Veteran Voices: James Downing from Vista de Monte Retirement Community

By James Downing, resident at Vista del Monte Retirement Community

My name is James, and my highest rank was First Lieutenant. I served in this position at Ft. Lewis, Washington, in the Ninth Infantry. I enlisted because the Korean War was being fought and my preference was to go into the Army. I believed this was my duty, since we were at war.

At the time that I enlisted, I was married to my wife, Marguerite, and I was working as a sixth-grade teacher in the Torrance Unified School District, in Los Angeles County. I left my wife and traveled by train to Fort Ord, California, for Basic Training. What I remember the most is that I was very lonely for Marguerite, and any leave time that I had, I spent with her.

After six months of Basic Training, I was selected to be the outstanding soldier of my training company. My first assignment was as an instructor at leadership school. After two months in that role, I was ordered to the Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and I trained for six months there.

I served the remainder of my service as Assistant Adjutant Officer assigned to the Ninth Infantry Regiment at Ft. Lewis in Washington. My duties included Courts & Boards, Safety, and Personnel. Although I did not see any combat, half the men in my training company went to Korea, and 50% of these did not return alive. I still feel guilty that so many of the men I knew became casualties, but I served elsewhere.

My commanding officer, a Colonel, was outstanding and a wonderful officer; however, my immediate superior, a Major, was the worst. Upon leaving the military, I resumed teaching and was assigned to the ninth grade at Torrance High. I did graduate work at UCLA, where I received my Master of Arts, and I went on to teach at Lincoln Junior High School in Santa Monica, California.”


LifeBio is an engagement program that captures cherished memories and lasting legacies through storytelling. Since launching in 2000, LifeBio has helped 20,000 people tell their life stories through autobiographical tools and services for all levels of care. LifeBio uses technologies as mediums to help individual document their stories in an easy and unique way such as tablets, web cams, and audio and video equipment. LifeBio has been a partner with Front Porch since 2009. For more details, check out LifeBio’s Impact Story on the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing (FPCIW) website.

Veterans' Voices from LifeBio: Ronald Max Bailey

In honor of Veterans Day, we are featuring stories of Front Porch residents who served in our armed forces. This is the story of Ronald Max Bailey, an England Oaks Retirement Community resident, who began his service in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

"I served in the United States Navy. I was on active duty from September 1970 until October 1982. I achieved the rank of Senior Chief while I was on active duty. I then served in the Reserves from 1983-1996, and I was promoted to Warrant Officer CW2 while in the Naval Reserves.

I attended Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts in Biology. During this time, I married my wife, and we have now been together 46 years. My reason for receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Biology was because I planned to be a teacher. Plans changed.

I enlisted in the Navy, so that I was not drafted. It was my decision to enlist, because I wanted to serve my country by ensuring the Navy ships accomplished their missions. I liked watching ships when I was young. I also liked traveling.  

It was bittersweet for me to leave home. My wife was expecting our son and even though she was very anxious, she saw me off. After about two months, it was requested by our OB that I should be allowed to come home for the birth of our son, as it was going to be a risky delivery. I was there for three or four days before we knew he was out of danger.

Boot camp was an initiation to Hell Week! I lost about 30-40 pounds during boot camp. We had many hours of rigorous exercises and the food was very BAD! I was one of a few enlistees who could type, so I did that most of the time. That was a great escape for me, as I enjoyed the air conditioned office and not having to complete most of the exercises.

After completing boot camp, I received specialization in my Naval Rate as Machinist Mate. When I went to my first duty station in Alameda, California, I got to be more hands-on at nuclear power plants in my rate of Machinist Mate. After completing my required schooling, I stayed in Alameda, California, for about six months before I was told to go to the nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise. Life on an aircraft carrier is like living on a floating city. Like any other job in the civilian world, if you do your job well and promptly, everyone was happy.

I did not see any actual combat, because the Enterprise was out at sea. The aircraft completing missions took off from the carrier. Some returned in bad condition, but they were home safe and sound. Even though we did not see combat, I felt proud that I was completing my assigned tasks to the best of my ability. My most memorable experience was in our port of call in Tasmania. The locals met the ship and took several of us home to eat, sight-see, and talk! The family I went home with treated me very well. We ate wonderful home-cooked meals, did a lot of guided sight-seeing, and just having a comfortable bed was great. 

My wife and mother wrote a lot of letters and we were able to call home some during long deployments. The letters acted as a link between my wife, son, and parents. My wife wrote many more letters than I did, which was a source of support for me. This, along with my faith in God, got me through rough times.  

My last duty command was under Captain Hilt, who was in command of the USS South Carolina (CGN 37). He was a good leader, in that our whole command received the Enlisted Surface Warfare Service Award. My wife worked with Mrs. Hilt in the Wives Club and as an ombudsman! Being on my last deployment to the home port of Norfolk was bittersweet, as I knew my discharge from the Navy was near. I truly loved my service in the U.S. Navy. We were welcomed home by a huge mass of people who met the ship. The community was a great welcome, too.

Upon my discharge from the Navy, I worked for three nuclear power plants as an instructor for new operators. I also spent several years employed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I did many on-site inspections of nuclear power plants in many states. I would have stayed in the Navy longer, but deployments were often long and in-port time was not nearly long enough. One of my deployments lasted 13 months. All in all, I was very proud of being a sailor in our U.S. Navy. I felt I was doing my part to protect our country!”

-Ronald Max Bailey

LifeBio is an engagement program that captures cherished memories and lasting legacies through storytelling. Since launching in 2000, LifeBio has helped 20,000 people tell their life stories through autobiographical tools and services for all levels of care. LifeBio uses technologies as mediums to help individual document their stories in an easy and unique way such as tablets, web cams, and audio and video equipment. LifeBio has been a partner with Front Porch since 2009. For more details, check out LifeBio’s Impact Story on the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing (FPCIW) website.

Front Porch Leads the Pack in Innovation!

Reposted from Life.Bio
LIFEBIO HELPS PEOPLE... AND SENIOR COMMUNITIES!
For over a decade, www.LifeBio.com has helped tens of thousands of people tell their life stories using our online platform, which guides the user through a series of biographical questions, then allows the individual to create his or her very own book. In addition to serving the consumer, however, it has been the great privilege of LifeBio to assist senior living communities across the nation capture and preserve the biographical information of their residents, which staff and volunteers can use to focus their person-centered care plans to meet the unique needs of each individual.

FRONT PORCH KICKS IT UP A NOTCH...
Recently, LifeBio received some feedback from Front Porch (www.frontporch.net) explaining how they used the LifeBio tool kit in an entirely new and innovative way! Project Specialist Julie Santos from the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing (FPCIW) shared the following:

"Today we had our employee appreciation event. As a nice touch, we incorporated LifeBio Story Cards around the table to enable some engaging conversations we normally would not have with our colleagues. At our table, for example, we had conversations about vacations. Following that we had a question about gardening, and we stuck with that topic for a while.

Then, the conversation turned around when someone talked about how her neighborhood growing up used to be an olive grove. I also heard feedback from another table. They had conversations about their favorite memories of their siblings. There was plenty of chatter in the room!"

TAKE A LOOK FOR YOURSELF:
Julie also shared these beautiful photos from the day’s events, and the attention to detail that was put into making the occasion extra special for everyone involved is evident:
WE CALL IT "SHARING DEEPLY"
What a wonderful and creative way to get to know the people you work with! After all, you SHARE over forty hours per week with these folks. Shouldn’t you get to know them? 

LifeBio.com applauds the network of Front Porch communities for thinking outside the box – and for deeply sharing not just with their residents, but with one another, too!

LEARN MORE:Read FPCIW’s Impact Story on LifeBio!

For more information about www.LifeBio, our products and services, please contact us at:
 info@lifebio.com
Or call 1-866-543-3246
Or visit www.lifebio.com


LifeBio.com empowers millions of people to share their life story, memories, pictures, and experiences before it's too late. LifeBio.com has the premier online Autobiography and Biography template to use to write and complete a life story that is ready to print. We help people build relationships through life stories.
 

Making a Memoir a Reality

At 87, she wrote her life story and created a family treasure

By Edmund O. Lawler for Next Avenue

When my mother was a teenager, she got to meet the most famous athlete of the 20th century.

It was 1947. Babe Ruth, by then stricken with throat cancer, granted my mom and her sister a private audience in the beautiful Manhattan apartment he shared with his wife, Claire. The girls, accompanied by their mother, were awestruck as the now-retired Sultan of Swat autographed photos and chatted amiably with them about baseball in a painfully raspy voice. My mom didn’t have the heart to tell the Babe, who would die a year later, that she was a fan of her hometown Chicago White Sox.

My mom was celebrating her recent high school graduation with a train trip from Chicago to New York where she rode the coasters at Coney Island, beheld the Statue of Liberty and dined at the Stork Club. The visit with Babe was a complete surprise — arranged by her businessman father and one of his confidants in New York City.

This memorable trip is among the many delicious moments captured in a self-published 2011 memoir written by my mom, Jean Oliver Lawler, for her 12 grandchildren. In good health at age 87 and calling a senior living center outside Chicago home, she titled her 115-page book How Do You Eat an Elephant? (One Bite at a Time). It’s an aphorism she often summoned to buck up her six children when facing a daunting challenge — and a motivational mantra she relied on to persist in the writing and publication of the memoir.

Her Memoir: a Challenging Endeavor

Mom was a nurse, a teacher and a homemaker, but never a writer. She didn’t use a computer. Still, she had a life story to tell.

Not long after my father died, she enrolled in a creative writing class at the community center near her home. The instructor’s feedback on her initial drafts was blunt.

Memoir writing was first and foremost personal, he told her. Facts are important, but what makes them interesting is how you feel about the facts. Her initial drafts lacked in this area, he admonished.

For further guidance, Mom read several memoirs, including some written by her friends. She found she was bored by autobiographies that unfolded chronologically, much preferring memoirs featuring vividly poignant vignettes from throughout the writer’s life.

One day, she bumped into a lifelong friend in a diner. Lorraine had just written her own memoir and had a copy in her car. She encouraged my mom to press on in her quest and offered to transcribe any handwritten material. Mom was inspired, and Lorraine made good on her offer.

In addition, Mom was coached and critiqued by her granddaughter (my niece) Moira Lawler, a gifted writer and editor. She implored my mother to write, write, write.

Mom spilled a series of engaging hand-written vignettes on to legal pads over the course of a year. But at some point, the project stalled. She was getting frustrated and feared her grandchildren would never get to read her memoir.

As a professional writer and editor, I’m an old hand at wrangling copy to get an article or an entire publication into print or online. So I stepped in to help.

A Natural Writer

As with any project, there were loose ends — in this case, computer files of transcribed chapters and a stack of handwritten chapters I needed to transcribe and edit. But I was struck by how well my mother expressed herself on the written page. Her writing was lovely and simply stated. She had an innate sense for plot. My role as an editor was minimal.

The memoir’s tone was largely celebratory — featuring vignettes of wonderful vacations, great friendships, a 57-year marriage and the achievements of her children. There were expressions of gratitude as well as stories about her grandparents and parents. It was filled with family lore that was new — not only to her grandchildren — but also to me. Interspersed throughout the pages were more than 70 photographs that illustrated her life’s special moments.

One chapter was titled “The Aunt and Uncle You Never Knew.” Sadly, it recounted the deaths of two of her children: an infant named Eileen Mary and 19-year-old son Danny, who died in a car accident. I’ve always admired Mom’s and Dad’s fortitude and faith in the face of the staggering loss of two children. The memoir, a family treasure, ensures that memories of her beloved Eileen Mary and Danny will live on in the next generation.

In the memoir’s conclusion, my mother offers some final advice for her grandchildren. “Top of my list is prayer,” she wrote, “God is there to guide you through life, if you ask.”

In reading and editing my mother’s memoir, I learned things about her life I never knew. She is inspiring me to write my own for the benefit of my two sons. Too much in life goes unsaid. A thoughtful and honest memoir can resolve some of the mystery.

Despite having made a living by writing — and almost always about someone other than me — the thought of penning my own memoir is daunting. But thanks to Mom, I know what to do. She taught me how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2017. All rights reserved.



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"Aging as an Art Form" at Wesley Palms

Residents tell inspiring stories of life-changing events 

Don McEvoy is a storyteller. As a former civil rights activist in the 1960s, minister, church pastor, author and personal friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Don has numerous stories to share about himself and his work.

But one of his passions is telling the stories of others –particularly stories of his fellow Wesley Palms residents. 

“During my eight years living here I’ve met scores of fascinating people,” Don said. “I’ve concluded that everyone, yes, everyone, has a fascinating story that needs to be preserved. You can’t go to dinner here without meeting someone with an interesting tale. That’s why I collected the ‘wisdom tales’ from my friends, each of whom has mastered the art of aging with grace and style.”

These stories are collected in Don’s latest book, Aging as an Art Form: Through the Eyes of Residents of Wesley Palms. The book contains 50 stories, experiences and life lessons either self-written or told to Don through interviews.

Among Don’s favorite stories are: a career minor league baseball player who barely missed being a New York Yankee; an aeronautical engineer who was the one of the first women to be accepted in an aeronautical engineering study project at New York University; musings of a concert violinist who after retirement needed to decide what to do with her vintage Italian violin made in 1695. Other stories include a resident who until the age of 14 lived in a traveling sawmill/lumber camp with her parents and drew inspiration from their hard work to become a doctor, a celebrated surgeon who after losing his vision, rededicated his life to working with the blind. Don’s book relates numerous stories of love, tragedy, celebration and hope from artists, athletes, musicians, professionals and home makers.

“All of these stories give the reader insight about who these people really are and how their experiences, passions, triumphs and disappointments shaped their lives,” Don said. “If there is an overall theme it would be perseverance and courage. Every one of these stories points to how the story teller’s life experiences has contributed to him or her aging gracefully.”

Read selected stories from Aging as an Art Form here. 

Editor’s note: Aging as an Art Form is available from Outskirts Press and Amazon.com. Proceeds from the book benefit the residents of Wesley Palms.