Sarah's beautiful boy

Thanks Bob Parks at Black-and-Right.com

Irregular quotes: Staying connected

Just because I like it.

7 years

A member of the New York fire department holds a picture of a September 11, 2001 attack victim, who was a New York firefighter, before a memorial ceremony in New York September 11, 2008. Throngs of family members of victims and others gathered in lower Manhattan for the annual ceremony. REUTERS/Chris Hondros/POOL (UNITED STATES)




Meet Tim, a 9/11 survivor from the 61st Floor. I first printed his story in 2001, reprinting again in 2006, and now, so we never forget, is Tim's story, which will always be a part of our own.



A WITNESS to INFAMY

Tim Veldstra watched burning papers flap against the window from his view on the 61st Floor. It must have been an explosion. It could have been an accident. It had to be coming from the other building.
He walked out of the coffee room inside the World Trade Center, second twin tower, on September 11, 2001, and looked for an explanation. It was 8:45 a.m. on the infamous morning and Veldstra had no idea of what was happening.
He had been thinking about his wife and daughter back home in Tulsa when he heard a boom.
"It was like a ticker tape parade falling down in front of my window," Veldstra said.
He had flown into New York from Tulsa three days earlier on a three-week trip. Veldstra, a financial adviser, had been only briefly oriented with the building the day before.
"The first day up there the first thing you want to do is look out those windows," Veldstra said, concerning the World Trade Center. "We went around to all the windows on our break." From one window you could look down on Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty.
Now beginning his second day and taking his coffee with creme and sugar, Veldstra left the break room and walked into the hallway to see a broken window and shattered glass on the floor. Believing an explosion had occurred in the other building, he walked around to the windows still looking for an explanation.
He was unaware of the dramatic sequence of events that had started their decent into history. The second tower, his building, would be attacked in a matter of minutes.
"I was in trouble and did not know it," but God did, Veldstra said.
Still on the 61st Floor, he heard the intercom system switch on and a man saying, "We need to evacuate the building. We need to use the stairs."
But where were the exits?


"I didn't see any exit for stairs, This was my second day," Veldstra said. He headed back into his office to grab his briefcase before heading to the exit. "Everyone else left everything - purses, wallets, laptop computers. They thought we would be back in a couple of hours."
Through the single door exit, he stepped into the small walking area.
"The staircase was no bigger than you would have in your house."
He had walked the sidewalks of New York his first night in town following a late dinner and had been shoulder to shoulder in a crowd. Now again he found himself in the midst of a crowd, many of them panicking, as they headed shoulder to shoulder down the narrow staircase.
"We headed down, turned a corner, at Floor 60 there were people coming in. We headed down, turned a corner, at Floor 59 there were people coming in."
Outside the narrow staircase now jammed with people, the world had begun watching. Every radio station broadcast the breaking news, every television program was interrupted, every life had tuned in to witness Veldstra's life.
"I had no fear at all. Some people did. Some people were terrified," he said.
Before he had left Oklahoma, Veldstra's trip had received a lot of prayers.
"My wife was just not feeling good with letting me go," he said. Every person they knew, every person they met, she would say, "Tim's going to New York. Pray for Tim." They would go to Wal-Mart and see people they knew and she'd say, "Tim's going to New York. Pray for Tim." Someone would call their house and she'd say, "Tim's going to New York. Pray for Tim."
As he walked down the stairs, Veldstra knew her feelings had prompted thousands of prayers on his behalf. When he had arrived in New York days earlier, he had called her the first evening, "See? I'm fine."
But now he understood.
The intercom switched on again. The man said, "Your building is secure," then incomprehensible words, and then a repeat, "Your building is secure."
The noise level in the staircase was too high, too crowded, too garbled for many to understand. Nonetheless, some turned away and headed back, perishing when the tower collapsed.
Veldstra kept on.
Feeling he had not yet found his explanation, Veldstra continued, one step at a time behind the person in front of him like the person in front of them, and so on, and so on.
The air had become muggy. It would eventually take him half an hour to climb down the tower.
Past the 31st Floor, Veldstra met with the second event.
Inside the staircase, the entire building moved from one side and then swing back to the other side, absorbing the shock from the second plane. However, inside, the wall to wall crowd knew nothing.
"People started screaming, pushing and shouting," he said. He needed to stop. he wanted to take a minute and consider stopping.
Up against the wall, Veldstra said people continued "coming by like a herd of cattle, pounding into my chest."
The panic had caused an increased pressure from people behind to move quickly. Although he considered stopping on a floor to escape the crowd, Veldstra started the descent again.
"We just kept going floor by floor by floor all the way from 61."



Less than 10 floors to go, smoke filled the already stuffy staircase. At Floor Seven, the smoke started and grew thicker as they continued down. Some covered their mouths with handkerchiefs or articles of clothing. He just prayed for an open door at the bottom of the staircase.
"I still did not have any fear, but I had all kinds of people praying for me," Veldstra said.
In the lobby, he was directed by security, firefighters, and police officers to head through the mall instead of exit out the front where feet of debris had been piled.
Now blocks away, the crowd was no longer pressed to keep moving.
Meeting up with fellow co-workers from Oklahoma, Veldstra and the group headed toward the hotel as he glanced up at the holes in the building, still unaware of what had caused it. Walking away, he heard a woman scream and turned around once more.
"There was something falling and I did not even know what it was," he said.
Then he comprehended. People were jumping out of the building.
"Seeing those people fall is the most sickening feeling. They fell so long," Veldstra said.
The seriousness of the situation met him at Ground Zero.
Although he would soon understand, Veldstra said he found it difficult to absorb the idea the situation had been hopeless for these people, so dire was the circumstance they leaped out the windows with no hope for survival.
A mile away, Veldstra and the Oklahoma group walked from behind several buildings to get their last chance at seeing the towers, but they had disappeared. The landmarks were gone, vacating the New York skyline.
"The first thing I see from the television in (my hotel) lobby is the plane flying into the building."
Now he had his explanation. now he knew what the rest of the world knew. He had escaped, thousands had not.
Veldstra said his experience is his testimony of God's goodness, a testimony he tells frequently since that day, a testimony he'll tell until his last day.

The World Trade Center site is shown Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 in New York on the seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) are scheduled to visit the site Thursday.
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Second time around

Facing the Giants guys are back again. Check out their new movie, "Fireproof", starring Kirk Cameron, coming Sept. 26.

Michael Monsoor: American hero honored

You probably don't know the name of Michael Monsoor.

Let's change that.

Here is a video tribute played during the Republican National Convention about Michael, a Medal of Honor recipient. Why don't you know him? Because our country's mainstream media, AMERICAN media, would rather spout statistics and rantings about the war, instead of praise the men and women in it.
So in St. Paul, Minnesota, inside the Xcel Center at the RNC, thousands sat and learned his name, while outside, protesters have attacked Republican delegates with poison, attacked their buses (while in route) with cement bags tossed over bridge overpasses, and broken windows in "peace" marches.

And act under the guise and abuse of their freedom, a freedom handed to them by Michael Monsoor.

Here's Michael.

Writing or something like it

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
- William Faulkner

Find out what you think. I'll help.

Tara Lynn

***UPDATE***

Class info:
10-weeks
$12/class

Location: LaFortune Community Center/Kaiser Library

Tuesday nights: 6:30-7:30 p.m.
(beginning Sept. 9)

Wednesday mornings: 9-10 a.m.
(beginning Sept. 10)

Also: Special 5-week class especially for home-school children, age 12 and up.
Tuesday afternoons: 3-4 p.m.
(beginning Sept. 9)

To register, send email to tara@taralynnthompson.com

The pen is mightier

They were mortal men, though made of metal not of this earth. The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were nothing more sensational or remarkable than anyone of us. Except one thing. They believed.
This wasn't about expressing a political view and being disliked, joked about on Jay Leno, gossiped about on the McLaughlin group, or broadcast on YouTube. Their act wasn't a media stunt, a sound bite, or a stumping speech. Their motivation wasn't from a Gallup poll or a Hollywood blockbuster.
They signed with their life.
This wasn't even a final act of redemption for a group of old men. Most were young, well-accomplished, highly educated, and seriously successful.

Out of the 56:
- 18 were under 40
- 3 were in their 20s
- 24 were judges and lawyers
- 11 were merchants
- 9 were landowners and farmers
- 12 were doctors, ministers and politicians

All were men with wealth and families, except two. They were men with their lives ahead of them and everything to lose. Yet, they signed. They committed treason, an act punished by hanging, an act performed though a British fleet anchored in New York Harbor.

This wasn't a boy's club, a place to sit and jaw and fan themselves while debating philosophy and economics. They would have no bodyguards to surround them, no armored car to whisk them away. They would sign. And their lives would cease to remain the same, if they lived at all.
And they knew it.
As Stephen Hopkins signed, his pen shaking, he said, "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

This is what they gave up.

Out of the 56:
- 9 died of wounds or hardships during war
- 5 were captured and imprisoned, each brutally treated
- several lost wives, sons or entire families
- 1 lost 13 children
- 2 wives were brutally beaten
- all were hunted down and driven from their homes
- 12 had their homes completed burned
- 17 lost everything they owned
- 0 defected

And because they deserve it, because we should know their names by heart, a little post signing biography. This is just a sampling of who they were and what they suffered:

- Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what is now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse.

- John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family.

- Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity.

- George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns.

- John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country."

- William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground.

- Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do you spare my home?" They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!" and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Special thanks to Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr who wrote such an inspiring speech about the men who gave away their freedom for our future. Thanks for offering more than just a history lesson. It's a glimpse into unabashed patriotism. And why we should expect no less from ourselves.
Read Mr. Limbaugh's speech here. Seriously. I'm not kidding. Read it.