As I sit home I feel hopeless. Helpless to do anything for my fellow marines, for my fellow man.

I am a proud Air Force brat (later Marine). I'm proud because I had a father that made it home from Korea and later Vietnam, He always came home with gifts and trinkets he had hand-made by the natives from the different worlds he explored.

My first gift was a dollhouse made of bamboo and all the tiny furnishings were made of budweiser cans. My mother would joke and say, "Daddy must have missed you real bad and got drunk".

When my father retired he moved our family to upstate New York. He had chose here instead of the battlefield he grew up in, in the Bronx. We grew up in the Northern Adirondacks just this side of the Canadian border.

We visited all the now closed theme parks: Storytown, Frontiertown, Santa's Workshop, Captain Kid Land. Even Park Safari and Man and His World in Canada. The Expos Stadium in the summer after the summer baseball league had finished. All funded by the local American Legion.

I remeber Community picnics, Booster Club bake sales, Church Dinners, Firemen Field Days, and let's not forget sneaking into the County Fairgrounds to watch the demolition derby and concerts and plain ride the rides and eat carnival food.

The Booster Club, the American Legion, The Elks Club, The Knights of Colombus, The Masons, The Shriners, The Lions Club, Catholic Charities, all that still exists today. Collecting donations for sick children, raising awareness to diseases like cancer and heart disease, having bake sales and church dinners to raise funds for the same. What isn't still there is, Community.

With the fall of the economy and the loss of guidance and government, we all seem oblivious. Oblivious to what has made us strong as a nation.

Community, community, community. I say it thrice in memory of what's not lost, simply forgotten.

It only takes one community to raise awareness make a stand and set the example. As one of the first colonies of the original thirteen colonies it's our communities responsibility, actual duty to lay stucture to how our great nation can look to itself for change, for resolve. The map has been laid out for us. From top to bottom , from beginning to end. Dare I say it's time to rebel once agian? Rebel for the Change we were promised or do we follow the map and leave the trail? The trail left behind by our founding fore-fathers. From the time that General Washington took refuge in the Kent Delord Home to fight for the country and government he longed for, demanded and later took charge of.

Later he became the first president and laid the ground. No longer colonized but United in State.

The wise words and guidance of great men like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The enginuity of master-minds of mind, spirit and God, like Benjamin Franklin and Tomas Edison.

It all started here, In this community. We have the technology, let's raise awareness and remind America why we are "These Great United States.

Tommi

This would be my speech if i were to run for Mayor (never will but, hey, you never know, minds change all the time)