Rich Crowley

2008-08-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

New pictures of Elizabeth and of Deb's short trip to Albuquerque, NM are up at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2006206&id=1036167340

The Funky Cold One

2008-08-14T00:32:00.000-07:00

My guess is that we all know at least one of those people who you don’t meet as much as you "experience." People who are natural story tellers who can leave you in tears laughing or crying, who you feel an almost instant bond with, and who you seem have known much longer than you really have.

I met one of those people in the fall of 1994. David Christopher Massena. He preferred Chris, but given Tone Loc’s big hit song “Funky Cold Medina,” we all knew him as Funky Cold Massena, or Funk for short.

Funk and I started Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri a couple weeks apart in September of 1994. We were in the same training battalion, but different companies, so we didn’t get to know each other much until we both finished Basic and got to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas to start our Advanced Individual Training.

Our Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) was 98C – Signals Intelligence Analyst. Funk and I were in the same class until he tanked a test and got rolled back into the class behind us. The four and a half months we spent at Goodfellow were a blast. Funk, Kirk Gillespie (who would end up working with me in San Antonio in 2003), Marshall Dossinger, Kevin Hutchinson (Hutch), Zach Raymond, and I ended up hanging out. They were great friends who helped me get through some of the tough times of adjusting not only to leaving home and starting my adult life, but doing it in the military to boot (if you’ll pardon the pun…). There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the bustling metropolis of San Angelo, but our favorite spot was a place called Mejor Que Nada – (“Better Than Nothing”). We went there many, many times. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend it, but if you’re in the area: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g56609-d518786-Reviews-Mejor_que_Nada-San_Angelo_Texas.html

Funk’s ability to work himself into situations you think could only happen in a movie is second only to his ability to tell you the story. He can’t talk without his hands, so a bit is lost in the translation to text, but he’s started posting some of his stories on a blog. I highly recommend you check it out when you need a laugh: http://funkycoldmassena.com/

When I left Ft. Hood in 1996, I lost track of Funk for quite a while. When we linked back up not long ago, I found out he’s settled near Seattle, is married, and has two sons. They have been given the blessing and the challenge of having a boy who is deaf, which I’m sure Funk handles with his typical roll-with-it attitude, but I don’t doubt for a second that the kid knows he is special and loved and treasured just the way he is.

So that’s Funk. Wish I had more friends like him, but I know they’re few and far between…guess we can just be glad we crossed paths with them at all.

1LT Nainoa K. Hoe

2008-05-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

Today I got to hear Mr. Allen Hoe speak. His son, Nainoa, was killed in Iraq in January 2005. Nainoa was a first lieutenant in the infantry and was, by all accounts, an extraordinary young man who excelled at everything he did. Allen served in Vietnam, and Nainoa knew from when he was young that he would be a soldier. He was shot by one of a group of cowards who were using a mosque and the buildings around it for cover.

Now that I am a father, I reacted differently than I think I would have before Elizabeth was born. My biggest fear is that something will happen to her. Losing her would devastate me. As I listened to Mr. Hoe speak about his son, I had a couple of thoughts.

One theme that wound its way through the almost hour and a half that Mr. Hoe spoke was the pride he felt in his son. After he finished his remarks, Lt Gen Frazier asked him what he says to other families who have lost a loved one in combat. He said he tells them to celebrate their life. In honesty, that’s what I expected him to say, but it was very clear to me that he does it everyday. He has done so much to honor the memory of his son, and in doing so, I think he honors the memories of others as well.

The second impression I had was that he did not express even one iota of bitterness towards the President or the war itself. As the parent of a dead soldier, he is part of a group that has clearly earned the right to criticize the person who made the decision to send his son to war, but he didn’t do that. When I thought about this, I was left with a feeling of almost disgust towards so many of the people who clamor so angrily that the war is unjust and a mistake and that our soldiers are dying for nothing. Nainoa Hoe believed in the cause for which he eventually died. His father believed he died doing exactly what he was intended to be doing. For them, arguing the merits of the war in Iraq was not a sterile academic exercise – their actions demonstrate their belief in this country and they both fought to bring the liberty we take for granted to other people.

I also thought of a comment I heard someone make. “How can the President sleep at night when he has sent so many innocent kids to their death?” I think I learned part of the answer today. He can sleep at night because he has spent time talking with people like Allen Hoe who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq. My guess is that most, certainly not all, but most of them had similar perspectives as Allen Hoe. They believed that their child understood the risks of choosing to join the military, but their belief in the cause of freedom was greater than their reservations of foreseen deployments and the possibility of dying. I wonder how many of the critics have spoken with families of fallen heroes? Makes me wonder how people can say they support the troops but not the war; what are they saying about a soldier who joins the military when they say the war he agreed to fight in is stupid or unjust or criminal or useless?

Mr. Hoe did admit he was angry, albeit a bit selfishly, about one thing – that he would not get to see the achievements he knew were in store for his son. If I could say one thing to him, I would remind him that as painful as it is to not get to see his son grow up, the story of his son’s life has had a tremendous impact on so many people – people he reached only because of his son’s sacrifice.

Hearing Mr. Hoe speak made me extremely proud of this country and the men and women who wear its uniform. He and his son represent some of the best things about America and I consider myself extremely blessed to have gotten to hear their story.

Couple links of interest:
http://gazingattheflag.blogspot.com/2007/02/army-lt-nainoa-hoe-farewell-and-walk.html
http://gazingattheflag.blogspot.com/search/label/Good%20News

Sad Day...

2008-03-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

Sad day in the Crowley home yesterday. We had to have our yellow lab Kaci put to sleep. She had an aggressive type of cancer that had spread through her body, and she was pretty uncomfortable. Last year, she had a surgery to remove a tumor from her back, and we think that bought us some more time, but I think Deb and I both kind of knew that her days were limited. The good news is we got her to the beach a month or two ago, and she had an absolute blast. In the X-rays they did recently, they found pretty severe arthritis in her back, and she had been groaning a bit more lately, but that day at the beach she ran and played like a puppy. We got a great video and some good pictures that we'll post on the Facebook page. We're pretty bummed, but there's no doubt in our mind that we did the right thing for her. I can picture her playing and wrestling with Bailey...

When it rains…

2008-03-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

2008 has been anything but boring for Deb, Elizabeth & me. First, the good news – Elizabeth is healthy and very happy. She giggles and laughs and can stand by herself for the couple seconds she doesn’t realize nobody’s holding her up. Deb is continuing to do well in her residency, and she did get selected for the child & adolescent psychiatry fellowship she was hoping to get. I have been trusted with a new position at work that has the potential to make a fairly significant impact.

All of this is in spite of the following series of unfortunate events, to borrow a phrase. Deb’s been having frequent headaches for quite a while. She saw a doc who helped some, but they didn’t go away. So she went back, they did an MRI, and found that her allergies had caused a bunch of gunk to get stuck in one of her back sinuses. It wasn’t life-threatening, but they wanted to get it cleaned out quickly because if it got infected, it could cause a whole host of problems. They did the surgery yesterday (March 3). Everything went smoothly and the surgeon said he’s pretty optimistic that this will help her headaches. Fingers crossed.

This morning, we were driving Elizabeth to her daycare before going to the hospital for Deb’s surgery. We were following a pickup truck up a hill. He stopped in the middle of the road, so we pulled up behind him and stopped. His reverse lights came on, and as he started backing up to get to the street he’d missed, I thought, “There’s no way this guy is going to back up into us.” He backed up into us. Fortunately, he had a tow bar on the back of his truck, so the front bumper of my car was completely wrecked. The good news is that he did have insurance, which is no guarantee out here. Unbelievable.

Speaking of daycare, the girl who has been watching Elizabeth (& doing a wonderful job) has to move out of her house because her lease is expiring. We’ve got less than a month now to find a replacement. This is no easy task in Hawaii.

Kaci – our lab who had a tumor removed from the middle of her back last year, now has several marble-sized bumps all over her head, neck, and shoulders. She has scratched one of them open and it hasn’t stopped bleeding for a week. Deb and I are hoping they’re just reactions to tick bites (it’s been a bad year for them this year), but we’re afraid it’s more serious than that.

When we moved out of the townhouse we bought in 2006 to move into military housing, Deb & I assumed we’d have no problem renting it out. Three months later, it’s still empty. Fortunately, we did receive 2 months of free ‘rent’ when we moved into our current place, so January was the first month we had to pay the extra money, but it’s now starting to pinch a bit. Add to that the fact that our daycare costs are probably going to triple (not only is our current girl doing a great job, she’s doing it pretty inexpensively), and it’s starting to get interesting. Hopefully the military folks turning over this summer will start looking for places out here soon and we’ll get somebody in there quickly.

My body finally cried uncle this weekend and I came down with a case of bird flu or something. Felt like I got hit by a bus. I could hardly walk up a flight of stairs without taking a break. No other symptoms of illness other than a bit of a scratchy throat, but I was just extremely achy. I slept a ton this weekend and seem to have been healed, but it had me pretty well laid up.

I did manage to get across the street and hang out at Elizabeth’s first birthday party. It was a lot of fun and was a great reminder that in the midst of all these challenges, we’ve been blessed to have a lot of pretty great friends. Pictures will be posted soon!

On that happy note, I will end.