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  • Battle Creek will miss Velma Laws-Clay

    BATTLE CREEK WILL MISS

    VELMA LAWS-CLAY

    Battle Creek lost a great personality and civic leader this past week: Velma Laws-Clay. (Photo, on right.)

    I served on several nonprofit boards with her, and we laughingly shared tales of what it was like, both of us having grow up as twins.Velma Laws-Clay.jpg

    Her passing reminds us how important and valuable volunteers and nonprofit Board service can be in a community.

    The best board members bring all or one of the historical "Three Ws" of effective board service: Work, Wisdom, Wealth.

    Velma Laws Clay wasn't wealthy. But she was loaded with passion, commitment --- work and wisdom.

    Effective board service means: doing your homework before board meetings, participation, listening, volunteering and being a positive influence and role model on the entire Board..

    Perhaps most of all it means following my Irish immigrant mother's reminder that "there's a reason God gave us two ears and one mouth."

    With that engaging, always ready smile, with her passion and service, ability to listen as well as to speak out, Velma Laws-Clay taught us much.

    And gave Battle Creek much.

    ------

    Photo above is of Velma (right) with her twin sister and "best friend" Vivian outside their historical family home on Manchester Street in the Washington Heights area of Battle Creek, Michigan.

  • New Day Mortgage's "Admiral Lynch" Creeps Out This Vet Viewer

    CREEPED OUT
     
    Maybe it's just me as a U.S. Navy Vietnam Vet , but I get creeped out every time I see retired Navy Rear Admiral Thomas Lynch (bottom, left in civies) being a blowhard TV huckster for veterans home mortgages, while exclaiming
    "We KNOW the military/veteran mentality."150116 Adm Tom Lynch.jpg
     
    Well, I don't think so Admiral.
     
    There is no single "military mentality" for U.S. veterans.
     
    (If you think so, spend some time in the ambulatory clinic waiting area here at the Battle Creek, Michigan Veterans Hospital.)
     
    I personally knew a Rear Admiral who would have abhorred Lynch's paid TV pitchwork (as if Lynch needed it).
     
    I served under Rear Admiral James Ferris (photo, bottom right) on twoTonkin Gulf cruises off North Vietnam 68-70. Now there was a leader. Who loved the Navy. And who knew and loved his crew.ferris_james.jpg
     
    What did Admiral Ferris do when he retired after 34 years as a WWII vet, fighter pilot, carrier captain and then task force admiral?
     
    He started personally delivering Meals on Wheels to the homebound elderly in his retirement area of Alameda, California.
     
    Now there's a real military "veteran's mentality."
     
    Service to country over self interest doesn't end when you take off the uniform.
     
    Admiral Ferris (photo, right)

  • Every Step You Take

    figurewalking.jpg

    EVERY STEP YOU TAKE
     
     
    by jim richmond
     
    It was hot today -- 89 -- as I took 10,093 steps around the Leila Arboretum trail. Each step a bit painful from sore ankles, but each step literally, consciously appreciated.
     
    My life. My appreciation of life has changed so much.
     
    Nearly 4 years ago, I died 6 times. 5 in the ICU at Bronson Battle Creek Hospital. With my two sons-- who had been called in -- wide-eyed watching.
     
    I knew they were wide-eyed, because the shock paddles brought me back from death's door five times that afternoon.
     
    I felt literally my heart stop, and faintly heard someone yelling "CLEAR!" as they applied the shock paddles that raised my body an inch off the bed, and restarted my heart.
     
    It continued to happen. And in brief milli-moments of consciousness, I thought to myself: "Jim, you're not going to make it."
     
    But I did. And the next day, they wheeled me down the elevator, across the hallway to a room where they put electrodes all over my head.
     
    And during the procedure -- with the attendant out of the room -- I went "code blue" again.
     
    Luckly, I was still connected to telemetry monitors in the ICU room in the adjoining building. Which evidently alerted staff.
     
    I remember little else. Except waking to this sea of huge faces bending over me, as this doctor thumped my chest, and then, applied portable shock paddles.
     
    So they rushed to install a $25,000 pacemaker running electrodes from under the skin near my top left shoulder down into my heart.
     
    And after several years of other health problems, "I'm back."  Thanks a good deal to a generous, patient employer who has put up with, tolerated two or three of my set backs.
     
    I am nearing 72. At work. Walking 3 to 5 miles. And enjoying every step I take each day.
     
    The experience changed, softened me to people, hardened me to those who want to argue, complain or criticize others or life.
     
    Each step today is a gift. Because I know my next one might be -- like yours -- the last one.