I have often thought of that time I was on bed rest on the Taylor because I was very sick. I can visualize, somewhat, when the ship's Corpsman came by to check on me in my rack. I had a high fever and he was checking on me on a regular basis. It is odd because I seem to visualize him from the perspective of someone behind him as he is approaching my rack. I can also visualize that rack and where it was in the compartment. It was in the Ship's Control berthing compartment on the top bunk in the corner of the compartment that was at the aft of the compartment and port side. I can't remember for certain, but I am pretty sure that the sickbay compartment was directly aft of that compartment, so that would mean my bunk was on the same bulkhead with the sick bay. That main passageway would have also been on the other bulkhead of my bunk. I "remember" this all occurred just before I left the Taylor for Orlando because I had lingering effects of being sick when I was there. I was in a motel room with a girl and she said something about how her baby was sick, as a measure of comfort to me. There are a lot of other details during that period that I remember, in the context of my artificial and symbolic memory, but that I don't understand. What I think all those details represent are when I was on the USS Stark being transported to Bahrain and before it was hit by the missiles. When I think of that time on the Taylor when I was very sick, I tend to "remember" the unmistakable sound of deck grinders being operated somewhere in the ship. I also "remember" something about a floor being installed and they had some kind of heater operating that would melt the material overnight to form the surface. I can’t remember how to spell the word correctly and but I first write it as parcait, which isn’t correct, according to spell checker.
I can't "remember" the name of that guy who gave me a ride in his blue Ford Escort to the airport for my flight to Charleston where I would get my Ford Explorer from long-term parking on the base, but I "remember" what he looked like. I think he was a Signalman. I was leaving that day for that flight, which was to travel to Orlando for Basic Electricity and Electronics School and the Officer of the Deck told me to wait a second so they could announce my departure but I told him I wasn't a Plankowner. I had been the first of the crew to arrive after the ship's commissioning so most people thought I was a plankowner. As I write that, I wonder if that has some bearing on me being at the commissioning of the USS Stark FFG-31.
As for those "memories" of departing from the Taylor for Orlando, I think it is all reversed, in that it represents me returning home after surviving my escape across Africa. It is reversed, in a sense, because it was 1986 when I left for Orlando, and that period of time matches almost perfectly with the time period I recognize as being missing in Africa.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 30, 2006
There was that traffic accident in my Ford Explorer pickup in 1986 in Terra Haute, Indiana. I was turning left and a car hit me square on my right wheel, remarkably causing no body damage and only flattened the tire. The impact twisted the truck around and I almost hit a light pole but I regained control and ended up on the sidewalk. An observer said she was speeding. I was traveling from Orlando to Great Lakes.
There was that time I was refurbising the manifold valves on that Blue Chevrolet. I put the carburetor, rather the timing mechanism is was attached to, I think, in wrong and it caught fire when I started the engine. Put the fire out with my hat. Afterwards, I chastised Micheal for running away but he explained that he had been running to the nearby creek to get some water to throw on it.
August 6, 2006
So I guess I was missing when "Top Gun" and "Iron Eagle" came out in theatres. The Danny Glover movie of 1988, "Bat*21," from what I read is based on actual events during Vietnam, but I wonder if my experiences the year before inspired the creation of the movie, in that I was trying to evade capture and I had some kind of air support. I knew a guy in high school, as I wrote earlier, that was named Hambleton. One of my roommates at Great Lakes had a last name of Nguyen. The other guy at G.L. was named Stroupe and he was from Arkansas. The movie "Die Hard" came out in 1988. The first "Lethal Weapon" was out on 3/6/87. According to my calculations, I was shot down sometime around 2/15/86, and no later than 2/18/86.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat%2A21
Tagline: Trapped behind enemy lines. A whole army after him... And only one man can save him.
My step-brother, Michael, died 11/25/86. We didn't have a Thanksgiving celebration that year. In Great Lakes, I used to cross in to Wisconsin a lot to go to a night club. I got two speeding tickets two different times making that trip. I met Diane Broch at that night club in Wisconsin.
When did I buy that Nissan 1986.5 model? It was brand new so I think I got it before the middle of the year. And I remember it was very hot that summer in Chicago and it didn’t have an air conditioner. Not long after I got it, I took a road trip to see Diane at her college, Valparaiso in Indiana. I think that was a 3-day weekend. It was probably Memorial Day, so that would have been May of 1986.
The fact that is was a Nissan though must mean something. Not sure what the 1986.5 means.
10/18/2006 10:30 AM
When I look at this photo, I am reminded of similar structures at the Great Lakes Navy training center in North Chicago.
http://www.lincoln.ox.ac.uk/content/view/527/206/
The Front Quad
10/18/2006 11:01 AM
http://www.lincoln.ox.ac.uk/content/view/431/142/
It is not only through the work of its Fellows that the College has made its mark. Over the centuries many of the undergraduates and graduates who have studied in it have gone on to achievements that reflect in lesser or greater part their experience in Oxford. During the last century alone they include many illustrious names. The First World War poet and author of numerous writings on English life and the countryside, Edward Thomas, was a History Scholar in the 1890s. Theodore Geisel, better known as the Dr Seuss whose works have enlivened and enhanced the education of generations of young children, was a Rhodes Scholar at Lincoln in the 1920s. David Cornwell, John Le Carré to the millions who have read and relished The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or others of his novels, read Modern Languages here in the 1950s. The College can boast a great number of distinguished sportsmen and women, including two Olympic gold medallists, one of whom, Stephanie Cook, won the modern pentathlon at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Even now, perhaps, as you stroll through these ancient quadrangles, there is behind a window a student working at a desk who will one day become such another household name.
10/18/2006 5:16 PM
There is a town in Washington state named Allyn. I didn’t know about it until a few minutes ago until I saw a KOMO4 news clip about someone shooting at cars and they showed a highway with Allyn and Shelton on it. I wasn’t paying attention to the story and I wondered if the shooting occurred in front of the sign. I looked up Allyn on the map and I immediately recognized the area. I have never driven through there but I remember studying that area a few years ago because I was thinking a lot about buying a kayak and paddling all the way around the Puget Sound. That area would have been a portage spot. I have thought about that place many times for a long time. I can remember thinking about it even after I became homeless because that was the first place I wanted to take a road trip to. I wondered for a long time about the practically of carrying a kayak through that area. I suspect, now at this time, that I have known about Allyn all along and I started looking at that area on the map not really knowing why I was looking at it and from that the idea formed of kayaking around the sound.
10/18/2006 5:24 PM
It’s even on Highway 3. I suspect that it has something to do with why my middle name is Allyn. Maybe I was actually born there. The road that runs through Antlers, OK, is also Highway 3.
10/18/2006 5:27 PM
Damn damn damn. That is just too damned weird. I must have spent hours studying that area on the map. And Allyn is right there in the middle of where I was planning to carry my kayak over into Hood Canal.
10/18/2006 5:30 PM
I am quite certain I saved some MapPoint files with a route mapped out through there.
10/18/2006 5:32 PM
Damn. What if that is where my forgotten home is located?
10/18/2006 5:33 PM
I would start walking there this very minute if I knew where it was.
10/18/2006 5:34 PM
But all the wackos will know where it is too, if they don’t already, which they most probably do.
10/18/2006 5:41 PM
Allyn is only 16 miles from Bremerton.
10/26/2006 8:05 PM
I’m guessing that this reflects a similar problem I had with my memory. It is confusing that this episode occurred in February 1994. I figured that if anything, the airplane crash of June 1994 caused my memory loss. I was probably losing it for brief periods before it finally just blanked out on me. But, as I think about, I have reason to believe that I suffered at least one head injury before that time, probably in the 80’s. And as I was reading this wiki article, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw the episode, I “remembered” a time I received a jolt of electricity. I was in school in Great Lakes and it was an exam and I was measuring something about an electronic circuit. I was careless with the circuit board as I used the test probes and I touched with my finger an AC connection, probably 120 volts, whatever was the wall voltage that powered that circuit board. The instructor said he saw me jump and the other instructor, FC1 Anderson, wrote it up in my exam review and I was relieved to pass the exam.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thine_Own_Self_%28TNG_episode%29
Airdate February 14, 1994
A Federation deep space probe has malfunctioned and crashed on Barkon 4, a planet with a pre-industrial civilization and a level of scientific advancement roughly similar to Earth's early Renaissance. Data is sent to recover radioactive material in the probe, but while working on his mission, he is overloaded by an electrical surge from the probe's computer and loses his memory.
The android wanders into a nearby village and is befriended by Garvin (the widowed town magistrate) and his young daughter, Gia. Since he doesn't remember anything about himself — not even his own name — the girl gives him a name ("Jayden"), and the village physician concludes (on account of his pale skin and unusual strength) that he must be an "ice man" from the nearby mountains.
10/30/2006 10:19 PM
The timeframe for the Hicks Road and White House are also consistent. I “remember” we moved into the house on Hicks Road in 1981 and it was my home until 1988, which was my fourth year in the Navy. When I was commissioned in 1982, Reagan was already in the White House and was there until 1989. Both periods cover 7 years.
11/1/2006 3:14 PM
May 4, 2005, was the day I went to the Kent Police department for help. I named George W. Bush specifically as one of the people harassing me. The policeman didn’t ask me any questions. He dumped me off at the St. Francis hospital in Federal Way where the first thing they did was secretly drug my food. I found it very hard to restrain the urge to laugh shortly after I had eaten. I wanted to leave the hospital and go back to my apartment the next day, the 5th, but they talked me out of it and I stayed there until the next day, the 6th. I didn’t know which bus would take me back to the Kent Police Department and I ended up having to walk a long ways. With a single red folder in hand, I walked all the way from the intersection of I-5 and Kent-Des Moines Road, taking a left on West Meeker Street, to the Kent Police Department where my Jeep was parked. I saw some chatter online after I got back to my apartment about how interesting it was that I wanted to leave on the 5th, which the date could have been written as 5-5-5. A few days after I got back to my apartment, I ran out of food and went for those 9 days without anything to eat. At the point of a one-way trip to a tall bridge, as a stroke of luck would have it, I discovered that the three hundred dollars in my checking account was then unfrozen and I ate that night. Maybe this happened before the starving period or after, I’m not certain. Actually it was at the end. After nine days, I was going to kill myself rather than stay there for another 30 days or so and starve to death. I had enough money to eat again for a while but I didn’t have enough money to pay the rent, so on May 31st, I moved out. I sleep in my Jeep for the next 14 days before I went into the Redmond Police Department, exhausted, and asked them for help because I had lived in that town before Kent and I had worked for Microsoft, which was based in that town. They didn’t ask me any questions and just dumped me off at the hospital. They took me to Overlake in Bellevue first. The nurse seemed too eager to introduce herself to me, my instincts telling me there was something wrong with her introduction, but I couldn’t understand why. It reminds me of that time, after moving to Kent from Spokane and I was in the Wal Mart somewhere around Federal Way or Auburn. A woman on two different occasions said out loud, “Oh my God!” as she walked into an aisle I was in and saw me. The other woman told her to stop doing that. So they shuffled me around from that hospital and I stayed for about 4 days at UW Medical Center. After that, I went to the VA and I was there for about ten days, all drugged up.
11/1/2006 7:40 PM
Highway 59 runs into Seneca, South Carolina, also. In what appears to be downtown Seneca, it is named Oak Street and it intersects with a road that is labeled Business 76 & Business 123. The Seneca branch of First Federal that I have written about several times is nearby on a major highway labeled Bypass 76 & Bypass 123. I wrote about running into Mark and Andrea Mogge again the first time after I had been out of the Navy for a while. I also wrote about a girl named Lee Edgar who worked at the Seneca branch. It was her terminal at the drive-through window that I was working on when I saw Mark and Andrea sitting in their small red pickup outside in the drive-through. We were talking in the parking lot outside next to Highway 76/123 and I “remember” at one point answering a call on my large cellular phone, the kind you carried in a bag, that was in my burgundy Plymouth Voyager car. I have been thinking that Lee Edgar represents some work I did for the SEC because of her last name. But last night I started thinking that maybe her first name has something to do with the comet of 1976. Her name, Lee, could represent “Life Extinction Event,” which is similar to “ELE” from “Deep Impact.” I can “remember” kissing her outside her house and that she lived a long way from where I lived in Taylors, SC. She was the last girl I dated before I started dating Tracie Rhodes, who took over Bobbilynn’s job of replenishing cash in the ATM’s and calling me out to repair the machines when they were inoperative. There seems to be more here if I could just remember it. There is also something, a memory, something, that has twice appeared in my thoughts, but now is gone again.
11/4/2006 10:26 PM
All those marathons I ran down south of Olympia. The run course started at Millersylvania State Park which you get to by taking I-5 and then taking Exit 95, of course, and then drive through Maytown. I told Ross Heise the first time I went down there, it was still dark and it reminded me of a scene from “The Howling.”
http://www.ontherunevents.com/xmasmarathon/
Christmas Classic Marathon
DRIVING INSTRUCTIONS: From I-5 north or south take EXIT 95 and head towards Maytown. Go to Tilley road and turn left. Go to state park entrance and follow past the campgrounds to Kitchen #3.
11/4/2006 10:32 PM
The state park is off Highway 121 and the first five miles of the run course are along that highway. I have been writing that 1/21/76 is the date I landed on Mars.
11/4/2006 10:34 PM
The turn off the run course after the first 5 miles is onto Goddard Road.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddard_Space_Flight_Center
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center.
11/4/2006 10:36 PM
The next turn is Gibson Road.
11/7/2006 1:01 PM
I still can’t remember how it was I got up to Stampede Pass that time. I can visualize being up there but I can’t visualize anything about the vehicle I was driving. I sometimes want to say that I drove that blue RX-7 up there but that seems impossible. I would not have driven that car up a mountain on dirt roads. And even more weird, I can almost visualize myself sitting in there vehicle while I was there, but I can visualize absolutely no details about it. It is as though the details of the vehicle have been erased from my memory but everything thing else is there. I can remember driving down the mountain, but I can’t even visualize the windshield of the vehicle. I suspect this is the beginning of my real memory returning. I may start to realize the vehicle I was driving in that day and that will be a conflict because I will find myself thinking about how I never owned a vehicle like that. It is something similar to my memory of watching the news about the Stark but in my memory, I was standing in a place that I remember living at in 1986 while the Stark incident occurred in 1987.
01/01/07 2:04 AM
Journal Archive: Re: Journal May 20, 2006, Supplemental
The other day, it dawned on me that my school assignments between the Taylor and the Wainwright were also clues. I started at Orlando, not sure what that means, Seaworld maybe? Then I toured some caves on a road trip to Great Lakes, with GL representing possibly a great deal of memories from my real life. And then I went to Dam Neck after, but between GL and DN was when my step-brother died, according to my memory. He pulled through a graveyard a few hours before he died and said something about how I "should get used to it." At Dam Neck, there was the nearby amphibious base, and the Oceania air station. Today, another thought struck me: Orlando, Great Lakes, Dam Neck, Flood Gates. Not sure what the last one means, other than the obvious that something is going to open the gates and release my real identity. I'm feeling kind of nervous.
01/12/07 10:33 AM
I still haven't had any new thoughts about those memories of Stampede Pass I was writing about. I thought that was some kind of door that was going to open to turn the Thomas Ray memories into conventional memories. The intriguing component about Stampede Pass is that I can' remember what I was driving when I went up there. There's no way I would have driven my blue Mazda RX-7 up there on those gravel roads and I am quite certain I never drove my Jeep Wrangler up there. I certainly would not have driven that Buick car up there, which was the car I had when I moved out here and I just started thinking again about that car yesterday. So the mystery remains: how did I get up there?
02/21/07 4:29 AM
A dream of reporting to a new U.S. military base, but in terms of other bases I "remember" this one was something like an outpost on a frontier. After waking, the house we were in reminds me of that house I "remember" we rented from the Hatridges. In the dream, I was the first one to arrive at the base. There was a landing strip outside that I want to say was a dirt landing strip, but when I picture it in my mind, it seemed to be paved. There were two fighter jets flying over the house and I was hoping they would land. One of them appeared to be the F-35 - I think - and the other one, I don't know what it was. It almost looked like the "USS Voyager" from "Star Trek: Voyager" except it was more flat. They were also VTOL because they would hover briefly before they would fly over the house again. Later, I was sitting in some kind of conference room and there were 3 civilian women in there. There was another guy there somewhere and I think we were the two U.S. Navy officers that would be stationed there and we all lived in that little house. There is more but I can't remember it.
02/21/07 4:54 AM
How I miss going out riding my Litespeed bicycle on that trail in Redmond. That 6-mile run I used to do along that trail; I miss that a lot.
03/02/07 6:14 AM
Studying that group photo of the STS-51-L, some of them look familiar. Christa kind of reminds of me of a woman named Anderson, I think was her name. I can't "remember" her first name. I knew her from school in Orlando and then I was talking to her after I was transfered to the next school in Great Lakes. I think she was in ET school.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Challenger_flight_51-l_crew.jpg
03/12/07 12:06 PM
I calculated that the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut occurred 53 hours before that invasion in Grenada and I think I was there at both events.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=metcalfobit11&date=20070311&query=grenada
Obituary
Adm. Joseph Metcalf led invasion of Grenada in '83
By Matt Schudel
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Joseph Metcalf III, the Navy vice admiral who led the U.S. invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada in 1983, died March 2 at his Washington, D.C., home after a series of strokes. He was 79 and also had a progressive neurological disorder.
Adm. Metcalf was given the assignment to lead the invasion only 39 hours before it was to take place Oct. 25, 1983.
04/14/07 3:28 PM
I have a noticable scar near the tip of my left pinky finger and I have no idea where that came from. But I do "remember" very clearly getting a deep cut on the side of one of my pinky fingers and I think it was the left one. I don't see that scar there though and I have been thinking about that for a while; wondering what happened to the scar. I can clearly "remember" telling Denzil about it and he was criticizing me for complaining about such a minor cut. I "remember" thinking it was cut to the bone. I was mowing the lawn and I swiped it across the barb-wired fence surrounding our house on Hicks Road. What could that symbolize? Trying to escape as a POW? I can't see why I would have such a "memory" simply to symbolize getting a cut from a routine exercise of laying out barb-wire for one of our camps.
05/10/07 2:59 AM
Those signs!!!!
I have these elaborate "memories" of a time I created some signs to put up along the road that Tracie would see as she was driving to work. I can't remember the message; basically signs that I loved her. I asked her later if she had seen them and she told me she had seen them. She was happy and she said that she had wished they were for her but I guess she didn't know. She drove back and picked them and I can still visualize seeing them in the trunk of her car.
05/13/07 1:51 AM
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/duranduran/wildboys.html
DURAN DURAN LYRICS
"Wild Boys"
The wild boys are calling
On their way back from the fire
In august moon's surrender to
A dust cloud on the rise
Wild boys fallen far from glory
Reckless and so hungered
On the razors edge you trail
Because there's murder by the roadside
In a sore afraid new world
They tried to break us,
Looks like they'll try again
Wild boys never lose it
Wild boys never chose this way
Wild boys never close your eyes
Wild boys always shine
You got sirens for a welcome
There's bloodstain for your pain
And your telephone been ringing while
You're dancing in the rain
Wild boys wonder where is glory
Where is all you angels
Now the figureheads have fell
And lovers war with arrows over
Secrets they could tell
They tried to tame you
Looks like they'll try again
Wild boys never lose it
Wild boys never chose this way
Wild boys never close your eyes
Wild boys always shine
05/13/07 10:33 PM
It is just like George W. Bush said; if I had not created this 3-3-5-9 artistic device, he and the other thieves would have just found another way to steal my identity.
05/15/07 3:09 PM
My buddy Doug Wiese also had a Phoebe Cates kind of girlfriend in my artifical and symbolic memory. I can't remember her name but I remember she was as beautiful and glamorous as Jim Shea's girlfriend, Phyllis. I think Doug's girlfriend lived in California, where he was from. Doug an Operations Specialist 2nd Class Petty Officer in my "C" school class at Dam Neck. He was changing rates to Fire Controlman while I was already a Fire Controlman 3rd Class, having been promoted to that rank in the fleet. After we graduated that specialist school for the MK152 computer, he was given the rank of Fire Controlman 2nd Class, while I didn't get any kind of promotion myself. We were the only two Petty Officer's in the class and the other's were E-3 Seaman. I "remember" one day on the beach when I think I met his girlfriend the first time. That base at Dam Neck had a private beach, which was cool, and we were all out there one sunny day. I was still dating Diane Broch but she was somewhere back in Illinois and I remember she came to see me at least one time. I remember that Diane was attractive and I liked her but Doug's girlfriend was the kind of girlfriend that I wanted. I felt as though I could have a girlfriend like her but I was pretty shy and I never really worked at it. I can "remember" Doug's girlfriend was out there in a yellow bikini and she was just incredible. I "remember" something about them getting married when they got back to California as he was assigned to a ship on the west coast. I want to say that he had served aboard the USS New Jersey before he went to Fire Controlman school, but I am not sure. I "remember" that he and I were in the same Fire Controlman "A" school in Great Lakes but I didn't really know him back then as the classes were larger in that 2nd school of the series. In Dam Neck, he was the Class Leader and I was the Assistant Class Leader. I think it was the USS Richmond K. Turner he went to while I went to the USS Wainwright. Something about Charleston, too. He and I took a road trip to Charleston. Yeah, his girlfriend lived down there. That might have been the first time I met her. We stayed at her house, or maybe it was her parents house. Remembering her makes me feel lonely.
05/15/07 3:46 PM
I didn't look this up until after I wrote about the RTK. I am quite certain I wrote about the RTK several years ago!!!
From 7/16/1963 to 6/13/1964 is: 333 days
http://www.navysite.de/cg/cg20.htm
USS Richmond K. Turner (CG 20)
Commissioned: June 13, 1964
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/112286a.htm
Radio Address to the Nation on the Observance of Thanksgiving Day
November 22, 1986
My fellow Americans:
This coming Thursday we'll celebrate a holiday that belongs uniquely to our nation -- Thanksgiving Day. Millions of us will travel from all parts of the country to gather in family homes, observing the holiday according to longstanding tradition: turkey with all the fixings, pumpkin pie, laughter, the warmth of family, love, and, yes, a moment of prayer to give thanks. Yet, at the same time, many among us will be less fortunate. And just as Thanksgiving Day has always been an occasion for counting our blessings, so, too, it's always been a time for making life better among our fellow Americans. In churches and synagogues across the country, for example, food will be collected in the next few days for distribution to the needy, or on Thanksgiving Day itself. And with this spirit of Thanksgiving in mind, I thought I'd speak with you for a moment this afternoon about the goodness of the American people and our willingness to give each other a helping hand.
The spirit of voluntarism is deeply ingrained in us as a nation. Maybe it has something to do with our history as a frontier land. Those early Americans who gave us Thanksgiving Day itself had to help each other in order to survive -- joining together to plant crops, build houses, and raise barns. And perhaps they discovered that in helping others their own lives were enriched. In our own day, a poll showed most Americans believe that no matter how big government gets and no matter how many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers. In other words, we Americans understand that there are no substitutes for gifts of service given from the heart.
In our recent history, there was a time not long ago when this spirit seemed endangered, when philanthropy and personal involvement were giving way to bureaucratic plans and Federal programs. So, when our administration took office, we made it one of our main aims to encourage private sector initiatives, to reinvigorate the American tradition of voluntarism. And I have to admit, our success in this area is one of the accomplishments of which I'm most proud. For in the past few years, we've witnessed an unprecedented outpouring of the volunteer spirit, a tremendous reassertion of good will and neighborliness. Last year alone, individuals, corporations, bequests, and foundations gave nearly $80 billion to good causes -- a record high. You can see these volunteer efforts all around. Consider the United Way, founded a century ago next year. Today there are more than 2,200 local United Ways in communities throughout the country. Just last year the United Way raised more than $2.3 billion, supported more than 3,700 health and human care agencies and programs, and served millions of families.
In 1958, for example, Dr. William Walsh asked President Dwight Eisenhower for the use of an old hospital ship, mothballed after World War II. Ike provided that ship, charging rent of just $1 a year. And Dr. Walsh turned the old ship into Project HOPE, a seaborne hospital and medical school that traveled the world. Today Project HOPE has been modernized, and medical volunteers traveled by plane recently to El Salvador to help with the aftereffects of the devastating earthquake.
Then there's Just Say No, a largely volunteer organization that's teaching children around the world to say no to drugs. This organization got started when Nancy was visiting an elementary school in California. A little girl asked what to do if someone offered her drugs, and Nancy's answer was simple: ``Just say no.'' Well, not long ago, Nancy hosted a Just Say No rally here at the White House. More than 2,300 children attended. Although Just Say No requires school officials, teachers, and especially parents to devote to it a great deal of time, Nancy told me that everyone she spoke to at the rally was convinced that it's not only worth it but of vital importance for the future.
Local efforts may be less well known than major undertakings like Just Say No and Project HOPE, but to the very heart and soul of the American volunteer spirit, many of you'll be able to think of good works being performed in your own communities. I think of a house for the homeless here in Washington founded by a young priest, Father Jack Pfannenstiel, and sustained by his own hard work and that of volunteers. McKenna House offers shelter, food, and human concern for the homeless men right here in our Nation's Capital. Of course, we must do more, striving always to give of ourselves to those less fortunate. But it's good to reflect that here in America, perhaps more than in any other nation on Earth, we have a tradition of giving -- of neighbor helping neighbor -- that makes life better for tens of thousands every day. And for this, too, on Thanksgiving Day, let us give thanks.
Until next week, thanks for listening. God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 12:06 p.m. from Camp David, MD.
From 11/25/1986 to 11/19/1987 is: 359 days
3-59
JOURNAL ARCHIVE:
I am finding it very hard to concentrate as I try to verify that there was no Thanksgiving speech during November 1987. I have to read the same line three times and still not understand what I just read.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1987/87nov.htm
This is the closet to Thanksgiving that I found so far in November 1987:
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1987/111987f.htm
Proclamation 5747 -- National Family Week, 1987
November 19, 1987
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
The destiny of America is shaped not only by events within the councils of government, industry, and finance, but also by the hand of God and the life and the love in each and every home in our Nation. America's families are a tremendous source of strength and faith and freedom for our children and our country, and during National Family Week we recognize this truth and pay glad tribute to the families of our land.
The family is a source of well-being, a place to give and receive love and to learn and live our traditions and the virtues and the values of responsibility, selflessness and self-reliance, loyalty, mutual respect, fairness, and the power of faith. In families we also come to know our inherent dignity and worth as individuals and to enjoy the God-given rights that are the basis of freedom.
We must remember during National Family Week, and especially during the Bicentennial of the Constitution, that freedom, the family, and the individual have everything to do with each other. That is a truth that the Founders of our country knew well. The more the integrity of the family is fostered -- the more social and public policy influences that weaken the family are eliminated -- the stronger is freedom and the healthier is society. Let us forever remember this personally and as a people, for the good of our families and the good of our country.
The Congress, by Public Law 100 - 166, has authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week of November 22 through November 28, 1987, as ``National Family Week.''
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of November 22 through 28, 1987, as National Family Week. I invite the Governors of the several States, the chief officials of local governments, and all Americans to celebrate this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php
Search Results : Using keyword(s) [ national family week FROM 1981 to 1988]
November 3rd, 1981 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 4882—National Family Week
November 12th, 1982 Ronald Reagan Remarks on Signing the National Family Week Proclamation
November 12th, 1982 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 4999—National Family Week, 1982
November 4th, 1983 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 5126—National Family Week, 1983
November 15th, 1984 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 5281—National Family Week, 1984
October 28th, 1985 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 5399—National Family Week, 1985
November 21st, 1986 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 5576—National Family Week, 1986
November 19th, 1987 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 5747—National Family Week, 1987
November 19th, 1988 Ronald Reagan Proclamation 5912—National Family Week, 1988
From 3/4/1959 to 7/28/1987 is: 3 days, 3 weeks, 340 months
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http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=34639
Proclamation 5687—Thanksgiving Day, 1987
July 28th, 1987
Thanksgiving Day is one of our most beloved holidays, an occasion set aside by Americans from earliest times to thank our Maker prayerfully and humbly for the blessings and the care He bestows on us and on our beautiful, bountiful land. Through the decades, through the centuries, in log cabins, country churches, cathedrals, homes, and halls, the American people have paused to give thanks to God, in times of peace and plenty or of danger and distress.
Acknowledgement of dependence on God's favor was, in fact, our fledgling Nation's very first order of business. When the delegates to the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774, they overcame discord by uniting in prayer for our country. Despite the differences among them as they began their work, they found common voice in the 35th Psalm, which concludes with a verse of joyous gratitude, "And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long."
This year, of course, our Thanksgiving Day celebration coincides with the Bicentennial of the Constitution. In 1789 the government established by that great charter of freedom, and "the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed," were cited by George Washington in the first Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation as among "the great and various favors" conferred upon us by the Lord and Ruler of Nations. As we thank the God our first President called "that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be," we have even greater cause for gratitude than the fresh triumphs that inspired Washington's prose. We have seen the splendor of our natural resources spread across the tables of the world, and we have seen the splendor of freedom coursing with new vigor through the channels of history. The cause for which we give thanks, for which so many of our citizens through the years have given their lives, has endured 200 years—a blessing to us and a light to all mankind.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1987, let us, in this unbroken chain of observance, dedicate ourselves to honor anew the Author of Liberty and to publicly acknowledge our debt to all those who have sacrificed so much in our behalf. May our gratitude always be coupled with petitions for divine guidance and protection for our Nation and with ready help for our neighbors in time of need.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 26, 1987, as a National Day of Thanksgiving, and I call upon the citizens of this great Nation to gather together in homes and places of worship on that day of thanks to affirm by their prayers and their gratitude the many blessings God has bestowed upon us.
In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-eighth day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.
RONALD REAGAN
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 4:49 p.m., August 3, 1987]
