Day 6

So today we are in the city of Victoria, TX. We started our day with a breakfast that the South Texas chapter hosted. They did a great job and let me say thank you to everyone involved. After breakfast we were placed on stage to do a little Q&A session. Everyone in attendance seemed really receptive of what we all had to say. After leaving the breakfast we were able to have a little down time until the event this afternoon. Jeff and a couple of the other guys took Karen to do a little maintenance on her and get all of her lights working again. We all met back up a little after 1p to put a fresh wash on all three of the trucks and I'm sure the trucks appreciated the baths that they got. We went back to the hotel to pick up everyone else and get ready for Victoria's event. We pulled into a store not far from the park that we were going to spend the rest of the day at. Wendell and the rest of his Chapter put together a real good event. We arrived at a store not far from where we were going. There was a high school band and cheerleaders that led us into where we were going. I was driving Karen and had a lot of survivors riding on the trailer with the Ribbon of Hope.

     While at the event we had a survivor come visit us at the trucks by the name of Calise. She is a 4 year survivor of Leukemia. The bigger thing is that she is only 7yrs old. She has a great personality. The first thing she said to me before I could give her a hug was that she was a survivor and that she has had cancer since she was 3. Now if you ask any firefighter what is the hardest call that we deal with, they will tell you its anything having to deal with kids. It breaks my heart because they are still so young to fight for themselves. But this little girl fought and is in 4 years of remission. Living in Memphis, we are blessed to have St. Jude's. We hear their telethons across the country each year. Chili's does a color the chili every year and also Malco Theaters sells the film bows. How many of you take the time to donate? There is alot of great research that takes place there and they help out lots of families each year. This is another place that can use your support.
      As you can read and hopefully alot of you have gone to www.pinkfiretrucks.org to find out more about what we are doing. We bring these pink trucks to communities so that we can do fundraisers in our own communities so that the money stays right here. We have to find the America where volunteering used to live. I think that we have moved so far away from that part.