Life is always full of surprises. Two months ago I was informed my husband has Stage 4 Cancer. His life expectancy is between one and six months. My husband worked delivering newspapers at the Ground Zero Area before and after the disaster. Three years ago he had skin cancer removed from his face. Due to No Insurance this went undiagnosed for a long time. The skin cancer appeared almost as soon as he become disabled and stopped working in 2003. My Husband began his career delivering newspapers to the offices in the World Trade Center in 1973, he is also a Veteran.
I have been married to him half of my life. We have raised our three children together. I am so angry over his impending death. I feel so ashamed at myself for believing our Government that the Ground Zero Area was safe for workers to return. I am furious over the lack of Special Services available to former area workers for Ground Zero. He told me the dust was so thick it effected his vision and slowed down. I washed his clothes everyday to get rid of the smell. I encouraged him to return to work and forge a living for us. Now I am helping him to prepare to die. Here is a letter I have emailed to Senator Bob Casey. Whether or not I receive any help is a mystery.
Carolyn Waugh-Tandy
8552 Bumble Bee Way
Tobyhanna, PA 18466
October 23, 2009
Dear Senator Casey:
Three years ago my husband had skin cancer removed from his face. My husband was a worker from the Ground Zero area in New York City. He had always delivered the New York Daily News to the Twin Towers and continued to service the area after the disaster. My husband became disabled in 2003 and stopped working. He was collecting a Veterans Pension for a couple of years before Social Security declared him disabled and awarded him full Social Security Disability Payments. I had contacted you when this Pension was terminated because the Veterans Administration wanted reimbursement of six months of benefits- We paid the $6700 from money awarded through Social Security. My husband was stationed in Germany during 1970-1972 and has an honorable discharge. He is from a family of Veterans: 2 brothers & a Father who served in WWII.
Currently my husband is in Stage 4 preparing to die from cancer. There is no Chemo that will help him. There is no cure since he was diagnosed with this in August 2009. His body is riddled with tumors including giant tumors in his lungs. I still do not know how I will pay his medical bills and afford to give him the Funeral he wants. I am asking for help from your office- 4 yrs ago I attempted to sign up for the Medical watch group in New York for 9-11 workers. I missed the sign up date by one day.
It seems so unfair we were told the air was safe & the workers should return. The dust was so thick my husband couldn’t see thus slowing his delivers. His clothes reeked of foul odor - I washed them every day! I sent off to work - I encouraged him to move forward and provide a living for us. I now must have the courage of my decisions and ask for financial help during this most difficult time.
My husband is Thomas Tandy
Thank You-
Respectfully;
Tell the Gang of 6: Give back your dirty insurance money
Have you heard about the six senators who are out to kill health care reform? Of course, that's not how they'd phrase it. Sens. Baucus, Bingaman, Conrad, Enzi, Grassley and Snowe say they're striving for "bi-partisan compromise." But what they're actually doing is working to make sure reform won't include a public option or mandatory employer-based insurance - two key policies needed for effective reform. There are 100 members of the Senate, but these six, inexplicably, seem to be holding all the cards when it comes to health care. So you probably won't be surprised to learn that all six have taken a huge amount of money from the health insurance industry and pharma - more than $3 million between them. These six senators -- who, by the way, represent only 2.74% of Americans between them -- are writing bad policy, and they're doing it while they take money from the very companies who stand to benefit the most. I just signed a petition to tell the "Gang of 6" to give back every dime of their dirty insurance money. I hope you will, too. Please have a look and take action. http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/gang_of_6/?r_by=5220-1983015-GiBIiLx&rc=confemail Daily action is our apple a day. We can't let up. Lobby money and anti-reform money is pouring into this fight. Republicans have announced a plan to spend at least 1 million dollars to kill reform using ad campaigns during the three week Congressional break. Please take 5-10 minutes for action every day as we battle for our lives on this issue.Thanks -
Couple's travel problems are solved
Trucking company will help Vermont duo and their dogs get to Florida
Pocono Record Writer
July 21, 2009
BRODHEADSVILLE — Solving transportation problems is how he makes a living.
So when Jim Barrett heard about the plight of the Knight family — the couple walking from Vermont to Florida and resting in the Poconos over the weekend — he figured it was a problem tailor-made for him.
Barrett is providing personal transportation for the Knights to get them to Florida to keep the couple from having to walk another 1,100-plus miles to the Tallahassee area, where the couple needs to relocate to find work.
"It's what we do every day, handle transportation problems," Barrett, owner of Dunmore-based trucking company Road Scholar Transport, said Monday as helped pack up the growing belongings of Frank and Terrie Knight at the Silver Valley Campsite outside of Brodheadsville. "We always say there's no transportation problem we can't solve. We're testing that now."
The Knights stopped in the Poconos on Wednesday in the midst of what they figured would be a three-month quest to walk from Burlington, Vt., to Florida, so that Frank Knight, 45, could find work when the harvest season for citrus fruit rolled around.
A migrant worker, he lost out on a job in his home state and was told there would be work for him in Florida. With no car, very little money and no bus that would take him because of the couple's two dogs they refused to leave behind, they started walking on July 1 and made it to Brodheadsville.
But just two weeks into their journey, they ran into problems. Terrie, already three months pregnant, had developed large blisters on her feet that made it very hard to walk. The dogs the two had in tow — Maya and Sweetie — needed an extended break.
They also lost their walking companions, a couple that were making the trip with them, around Honesdale.
Frank started to worry that the promise he made to his wife may not come true.
"I promised her I was going to get her to Florida, and I was doing everything I could to keep that," he said. "My grandfather always told me, if you can't keep your promises, you can't keep anything."
So they stopped for what they thought would be two nights at the campsite, just to rest.
But when the story got out about the Knights and their planned trip, the Poconos responded, according to Silver Valley Campsite co-owner Linda Sosko.
Charitable well-wishers came out of the woodwork, driving up to the family and dropping off extra dog food, money, camping equipment or groceries to make the trip a little easier.
"They were besieged," Sosko said of the seemingly constant phone calls that came into the camp.
"Even people that didn't have money came in to donate supplies as small as Band-Aids. Anything they could give to make the trip easier."
Then came the best news — Barrett's local trucking company was working on a way to get the couple to Florida.
It wasn't easy. The original thought was to load them up on a truck heading that way, but the couple and their dogs wouldn't fit in a truck, and it's illegal to let them ride in a trailer.
Buses and planes were out because of the dogs, so when it looked like every avenue was about to be exhausted, Barrett arranged for his son Matt and another Road Scholar driver to just drive them to the Sunshine State in his own vehicle.
"I'd be a liar to myself if I said I couldn't solve this transportation problem," said Barrett, of Clarks Summit.
The Knights gladly accepted the lift, and will now make it to Florida about two months earlier than they thought they would.
The couple said their intention was never to get gifts from anyone. That's why they're going to Florida, so that they wouldn't have to sign up for welfare and "live off the taxpayer," Frank said.
But they said they were extremely lucky they stopped over in the Poconos.
"It's been a roller coaster, just crazy," Frank, 43, said. "It's like we had a hundred friends we didn't even know."
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090721/NEWS/907210320
A Big Thank You goes out to Jim Barrett the owner of Road Scholar Transport of Dunmore, PA and everyone who helped this couple out!
Jobless man, pregnant wife and two dogs hit the road looking for work
July 17, 2009
BRODHEADSVILLE — There was no work in Frank Knight's home state of Vermont, but he had a sure-fire job waiting for him in Florida by the fall.
The only problem was he didn't have a car. Or money for plane or train tickets for him and his wife, Terrie, who is three months pregnant. Or family to help out.
A bus was out of the question — if they traveled that way, he'd have to leave behind his two young Siberian huskies, Maya and Sweetie.
"I'd die before I left these dogs behind," Frank Knight, 43, said.
"So would I," Terrie Knight, 45, agreed.
So they did the only thing they could do.
They started walking.
Two weeks after the couple left Burlington, Vt., they've made about 500 miles, both on foot and picking up rides. They and their two dogs finally rested Wednesday and Thursday nights at the Silver Valley Campsite near Brodheadsville.
Frank Knight, who works as a migrant farm worker, said they travel anywhere from 30 to 70 miles a day, hoping to make it to Florida by mid-September for the citrus-picking season.
"That's all we can do, is walk to the work," he said. "People forget, in the old days, in the Old West, in the Great Depression, this is what people did. And it's what we have to do."
Things have gone from bad to worse for the couple this year. Frank had been employed by a carnival company, but he was laid off in February when the company was traveling through Maryland.
He was forced to go back home to Vermont — only the carnival company had a rule to take back laid off employees to the state where they were hired, so they were taken to Florida.
They walked much of the Appalachian Trail back to Vermont for two months, only to find out the farming jobs in Vermont — including one he had been promised — had dried up because he couldn't get back in time.
Then he got the work offer in Florida, so he and his wife started back out on the road, again on foot, hoping a car or two along the way will help out with a ride.
"As much as this is to get work, it's also a test," Frank Knight said. "I want to see how nice people still are out there."
They haven't been terribly lucky so far in Pennsylvania, which, along with New York, he said are the two hardest states to walk through because there are so few side roads that lead anywhere, and they can't walk on interstates.
They've only been picked up for rides twice so far after getting seven rides through New York.
Terrie has developed some nasty blisters on her feet, but said she's able to "wrap them up and keep going."
Plus, they've lost their traveling companions, two friends who also were making the walking trip with them, but took off in Honesdale while the Knights were sleeping in a tent next to them.
"So if you see a couple walking along the road with an orange tent on their backs and they don't have two dogs," Terrie said, "that's probably them."
Money is an issue. Frank Knight says they live day-by-day, and everything they own is on their backs.
Actually, it's only on Frank's back. He doesn't allow his pregnant wife to carry anything other than dog food.
The money for the campsite was provided by workers at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Brodheadsville, where the couple wandered into Wednesday looking for help, according to church officials.
Workers at the campsite then took the couple grocery shopping Thursday morning.
The two don't have family they could contact because of arguments on both of their sides of the families.
"This trip is by the grace of God," Frank Knight said. "It depends on the kindness of people along the way. Sometimes we have it, sometimes we don't."
There is still another 1,100 miles to go. One way or the other, Frank Knight said, they're going to get there.
"I know people think we're insane," he said. "A teacher who picked us up in New York said that to us, but said 'I admire you, at least you're not sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.' This is all we can do, so we have to do it."
This Memorial Day please keep the family of Bobby Enloe in your thoughts & prayers. This family has been searching for answers about their loved one for too many years.
“Bobby's family is searching for information to put things to rest. In 1951 A plane went down off the coast of Alaska, in a chain of Islands. My brother was supose to be on that plane. It took almost two weeks to find the plane and it's passengers. At that time the Navy personel informed us that my brother was the Radio Man on that plane. That they had all deceased. At the same time the Alaskan Times News Paper Published a report that Two flares were seen, on two different occations, From that crash sight. Proving somebody was alive. The Navy denied that this was true. They sent the sealed casket with an honor guard, Inssisting that his body was in there. My father managed to pull strings to open this casket. Finding only a uniform layed out, and his cap: Absolutly no physical body to be seen. This has left us wondering if he had been the one too had sent the flares up, at the sight of the crash. Three months before this all had happened. He had been on leave. Visiting with the family. My father was in question of what was going on, due to his behavior. The morning he left, to return to duty. He told my mother he would not be back. Raising more concern about what was going on. At that time my father asked him about UFO'S , and what he knew. His responce was; I can't tell you, But if I could. It would curl your hair! If anyone has any information on these events or can lead me to the truth. It would change a great deal for my family. I have filed a Freedom of Information Act. And Was led to a dead end. His files no longer existed. As if he never were to exist.”
http://www.myspace.com/472680008
I am the wife of a Veteran who watched as her husband loose his VA Disability Pension & was forced to repay six months of benefits. I wrote too many unanswered letters to authorities. I found the story above heart wrenching and I have taken up their cause. They can be contacted through the website mentioned.
Thank You & God Bless You All For Fighting For Our Freedom!
