Well, it’s been four months of hard work, long hours, and one hell of a lot of learning. This is a first for each and every one of us, and what we’ve learned about planning an event of this magnitude and scope is simply staggering.
As I’m writing this, we’re down to just about 36 hours to go. thoughts are flying through my head almost faster than I can register them. Did we think of everything? Did we do everything we could to get the word out? What have we missed? Are people listening? Do they even care?
Well, it’s pretty much too late to worry about it. I’ll be in Austin, Texas on the South steps of the Capitol building at noon on Saturday even if it’s just my wife and I & a couple of close friends. We care. We have marches going in 13 other cities. Our volunteers and their families & friends there care.
We have been as high as 29 cities during this planning process, and we’re ending up with 13. That should probably feel a little disappointing, but overall not bad for 4 months work. We’ve hit roadblocks in some cities…conflicts with other events, some volunteers have been lost due to personal reasons, and in some cases the costs were just too high. Ironic, isn’t it, that the only ones with their hands out asking for money is the very government that we’re imploring to do a better job of taking care of our Veterans?
Bottom line: I’m damn proud of what we’ve managed to accomplish in such a short time. We’ve gotten endorsements from Congressmen, we’ve gotten a proclamation from the Governor of Ohio and at least six mayors, and we’ve managed to pull together an AMAZING team of volunteers that I hope to keep working with down the road. My heartfelt thank you goes out to each and every one of them.
I hope to see everyone who is reading this at one of our locations. The map is current, and it’s located here: https://www.vetsmarchonamerica.com/march-locations March On! ~Sledge
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