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Monday, 16 January 2012 |
JFI Veteran Volunteer Works with Teachers in Arizona
This month, our Veteran Volunteer Spotlight is shined on Bob Madden, a long-time JFI volunteer who has been giving classroom presentations in the greater Phoenix, AZ area for more than five years.
The Beacon (TB): Please tell us about your military service.
Bob Madden (BM): I served with the 173rd Airborne in Viet Nam, and then taught at the Airborne School at Fort Benning and earned the rank of Captain before leaving the military in 1973.
TB: How did you first hear about the Joe Foss Institute?
BM: I don’t remember how I first heard about it, but I have loved being a part of it and appreciate having the opportunity to help inspire patriotism in the classroom.
TB: What motivated you to get involved?
BM: I really care about patriotism in schools, and I want to see it promoted. If you read Joe Foss' book, you'll see that's what he cared about, too.
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Wednesday, 24 August 2011 |
Vietnam Veteran & JFI Volunteer Serves Students in California
The Beacon conducted an interview recently with LtCol Ed Benes, USMC (Ret.), a Joe Foss Institute Veteran Volunteer (pictured below with Lorna Jacoby, a middle school teacher, after he had presented in her classroom). We caught up with him between a round of golf and a presentation he was going to make at a Rotary Club. In his words, "if I have free time in my schedule, I'm going to do something productive with it."
 The Beacon (TB): Please tell our readers a bit about your military background.
LtCol Benes: I joined the Marines in January of 1968. I told my recruiter I wanted to fly airplanes, and he told me all the hurdles I'd have to jump through to fly, since I didn't have a college education. He was blunt and honest, and made it sound like a long shot, but I thought "I've got a shot, let's go for it." And it turned out about like he said it would.
I eventually got to fly, but it was not an easy road. I went to boot camp in San Diego, and thought 'what have I gotten myself into?' I ended up in Vietnam as an Infantry Platoon Leader in 1/5--Bravo Company 1st Batallion, 5th Marines. Eventually I became the Company Executive Officer, and then spent time back in the States, in Hawaii and later at Parris Island, before I finally got the go-ahead from the Marines to fly. So I headed off to flight school in the early summer of 1973, and starting in 1975, I flew A-4s. I retired in 1989 as the CO of MWHS-3, the Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 3.
TB: On behalf of myself personally--and on behalf of the Joe Foss Institute, and the United States of America--thank you for your service to our nation.
LtCol Benes: I appreciate that--I really do.
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Friday, 22 July 2011 |
Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life,
But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death.
And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death,
To you, O FREEDOM, purport of all!
(You that elude me most—refusing to be caught in songs of mine,)
I offer all to you.
’Tis not for nothing, Death,
I sound out you, and words of you, with daring tone—embodying you,
In my new Democratic chants—keeping you for a close,
For last impregnable retreat—a citadel and tower,
For my last stand—my pealing, final cry.
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Friday, 22 July 2011 |
by: Isaac Rosenberg
The darkness crumbles away -
It is the same old druid Time as ever.
Only a live thing leaps my hand -
A queer sardonic rat -
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
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Friday, 22 July 2011 |
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."
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Wednesday, 18 May 2011 |
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967). The Old Huntsman and Other Poems. 1918.
THE anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.
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Wednesday, 11 May 2011 |
Composed by Francis Scott Key, "In Defense of Fort McHenry" in September 1814.
Congress proclaimed it the U.S. National Anthem in 1931
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
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Wednesday, 13 April 2011 |
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By: J. Mason Knox
It ain't the guns nor armament,
Nor funds that they can pay,
But the close co-operation,
That makes them win the day.
It ain't the individual,
Nor the army as a whole,
But the everlasting team-work
Of every bloomin' soul.
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Thursday, 17 March 2011 |
July 4, 1878
or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.
Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
And drifts again, with its little flock
Of a hundred souls, on Plymouth Rock.
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Tuesday, 15 March 2011 |
I build my nest on the mountain's crest,
Where the wild winds rock my eaglets to rest,
Where the lightnings flash, and the thunders crash,
And the roaring torrents foam and dash;
For my spirit free henceforth shall be
A type of the sons of Liberty.
Aloft I fly from my aërie high,
Through the vaulted dome of the azure sky;
On a sunbeam bright take my airy flight,
And float in a flood of liquid light;
For I love to play in the noontide ray,
And bask in a blaze from the throne of day.
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