On Tuesday, May 21, about two dozen veterans from Arizona who fought in World War II boarded a jetliner at Sky Harbor International Airport for Washington, D.C., in what for them can be characterized as a bittersweet trip. These living pieces of history, part of "The Greatest Generation," are being hosted by Honor Flight Arizona, part of the National Honor Flight Network. The program, begun nearly a decade ago, pays the travel expenses for World War II veterans and their "guardians" -- volunteers who pay their own way to assist those who need it on a tour of some of the nation's war memorials, including their own World War II Memorial. The group also will dine with members of the current 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment "The Old Guard," soldiers who guard the Tomb of the Unknowns. Honor Flight Arizona operates completely on donations, both corporate and private, and is striving to take every one of the state's World War II veterans who is able to see the memorial to the war they fought in and many of their comrades died in. Next week, you can be part of that effort. The Arrowhead AMC cinemas in Glendale is showing "Honor Flight" the movie about the program, one time only at 5:30 p.m. to help raise funds for Honor Flight. One showing at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 28. The film is being shown in Mesa the next day. Addresses and other information for both theaters are below. The only catch is that you have to buy your tickets online. You can order tickets here or visit http://www.honorflightthemovie.com/see-the-film. Enjoy the show!

And if you are not doing anything Thursday, May 23 in the early afternoon, head down to Sky Harbor. The boys will be returning from what could be their last mission.

AMC Arrowhead 14
(7700 W. Arrowhead Towne Center, Glendale, AZ)
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
5:30 pm

AMC Mesa Grande 24
(1647 South Stapley, Mesa, AZ)
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
5:30 pm

Admission: $10.00
 

To purchase tickets, to go:
Glendale: http://www.tugg.com/events/4050
Mesa: http://www.tugg.com/events/4051

If you are a Surprise-area resident with a reliable vehicle and have a couple hours a week to spare, the city's Senior Center would like to hear from you!

The Senior Center is recruiting volunteers to drive seniors from their homes to the Senior Center for lunch and activities.

Vehicles and training are provided. 

Volunteer van drivers are required to have a valid, clean driver’s license and submit to fingerprinting and background checks. Shifts are 4 to 6 hours; once or twice per week; depending on availability.

For further information or to receive an application, please call 623-222-1500 or visit the Surprise Senior Center, 15832 N. Hollyhock St.

Time is at a premium for many of us. This is an opportunity to serve those who lack something we might sometimes take for granted -- a set of wheels.

A group of animal shelters is launching a push to have more pets spayed and neutered to reduce the incidence of homeless animals in Maricopa County.

The Fix.Adopt.Save program announced Tuesday, April 16, by the shelters will provide 44,000 free spay/neuter surgeries, according to officials with the Arizona Animal Welfare League. It also will provide a boost to efforts to prevent pet euthanasia, a course that shelter officials say often occurs when they cannot find homes for unwanted pets.

The program will last 3 years.

If you have a pet that needs to be spayed or neutered and have difficulty paying for the operation, this may be an excellent opportunity. Contact one of the eight shelters taking part or give to any of the foundations supporting this effort. They include: Altered Trails, the Arizona Animal Welfare League, the Animal Defense League of Arizona, the Arizona Humane Society, HALO Animal Rescue, Healing Hearts, Maricopa County Animal Care & Control, and PACC-911. The foundations are: the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust and PetSmart Charities.

The newspaper columns I read in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks were some of the most stirring I can recall. One in particular struck me from the Miami Herald. I cannot recall the writer, but I remember his message to those who carried out the carnage. The United States lost big that day, but our resolve not to be beaten by terrorists was "steeled."

I thought of that Monday night as my wife and I watched the news coverage of the Boston explosions. This attack will spur new vigiliance, maybe new protocols for spectators at open-air events with no single or set controlled points of entry. But one thing it cannot do is deter Americans from living their lives, pursuing their passions, whether it be marathon running, visiting art festivals or taking in a ballgame.

Once that happens, those who carry out these incidents have won.

Law-enforcement has numerous plans and measures in place to deter attacks. But law enforcement cannot be everywhere at once. With our freedom perhaps  comes a little more responsibility to be aware of our surroundings, take note when something does not seem right, and report it. It may seem inconvenient when one is supposed to be relaxing and enjoying an event, but it is an inconvenience worth living with.

On Saturday evening, my wife and I were reminded of just how beautiful, how idyllic, the weather in Arizona is during springtime. We also had a chance to enjoy one of our favorite activities, taking in a spring training baseball game at Camelback Ranch in Glendale between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox. It's a great combination of teams, since both of us were born in the greater Chicago area and she was raised there (I being a childhood product of the Los Angeles and Phoenix areas). So, there you have it -- a great combination of geographical ties to which we could claim as we settled in for the game under a clear periwinkle sky and temperatures near 70 degrees with light winds. Oh...how nice that sounds after nearly a quarter century in metropolitan New York, the last of which saw that area set a record for January snowfall.

This is a great time of the year to see a spring game. The teams are basically in final tuneup mode for the regular season. Dodgers manager Don Mattingly had been quoted Sunday on the team's website as saying that he was going with his expected Opening Day lineup this week.

As they were preparing to get the game under way, I was on the field, in front of the Los Angeles dugout, looking for some pregame photo ops, when an historical one came along. The ceremonial first pitch was delivered by former Dodgers great Don Newcombe.

A winner of multiple awards in his career, which peaked in the 1950s,  Mr. Newcombe is a former National League MVP and Cy Young award winner, honors he claimed in the same season.

What a treat...I could almost hear Terrance Mann, voiced by actor James Earl Jones saying in the movie "Field of Dreams," saying, "It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."

"It's cancer."

With these words, Alyson Cline's life and the lives of thousnads of others have been changed permanently. Some, like Alison, have survived. Many others have not. The stories of cancer survivors come to the forefront each year at this time as the American Cancer Society sponsors its annual Relay for Life, an event to raise money for cancer research, treatment and support and awareness about the disease.

According to the National Cancer Institute's 2013 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer for 2013, overall cancer death rates continued to decline in the United States among both men and women, among all major racial and ethnic groups, and for all of the most common cancer sites, including lung, colon and rectum, female breast, and prostate. However, the report also shows that death rates continued to increase during the latest time period (2000 through 2009) for melanoma of the skin (among men only) and for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and uterus.

Relay of Life supporters, including Ms. Cline, will tell you that regardless of declines in certain cancers, the need to press the fight against the disease continues at a high level, and the relay is one prominent method of getting others involved.

There is still plenty of time to become a supporter for this year's event in Surprise, which will start 3 p.m., Saturday, April 6, at the Valley Vista High School Track Area, 15550 N. Parkview Place. A number of pre-relay events will be held earlier, beginning with the survivor brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Find out more by logging on to either http://www.surpriseaz.gov/Archive.aspx?ADID=5974 or http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?pg=entry&fr_id=50822 -- the main sites are surpriseaz.gov and http://www.relayforlife.org/index, respectively. You can also obtain information by phone at 623-826-4939.

I don’t stop very often from my work routine to ruminate over something. With two newspapers to fill weekly with meaningful, impactful items, I barely have any free time. Ask anyone who has tried to call me, tried to get me to come out and cover a story or just wanted to bend my ear for awhile on an issue – something I wish I had more time for. After all, the citizens of Sun City West earned their place in this community through hard work and deserve to have that from their local news editor.

As I said, I don’t usually stop to write something like this. After nearly 35 years in reporting and editing, it’s not easy to find something that really makes an impression on me.

This item does.

On Feb. 19, when the Sheriff’s Posse of Sun City West recognized its long-serving volunteers – let me repeat that – volunteers, as in no financial compensation, just doing it for love of community or desire to stay active in a positive way. There were awards for 10 years of service given Rosemary Abrami and 15 years of service for captain and former commander Frank Adelman and Harold Stern for 15 years of service. These time periods are significant and deserve full commendation from the good citizens of Sun City West who the Posse looks out for.

But, as noteworthy as they are – remember, these individuals were at least 55 when they started and if they were that young have been doing this while they could just as easily been kicking back and enjoying nothing but the good life provided through the Recreation Centers of Sun City West – they were still far short of what Richard Nardizzi has given the Posse and this community.

When Cmmdr. Al Bedenk trotted out the awards, he presented Mr. Nardizzi with a certificate recognizing him for 30 years of service. Not 20, not 25, but 30 years.

In today’s world, it’s not often we see commitments like this. But Mr. Nardizzi turned in those three decades, and appears ready for more.

February was volunteer month in Sun City West – a time to recognize all who serve the community with no return. The Posse already has thanked Richard Nardizzi. If you happen to see him around, do the same.

As I watched from my New Jersey neighborhood that clear September morning 11 years ago, the smoke rising from the Twin Towers, many thoughts ran through my head. "How could this have happened? Who were these people and how did they get past our security and strike such a devestating blow?"

In the hours that followed, in the newsroom where I worked at the time, we learned of a group of passengers aboard United Flight 93 who had fought with terrorists in a failed attempt to retake their hijacked jetliner. What might have seemed like failure was really succes since the hijackers' bid to crash the fuel-laden craft into the U.S. Capitol or perhaps even the White House, ended in a field in Pennsylvania.

If ever there were heroes, it was these passengers, as well as the scores of first responders who plunged into the attempt to rescue people at 1 and 2 World Trade Center, as well as the Pentagon, and who later searched for survivors among the rubble, an effort that time has revealed has impacted the health years later of some of those rescue, police and fire personnel.

Later that week, I wondered what my friends and former classmates here in Arizona were thinking, as well as those in other parts of the country. Did they know what it must have felt like to live within a half hour of this tragedy, watching it unfold. It was one thing to see it on TV, another to gaze toward lower Manhattan and know what was going on. 

I remember the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks played in New York that October, facing the Yankees in the World Series, and brought messages of condolence and encouragement to New York City. This past Sunday night, I watched television news accounts of the memorials being held in Tempe and other Grand Canyon State locations.

It was a lift, and should be for all of us, that these memorials are still going strong more than a decade after the attacks. We all should remember these acts, perhaps remember how we felt then, and use those memories to maintain our resolve that America stays forever the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Don't worry, this is not going to be another column of analysis on last week's historic Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act.

But after watching reporting and analysis segments on both CNN and Fox, I came away with a reaffirmation that we as citizens and consumers of health care have a certain responsibility to ourselves and our fellow Americans to try to keep costs down.

Those of us who use the emergency room as a long-term care facility cannot continue to do so. These visits by folks who cannot pay for their care are costing the rest of us far too much. The same arguement can be, and has been, made about illegal immigrants who obtain care at U.S. hospitals. Of course, this is not a call to do the inhumane thing and turn away those in need of coverage. It IS support for the kind of immigration controls that will keep noncitizens without the ability to pay out of America's borders and from being more of a drain than they already are on U.S. taxpayers.

But back to the idea of legal immigrants overusing the emergency room.

Many employers are now opting to link up with a healh carrier that offers financial incentives for workers who obtain wellness exams, certain tests, and other services designed to catch or prevent problems before they develop into expensive ones. Other employers are using packages carriers now provide that includes a high deductible. This practice of putting more of a financial burden on the employee is designed to discourage over use of visits to the doctor.

The Fire District of Sun City West recently enacted a budget that included health coverage with a higher deductible and encouraged workers to obtain preventative or wellness exalms. The deal with Cigna kept what would have been a 17.3 percent rate increase for that item to a 4.36 percent hike, according to Accounting Supervisor Coaleen Poland.

As anyone who's been to an emergency room knows, they are no fun at all. When I was around 12, I was hit by a car while riding a bicycle. About 10 years ago, I was in an auto accident that required closure of a head wound. Even with all a facility does to make its emergency patients comfortable, the ER experience is painful and anxiety-producing.

All the more reason to avoid using them as care facilities and practice responsible health care.

And, for those disagreeing with the concept of being required to buy health care or any other aspect of the recently upheld law: put pressure on legislators to change those rules or take that disatisfaction to the voting booth in November.

This entry is not so much an intent to offer my thoughts as it is to gather yours.

As you may be aware, a private developer is proposing a new shopping center on the property occupied by the long-vacant Sundome entertainment venue. This project would be anchored by a grocery store intended to cater to Sun City West clientele. The developer, Brown Grace 6, met last week with representatives of the RCSCW and PORA to update them on the project. However, the meeting produced little, if any news.

A statement from the RCSCW said essentially that the project was still planned and that Brown Grace was awaiting corporate approvals but offered no elaboration.

This inactivity may give SCW residents an opportunity that they can take advantage of to let the RCSCW, PORA or the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, what they think of Brown Grace 6's idea and what should be done with the property. After all, a project embraced by residents is one likely to meet with economic success, right?

So, what are your thoughts?

Should the property be developed as a shopping center? If not, what would you like to see? Another type of commercial development? Condominiums? An upscale restaurant? Or, as one woman suggested to me, a mini-casino?

What would you like on the Sundome property?

If you live in Sun City West, you came to retire and enjoy the years of missing out on office deadlines, making sales quotas, repairing machines, making automobiles or whatever else in the myriad occupations you may have filled to EARN your time here. This project will affect your community, perhaps bringing with it more traffic or activity or something you would prefer to avoid. On the other hand, you may welcome the ripple effects of a new commercial venue that will generate much-needed tax revenues.

Your voice, while but one by itself, can be an influential tool when combined with those of your neighbors. You have seen what a groundswell of public opinion can accomplish through defeat of this spring's bylaws amendment proposals.

Now it may be time to gather those voices again for the community you love.

I have been meaning to write about this since a few weekends ago, when I had yet another one of these experiences. I am sure most of you, too, have had one as well.

During a trip to an area department store, I was browsing the men's sport shirts. While considering purchases, I was taking items off the racks, examining them, sometimes putting on up to my chest to get a glance, checking the price tag. I am not a complicated shopper. I usually know pretty quick what I like, and if the price is right or I really need it, I buy.

But this is a process that I find easier without distractions. Much less so than, say, eating dinner with my wife or talking to her as the two of us consider a jewelry purchase. Still, I have experienced interruptions during these times by children who are running around, shouting, screaming, stamping their feet or drumming their fists on tables.

Now, before you say, 'Please, kids are going to be kids -- let them be, and stop complaining,' let me define what I am referring to in this post. It is not the occasional shout or noise or sudden run down a store aisle by a young child. It is the type of behavior that becomes not only an annoyance but perhaps even a safety threat. For example, a young child, running at full speed, nearly barreling into a shopper, maybe even an elderly person, who decides to suddenly jump out of the way or gets run into by this youngster. Or the child who shrieks or shouts repeatedly as you're trying to enjoy a meal.

Restaurants, department stores and the like are not day-care centers. I believe these incidents are not the product of "a child simply being a child" but a parent who either refuses to discipline or does not know how.

Now, my wife has lovingly reminded me on a number of occasions that raising a child is a full-time job, a challenging one at at that, and that should be understood when raising the issue of child behavior. Parenting is a nonstop proposition.

But there are plenty of well-behaved children around, and I believe they are that way because their mothers and fathers instilled boundaries of acceptable behavior at a young age, and that discipline has carried over to their formative years.

I have heard someone say, "If you cannot handle the demands of raising a child, don't have them in the first place."

I do not know if I would go that far, but wonder if parents should step it up if they see a problem developing. It does not seem to be too much to ask for those wishing a relaxing dinner or an "uneventful" shopping experience.

For many years, my brother and I have used the phrase, “That ball still hasn’t landed,” to indicate when one of us thought someone had hit one out of the park with a decision, an act, or some type of activity or accomplishment.

Well, the ball that the Surprise West Valley Veterans Committee and the city of Surprise smoked out of Surprise Stadium May 26 traveled a long way before it came back to earth.

“We Remember the Fallen” was billed as a heartfelt ceremony to honor the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice serving this nation in uniform.

And it did just that.

A mix of older veterans and younger ones paid tribute soldiers of wars long ago and ones still being fought. Ceremonies and music were performed at various intervals.

It was done to honor the fallen, but organizers also wanted to educate the public, distributing mini handbills on topics such as the story of “Taps,” and the meaning behind the way the American flag is folded. It was also intended to depart from past practice of a festive Memorial Day event in the city. As committee member Bill Lipscomb said, "Memorial Day is not a celebration; it's a funeral."

As the Gold Star families, those who have lost military members to death in service to the country, stood along the first- and third-base lines, I was reminded that while each fallen soldier represents a sacrifice in service to America, he or she also was a brother, father, sister or mother who will never come home again.

I read an op-ed piece four or five years ago that talked about how the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had robbed the country of many of the best it had to offer.

Recalling the displays of disrespect and criticism that many of our returning Vietnam veterans faced coming back from that conflict reminded me of something that was mentioned during the “Fallen” ceremony – these men and women who died in all America’s wars did so carrying out orders, doing what their country asked them to do.

This week, we observed the anniversary of one of the most well-known operations that saw many American military lives lost in the cause of freedom. D-Day, or "Operation Overlord," as it was named, secured the ground that enabled the Allies to begin their push across Europe, wresting control of lands held by Hitler's Germany and beginning the end of World War II.

We surely can remember not only each Memorial Day, but throughout the year, what our fallen veterans have given for us.