Wednesday Hero

Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig
Marines of Company B, 1st Battalion, 6th Regiment.


It is hard to know whether Monday was a very bad day or a very good day for Lance Cpl. Andrew Koenig.

On the one hand, he was shot in the head. On the other, the bullet bounced off him.

In one of those rare battlefield miracles, an insurgent sniper hit Lance Cpl. Koenig dead on in the front of his helmet, and he walked away from it with a smile on his face.

"I don't think I could be any luckier than this," Lance Cpl. Koenig said two hours after the shooting.

You can read the rest of Lance Cpl. Koenig's story here.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

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Wed Hero

Capt. Ferris W. Butler


Capt. Ferris W. Butler, former platoon leader with D Company, 214th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain, 2nd Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Drum, N.Y., talks to the Soldiers at Morale, Welfare and Recreation east Feb. 5 at Joint Base Balad, Iraq. Butler, a Port Tobacco, Mass., native, participated in Operation Proper Exit, which brings Veterans who were injured in Iraq back to the country to revisit the area and share their stories.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

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Wednesday Hero

This Week's Post Was Written By Mark In Honor Of His Wife's Grandfather

Marvin Glenn & His Wife, Christina


Marvin Glenn was born in Oklahoma, joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1939, and married his wife of over 60 years. Marvin enlisted in the Navy in 1944, becoming a member of the Greatest Generation. He chose to serve, despite being exempt due to a heart murmur. He went on to serve on the Escort Carrier USS Copahee. After his discharge Marvin became a brick layer, a job he continued to perform until he was 82 despite only having one eye. Along with being a brick layer, Marvin maintained a garden which he and his wife used to provide for themselves, and those in need. The life Marvin lived, in service to others, inspired his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and anyone who came to know him. Marvin was laid to rest in Henryetta, Oklahoma on January 16, 2010, at the age of 92, with full military honors.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

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R.I.P Capt. Phil

1 hour and 15 minutes ago

Phil Harris, the fishing boat captain whose adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on the television show "Deadliest Catch", has died, the Discovery Channel said Tuesday night. He was 53.

Harris suffered what his family described as a massive stroke on Jan. 29 while the fishing vessel he captained, Cornelia Marie, was in port at St. Paul Island, Alaska. The fisherman was flown to Anchorage for surgery.

The reality show, which has filmed five seasons, has been one of the Discovery Channel's most popular and depicts the crab fishing industry in the dangerous waters off Alaska.

"It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to our dad - Captain Phil Harris. Dad has always been a fighter and continued to be until the end," sons Josh and Jake Harris said in a statement released by the network. "For us and the crew, he was someone who never backed down."

In a statement, Discovery Channel senior vice president Elizabeth Hillman says, "Phil was a devoted father and loyal friend to all who knew him."

"We will miss his straightforward honesty, wicked sense of humor and enormous heart," she said.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, she said no additional information was immediately available Tuesday night.

Harris had seemed to be improving, and in a posting last Saturday on the ship's Web site, he was described as "talking to friends and family today; showing his greatest progress" since the stroke.

His sons wrote in a Feb. 3 posting that "No one ever said Captain Phil Harris wasn't tough. Today, dad showed some good signs of improvement, squeezing our hands and even summoning his trademark Captain's bluntness ... We are encouraged but still very cautious."

According to the ship's Web site, Harris started working on fishing boats at age 7 and started work 10 years later on a crab boat. When Harris turned 21, he ran a fishing vessel out of Seattle, making him one of the youngest to captain a vessel in the Bering Sea.

When Harris suffered the stroke, the family said a friend, Derek Ray, had flown to St. Paul to take over the role of relief skipper for the rest of the opilio crab season.

Harris' fishing vessel was based in Seattle.

___

On The Net:

http://www.corneliamarie.com

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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Monopoly Gets a Make-Over

Technorati Tags: Monopoly,Fall 2010

Monopoly' Gets a Makeover, but Will Die-Hard Fans Buy It?

by Lindsay Robertson
Thursday, February 4, 2010

©Hasbro

Hasbro has unveiled the design of the new 75th anniversary edition of their classic board game, Monopoly, set to hit stores in fall of 2010. "Monopoly: Revolution Edition" is slick and round instead of dull and square, with debit cards and an ATM instead of paper money and a banker, clear plastic representations of the classic tokens (bye-bye, little boot!), and clips of popular songs (like Rihanna’s "Umbrella," Daniel Powter’s "Bad Day," and Beyonce's "Crazy in Love") that play after certain actions.

This is not the first game to get a modern reboot (there’s an update to the classic Trivial Pursuit, and Scrabble got a face-lift for its 60th anniversary), but Monopoly’s changes will undoubtedly appeal to the 21st century's techie youngsters. For one thing, the adjusted-for-inflation prizes are more impressive.

Players can collect $2 million dollars for passing “Go” instead of a mere $200 — practically what the average kid gets for losing a tooth these days. But it's bound to annoy die-hard fans of the comforting classic version, who might send it directly to jail come next fall. (At least they can take comfort in the fact that Monopoly: Revolution retains the classic Atlantic City-based street system.)

So far, the Internet echo chamber's biggest criticism focuses on the new version's tight security. It seems that when it comes to Monopoly, half the fun comes from cheating by stealing from the till when nobody's looking, a loophole the new version closes with its fancy electronic banking. (However, an electronic banking version has actually been on the market for years.) Surely our nation's tech-savvy youth will somehow find a way to game the "Monopoly" system, assuming they can be pried away from screens long enough to start a game.

Wednesday Hero 2/3/10

Airmen from the Kentucky National Guard's 123rd Contingency Response Group help to offload wounded Haitian refugees and medics from Puerto Rico National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters at the air hub Jan. 25, 2010, in Barahona, Dominican Republic.

Photo Courtesy U.S Air Force Taken By Tech. Sgt. Dennis Flora

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

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