I Am REALLY Proud

Anyone who knows me knows that for the most part I feel like I am living on the footsteps of hell here in Georgia. Stereotypes, traffic, weird accents, you name it, I complain about it. We moved here because of a job transfer and are always looking for the right opportunity to move back out.

But today things are little different. Today I can forget about the smog, the bad traffic, the poor planning and leadership that has led us to a record breaking water crisis and I can sit back and I smile at my fellow Georgians.

See, there is this radio station called Q100 and their morning show, The Bert Show, had this crazy idea about 3 weeks ago that we should get together and write thank you notes for all of the military who are overseas and will be away from their families and friends at Thanksgiving. The premise was simple: the holidays suck when you aren't at home. So let's try to bring a little bit of home to our troops.

They figured out that there are currently 375,000 people deployed all over the world. They put the word out and local restuarant chain, Taco Mac, volunteered their restuarants as a drop-off point for the letters and a wharehouse and their employees to sort and ship the letters off. Pitney Bowes stepped in and offered to cover the complete cost of mailing the letters.

Originally the deadline for the letters was Friday, October 26th. On Tuesday, the 30th, they announced that they had received 300,000 letters. Incredible. But not incredible enough. We needed one letter for EVERY service member. So the call went out again: keep writing, keep bringing your letters to Taco Mac until Friday, November 2nd.

This morning they announced that not only did they get the 75,000 letters that they needed, they had more. Now we had extras in case some don't make it, or to send letters to our service men and women who are stateside, but still far from their homes.

The residents of the state of Georgia got together and wrote more than 375,000 letters with no political agenda, no say over where their letters went and no expectation of a response. Georgians wrote more than 375,000 letters for our service men and women just to say thanks.

Wow doesn't even begin to cover it.

Thanks Georgia. I won't be so hard on you now. Today, I am proud to be a resident.

And for the record, yes. I wrote letters and dropped them off at Taco Mac.

Thank you to every member of the military. Because of you I have the freedom to write this post. Stay safe, have a happy Thanksgiving and I hope you get to come home soon. Oh, when you get back home, come on down to Georgia. It's actually pretty nice here.

--E