that was going on. Then President Bush came over the monitors and loudspeaker as he addressed the nation. And afterwards, more cheers, applause, and screaming of "USA, USA".

I will never forget Sept. 11, 2001. It still hurts us though. Some people don't want the hurt to remain. Different people remember and honor in different ways.

I noticed a few quotes in an article on FoxNews this morning that kind of struck me.

• "We've kept it alive, and perhaps kept it alive too long," said Charles Wolf, whose wife, Katherine, was killed at the World Trade Center. "How many times do you reopen the wounds?"
• "The remembrances have to continue; for how long, I can't say," said Barbara Minervino of Middletown, N.J., whose husband, Louis, died in the towers.

A former supervisor of mine has a daughter who watched from a nearby office tower as the World Trade Center burned, people jumped from windows 100 stories up, and the buildings collapased. It had such an impact on her that she went into counseling afterwards.

I know people and have friends that have fought in the desert of Iraq. I have never heard them question why we are there or what their mission was. Our mission is clear: Protect our way of life. Protect those who can't protect themselves. Foster Democracy in nations that have never known such freedoms.

I stand behind each and every one of our men and women in uniform. I support them; I love them; and I want them to come home. But at the same time, I know they are there for a purpose.

We can second guess our government all we want. That is our right. We can say that McCain will be a better president for this reason or Obama will be a better president for that reason. That is our right.

They can call George Bush every name in the book for all I care. They can complain about our military and our intelligence community's methods and tactics all they want. People can sit back and bitch about the Patriot Act all they want.

We can say that the War on Terror was justified -- that our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have been worth it. You won't ever catch me saying they have not been. We can speak out against it. That is our right.

But it is our responsibility to remember the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 and the families and victims. It is our responsibility as Americans to make sure that never happens again. It is the cross we have to bear.

We need this country to be secure. We need to keep the future our of country and of our children in mind at all times. We need to continue to fight to preserve our way of life.

A wise Vulcan once said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Your may think, "Well I need a 47-inch wide screen TV, or I need a gas guzzling SUV or a pair of $150 pair of shoes. I need to go out tonight, dress like a skank, and party with my friends. I need to go yell at a referee and act like an obnoxious ass at a little league game." You don't really NEED to do any of that. It's your right as an American to do any of that; and that right is being protected by men and women in dark holes of the Pentagon, on the streets of Baghdad, in the warden's office at Guantanamo Bay, and in the mountains of Afghanistan.

If it keeps my family safe - if it keeps my friends safe - if it prevents my neices and nephews from growing up in a world where they worry about planes falling out of the sky to hurt them, then I don't care the lengths that our government has to go to in order to keep this country safe.

One of my all time favorite quotes was on the very last episode of Jericho: "That is the responsbility we've got here... Because that's how things get better and people stay free."

So let's go forward, remembering those who died on Sept. 11; remembering and honoring those who have died for us in the line of duty since then; remembering and honoring where we were, what we've learned and how we've grown; learning from our mistakes; and continuing to fight the fight that needs to be fought.

Think Bathing a Baby Is Fun? Try A Cat

Ever tried to bathe a cat? It's not a whole lot of fun. For anyone involved.

We have three cats -- two that are eleven, both of which are long-haired (one tortoise shell calico - Dorry; one black persian- Dexter); and one tuxedo-colored short-haired (Mittens, who I affectionately call Demon) that we took in as a stray last year around Thanksgiving.

The two older cats are declawed; the new one isn't. So we trim her nails. She puts up a helluva fight when we do -- so during the first few times, we got scraped up a good bit. But she's calmed down lately. We don't have to worry as much about putting battle armor on when we cut her nails anymore.

But we think Dorry is picking up some of Demon's bad habits.

Dexter and Demon are pretty good about keeping themselves up. Dorry never has been. I think she has some mental issues. She's always been kinda weird. She gets mats in her hair a lot. And she likes to hang out in the litter a lot. She would literally just sit there all day long if she could.

So anyway, getting to the point of the story here... It was time yesterday for the cats to be combed.

Dexter doesn't like it, but he took it like a man.

Dorry fought tooth and nail the entire way. She's never fought us like she did yesterday. I came away with a pretty interesting cat bite and my wife with some pretty bad scrapes on her arm. Eventually we wrapped her legs in a towel and did our best to comb her. The whole time I was combing her, I realized she just stunk. I mean, she just smelled really bad.

We decided while she was already in a bad mood that she was going to get a bath. This is always fun. I don't know what other people have to go through when they bathe their cat(s). Most people think that we're crazy that we bathe our cats when we tell them about it anyway. But Dorry does not like to take a bath at all.

Getting her into the water usually involves carrying her into the bathroom in such a way that she doesn't see the water until she's standing in it. We've tried walking her face first toward the tub before and she freaks out. She will kick, scream, and wail like you wouldn't believe.

Once she got into the water she just kept on wailing. She looks up with this expression as if she's saying "Why have you brought this upon me?" and just continues to wail. You try and put some shampoo on her and she squirms and wails the entire time. When you rinse her, she squirms and wails the entire time.

Eventually, she accepts her fate. But this usually takes about 10 minutes. So we eventually managed -- and she got through it fine.

The funniest thing though was when I flipped the drain switch and the water started to drain. She heard the water start to go down and watched it slowly get lower and lower and she tried to bolt right from the tub to avoid getting sucked down. In the end, there was a tub full of residual bubbles with this cat that looked like a water-logged rat standing in the middle.

She has so much fur that when she's dry she looks 2-3 times her actual size. She's really a skinny cat; you don't really know it until she's wet. We toweled her off as best as we could and tried to get her to stay in one place with a towel, but she refused to sit down. She went back to the door to the room where the litter is and just stared at the door. I was not about to let her in there to go sit down in the litter and get it all through her fur. I knew that's what her plan was.

Four hours later, the dry, clean cat was allowed access to her litter. I guarantee you she'll be reeking of it in just a few days.

No One Title Fits This....

So Jericho came to the end of its -second and alleged final- season on CBS last night. My boycott against CBS (see my March 23 post) will continue.

Knowing full well this could be the final episode ever of Jericho, I watched it with nervous excitement having my own ideas of what would happen, seeing the plot unfold, and watching it with a wide range of emotions.

The whole show has had a lot of symbolism and hidden messages in it, from political to historical. It has kept me riveted.

I never expected when Jericho started to be as disappointed with the closure of a television show as I am now because last night's episode exhibited some of the finest television writing I have ever seen. From the ripping off of the Allied States of America patches from the soliders' uniforms showing their protest of the puppet government put in place by a powermongering corporation, to the show of respect for another man's loss of family... and I never thought I'd find myself saying something like this, but ... to the shooting down of two former United States Air Force jets by the Texas Air National Guard.

Throughout the whole episode, I was yelling at the TV. A 33-year-old man was getting misty eyed watching how well the humanity and the patriotism bled through the screen. I was screaming in frustration or hollering in excitement.

That, my friends, is television at it's best.

However, one of the most profound moments in the show came during an exchange between the two heroes, when the one, Jake Green, was asking the other, Hawkins, what was going to come of their actions.

Hawkins replies: "Whatever happens in the next few hours could determine the course of things for years to come. Maybe our history for the next hundred years. That is the responsbility we got here. And if that comes at a terrible cost, then so be it. Because that's the only way that things get better and it's the only way that people stay free."

Imagine these scenes:

• The morning of July 4, 1776, Philadelphia, PA, at the Pennsylvania Statehouse as delegates of the Second Continental Congress assemble to go over the final draft of a document called "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America"....
• April 12, 1861, in the Charleston, SC harbor, as Confederate batteries are about to open up on Fort Sumter...
• December 7, 1941, in the White House as President Roosevelt receives word of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor...
• August 6, 1945, as crewmembers board the Enola Gay at Tinian Airbase in the Pacific...
• April 16, 1962, as President John F. Kennedy reviews surveillance photos showing Soviet missile batteries on the island nation of Cuba...
• November 22, 1963, as Lyndon Baines Johnson is sworn in as president aboard Air Force One following the assassinaton of President John F. Kennedy...
• August 2, 1990, as President George H. Bush receives word the the Iraqi army has invaded Kuwait...
• November 8, 2000, in the Florida election commission headquarters....
• September 11, 2001, in the Pentagon, aboard Air Force One, or in the FAA headquarters as civilian airliners are used as weapons of terrorism against the United States....

Think about what happened in a few hour time period on each of those days.

Government leaders, military personnel, and ordinary citizens all made decisions and put actions into place that have since affected American history and world history and will continue to for years to come.

In many of those cases, the cost of those decisions was in a particular hardship, political strife, turmoil, or signficiant loss of American lives. These are things that we must be faced to go through from time to time in order to sustain our freedom.

We've lost 4,000 servicemembers in the Iraqi theater in the past five years. We lost more than 58,000 in a more than 10-year period in Vietnam and the jungles of Southeast Asia. Nearly 292,000 American servicemembers died serving their country during our less than four-year involvement in the theaters of World War II.

We've seen that there can be a terrible cost for our actions and for how we respond to different situations - and that cost, whether in the past, present, or future, can or will be hard to deal with and cause tremendous heartache and doubt. But that's how things get better and people stay free.

Remembering our fallen service members

Theodore Klingensmith is listed Panel 35W - Line 27 of the Vietnam Memorial. Teddy, as he was called, was a cousin of my mother's. He died on January 3, 1969 while serving his country in Vietnam. Teddy was killed before I was even born. I never had a chance to know him, but am proud of him.

In the more than 200 year history of our country, more than 1,004,000 servicemembers have died in the line of duty.

We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all of these fallen soldiers for their sacrifice, for the courage, for their honor in defending the very freedom that so many of us take for granted.

We have men and women around the world giving their lives each day so that this nation and our way of life will not perish from the Earth. For that, I am truly grateful. We cry with the families of those fallen soldiers. We mourn their loss, but give thanks that we live in a nation that allows us to follow our dreams.

Today, on Memorial Day, I can't help but think about what this nation, what this world would be like had those soldiers not stepped up in the face of danger and stood their ground. Could we still be ruled by a European power? Could we have split into two countries? Would the Cold War still be going on? Would the terrorists have unleashed even more fury upon American cities?

Despite any differences we all may have, we are all Americans. We should all stand behind our service men and women. We have a right to question our government's policies and actions. But we should not ever show disrespect or anger toward our men and women in uniform for carrying out their orders. We've seen what kind of hurt and animosity that can cause - we saw it as our troops came home from Vietnam, after watching their comrades die in over the skies, in the rice paddies, in the prison camps of Southeast Asia. Never again should we turn our back on them.

When you sit back and watch TV, cruise down the highway in your SUV, eat out at a restaurant, or walk down your local main street just know that men and women are giving their lives so that you can do just that.

Thank you to all our servicemembers, past and present - I am proud of you all.