SWAPA and SWA Flight Attendants Help Fallen Hero Children go to Disneyland

[chase]

Know of a Fallen Hero Child? Send them to Disneyland for free!
1217 fathers have been killed while serving in the military since 9/11
16 mothers have been killed
350+ children were below the age of 2 when their parent was killed

An event last year, Snowball Express, brought nearly 900 children and surviving spouses of military members killed since 9/11 to Orange County for an all expense paid weekend in Dec.

Lives were changed forever because of it.

You can visit http://www.snowballexpress.org to learn more about this year's event in which 1500 attendees will come again to Disneyland, the Oakley Corporation and to be entertained by Gary Sinise and his band, Lt Dan Band. Again all expenses paid for first time attendees and for returning families all expenses are paid once they arrive in California.

Corporations are donating to include Southwest Airlines, Bill White of the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, TriWest Healthcare Alliance, both the Southwest Airlines Pilots and Flight Attendant's unions endorse the event as well as Rotary Clubs and the Ladies Auxiliary VFW have adopted our charity as one of their 5 youth services organizations they are supporting for '07-'08.


If you wish to sponsor a child or entire family, you can donate directly on the homepage of the website. It is only $500 per person to change a life and show these children they are not alone and Americans will not forget their sacrifice.


If you wish to sponsor a specific family, contact the foundation at [email protected] and we'll send you the bio on the nearest fallen hero to where you live. Helping their family attend is a great project for children wishing to do service projects, churches and individuals who simply want to help but don't know how. We can be that conduit to do so. Just contact us and we'll make it work.


If you know of children who have lost a parent, please have the surviving parent register to attend along with the children at www.snowballexpress.org.

Lastly visit this website to hear in the spouses and children's own words what this event meant to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rY2XiUVW9c

If there are questions please write to [email protected] and you'll get a rapid response. You can also PM me if you have questions.

As one USMA '79 grad who recently sponsored a family to attend said to me, "The excitement in her voice when I told her she was returning was as if I was paying for her to go see her husband again for the weekend, I was overwhelmed with the excitement she had for attending....whatever your organization is providing, please continue to do so."

You can visit the download section of the website and downloade a brochure of this year's event, please share that and the website link with others.

I'll finish up with a letter from one of the attendees from last year's event and what it meant to her and her childen.

Dear Snowball Express,
Both of my boys were just quiet. They wouldn't talk to anyone or want to do anything. They thought their dad would be upset if they were happy. All of their friends had both parents and here they were with just one. And all because their dad was doing his job. They are really proud of him, they just don't understand. Still, till this day, they don't. But going to California for the weekend opened my boys up more. They now know they are not alone and they want to talk about it more. My boys are now more understanding and more loving and for the longest time I thought it would be a long time before I’d see their old selves again. I am grateful to Snowball Express. I lost my husband and I didn't want to lose my children. And now I have them and we are healing everyday. We have tough days and we sit down and talk about it. Before going to California they wouldn't talk to me at all. Thank you for helping me and my children. We will always be grateful to everyone that was there that weekend. You helped my family more than you'll ever know. Thank you. Sonya

 

[Bake]

Thanks for the message Chase.

Bake

 

[obadie]

Stories like this makes what you think are problems mean nothing. Thanks for the reality check.

Obadie

 

[chase]

Obadie,

I called to thank a sponsor the other da who had decided to fund two of the families from Tampa to fly out, he said to me the following,

"We had befriended this family after her husband had died and told her she should call us if she ever needed anything. She's never asked for anything until today when she called to ask for our assistance in purchasing the airline tickets. When I told her our firm would do it, the excitement in her voice was as if we were giving her a weekend with her husband...she was that excited....whatever you are doing with this organization, please continue it because these families are making differences."

www.snowballexpress.org

In the last few weeks I've run across more airline pilots who have non-profits, most work for major airlines, that help mililitary fallen heroes, wounded soldiers or families of these groups....if you know of some of them please have them PM me or give me their names so we can begin to collect the resources, particularly those from airline pilots....rather an amazing turn of events compared to what many think of th profession as a whole. Thanks.

Stories like this makes what you think are problems mean nothing. Thanks for the reality check.

Obadie

 

[BigMeat]

Thank you very much Chase. No matter what, those kids pay just as much a price if not more than their parents did. May God bless them. Lets see how many of those kids we can sponser. Even if you cant afford it by yourself get a few other people together and sponser at least one.

 

[chase]

One of those 1217 who will not be returning.

Bigmeat,

We have the data on all of the registered families (nearly 500 right now) with each city where they live. If you wish to sponsor a fallen heroes' family near where you live just PM me, I'll email the bio on the soldier/sailor/marine/airman and the number of survivng children. Here is one example and a family that has registered to attend.

This is Marine Cpl. Charles O. Palmer II. He is survived by his wife and two children. He was kllled on May 5, 2007.

36-year Marine from Manteca killed in Iraq

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]MANTECA, Calif. — A 36-year-old Marine from San Joaquin County was killed in Iraq over the weekend, 13 years after the end of his first military service.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Cpl. Charles O. Palmer II, of Manteca, was killed Saturday while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, the Department of Defense announced Monday in a news release.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Palmer had served on active duty from 1990 to 1994 before deciding to re-enlist last year, just before his 35th birthday.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Palmer was assigned to the 8th Communication Battalion, II Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group.[/FONT]


All three of them will join 1500 children and surviving spouses in Orange County with the help of many corporations and Southwest, SWAPA, flight attendants and other SWA employees I'm proud to say. His family resides in NC.


[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Died:[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]May 05, 2007[/FONT]
To see a picture of a hero, go to this link

Cpl. Charles O. Palmer II, 36, Manteca; killed by a roadside bomb

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[COLOR=#999999! important]By Carla Hall, Times Staff Writer [/color]
[COLOR=#999999! important]July 15, 2007 [/color]
Charles O. Palmer II could never quite get the Marine Corps out of his system. After a four-year stint that ended in the mid-1990s, he never found another job "equal to the Marines." That's what he wrote in a letter to the service, explaining why he wanted to reenlist.

"It is home," he wrote in late 2005. Nowhere else had he found such camaraderie, loyalty and comfort.

"The whole time he was out, he had the Marine haircut, the Marine attitude," said his father, Chuck. "He was the Marine's Marine."

That didn't stop the senior Palmer from worrying about his son's tour of duty in Iraq.

"When I thought about my son being a driver — trucks or Humvees are the most popular target for roadside bombs. He said, 'Dad, the war is dangerous.' It didn't matter if he was a foot soldier or driver. He reassured me that everything was going to be OK."

But on May 5, the 36-year-old corporal was one of two Marines killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee in Iraq's Al Anbar province, west of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 8th Communication Battalion, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Palmer grew up in Manteca, a Central Valley city 80 miles east of San Francisco, and was a high school athlete, taking up track, wrestling and football.

After his graduation from Manteca High School in 1989, he tried out a variety of jobs. Palmer was working at a gas station and a bait shop when he enlisted the first time in 1992.

"He said, 'Dad, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not doing anything with my life,' " his father recalled. "We come from a long line of military…. All of us when we left home, we gravitated toward it."

After Palmer was honorably discharged, he settled in Mooresville, N.C., where his mother and stepfather, Peggy and Ron Emmick, had moved.

Palmer planned to work with his stepfather, who was looking for another venue for his California-based competitive racing kart business. The Emmicks returned to California, but Palmer stayed.

"North Carolina fit his personality," said his father, who lives in Manteca and works for a company that provides supportive living services to the developmentally disabled. "The whole country-boy attitude, he fit that really well."

Palmer's wife, Tanya, said he was the consummate outdoorsman who liked to camp, fish and barbecue. "He wanted to buy a lot of property in South Carolina and start a hunting lodge there for our retirement," she said.

Palmer signed up for the Marine Corps Reserves. And he continued the quest for a job that would satisfy him.

He was a manager at an equipment rental company and later took up powder coating — a process of dry-coating a metal surface (instead of applying a liquid paint), then curing it with heat.

"It's beautiful when it's done right. He had a real eye for it," said his stepmother, Teri Palmer, who married his father when Charles and his younger brother, Jason, were little and has doted on them ever since.

"I guess I'm referred to as a stepmom, but it's not something I really considered. They are my boys," said Teri Palmer, who has a daughter with Chuck.

Charles Palmer lived mostly with his father and stepmother, but also spent time with his mother. "He was his mom's son and she was willing to share him — and I was willing to share," Teri Palmer said.

Palmer met the woman he would marry at a friend's house five years ago. "That first night we just talked until the sun came up," Tanya Palmer recalled. "He looked at me and said, 'I'm committed.' I said, 'Really?' Because I had a lot of baggage. I had two kids."

But Charles Palmer bonded easily with her children, Brenden and Rebecca Whitlow, who are now 6 and 9, respectively. "They considered him their daddy," Tanya Palmer said.

 

[LearLove]

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