{"id":34037,"date":"2013-02-08T11:15:53","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T15:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=34037"},"modified":"2013-02-08T11:12:49","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T15:12:49","slug":"this-weeks-friday-feel-good-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34037","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Friday Feel-Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elbert Wood, 93, of Houston, TX, is a USMC World War II veteran. He came home from a medical appointment on January 21st.<\/p>\n

His home had been vandalized. Two juvenile “little darlings” had broken in. They’d spray-painted many of the walls, furnishings, carpets, and appliances.<\/p>\n

Wood served in the Pacific in World War II. He was wounded in action twice. He also recently lost his wife – 19 days before the incident, to be precise. Let’s just say he deserved better than this.<\/p>\n

Just another case of big-city vandalism and taking advantage of the elderly, eh? Perhaps. But here’s where the story takes a good turn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seems as if word of what happened to Mr. Wood got around. Independently, many pitched in to help.<\/p>\n

Like MAJ Roberto Rodriguez, A\/1\/23d Marines – and his troops. They went to the man’s home to help.<\/p>\n

On arrival, they were joined by a group of contractors laid-on by a local radio station. So instead of doing clean-up work, the Marines instead cleared the entire house so the contractors could do a better job while doing the rehab.<\/p>\n

GruntLife – a vets organization – also got wind of the incident. They started a fundraiser<\/a> to send Wood and his children on a trip to DC to visit the World War II memorial and the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The fundraiser achieved its initial target of $5,000 within 72 hours.<\/p>\n

The revised plan is to send Woods’ children to accompany him to DC in April as well. They’re well on the way to making that happen.<\/p>\n

No, this won’t make the incident “go away”. It happened; nothing can change history. But it does help mitigate the damage done to Mr. Wood – both that done to his property and his dignity.<\/p>\n

And it also shows that, while there are indeed many jerks among us, there are also those who still give a damn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elbert Wood, 93, of Houston, TX, is a USMC World War II veteran. He came home … This Week’s Friday Feel-Good<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marine-corps","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}