What A Journey!

It’s funny how things happen in life. I’m a retired guy who enjoys riding bicycles. One day when I was out riding, I kept having the recurring idea of recognizing the sacrifice that the young children make when their mom or dad are away from home serving our country in the military. I had a vision of giving each child a world-class bicycle.

I suspect that this kind of thinking is rather common for retired folk who want to give back a little for all the benefits of living in a great country like America. God knows I’ve had loads of different ideas, most of which have come and gone. The only difference here was that this vision kept coming back over and over again. I even took it with me when I hit the pillow at night.

Foundation

One day, I decided to share my vision with my friend, Rob Clarke, a retired Lieutenant Colonel, who served in Afghanistan. And Rob liked it. My original idea was that I would make a long distant bike ride, and get people to sponsor me on a per mile basis. Together we thought of a number of locations one of which was Liberty, Texas. I mentioned the Liberty ride to another friend, Cormac O’Reilly, who suggested that he and I take a quick trip over to Liberty one day to check it out.

Sense of Place

Cormac loved Liberty, which is a picture post card small Texas town, with a beautiful square and people who have a real sense of community. While in Liberty we had lunch at a restaurant, on the square, called Jax. And while we were eating, Cormac picked up a copy of a local newspaper, to find a major story about a young soldier from Liberty who had been awarded a purple heart. The soldier’s name was Sgt. Eli Rich, and from reading the article we learned that Eli and his wife Ashley live in Fort Lewis, Washington and have two young children, Blaine and Jessyca - they sounded perfect.

And that was the formal beginning of Operation Red, White and Bike. A short time later, after we fleshed out our initial thinking, we successfully applied for 501 (C) (3) Non-Profit Certification from the Internal Revenue Service.

Building the Team

During that frustrating and protracted process, my original idea took a number of twists and turns. First, Rob and I decided to expand the people involved in Operation Red, White and Bike. Rob mentioned that our old boss, Jim Yates, a long tenured human resources manager for Amoco’s International Operations Group, was retiring and wanted to be involved in some charity work so he too could give something back. Rob talked with Jim who was interested and came on-board.

Then Rob’s close friend, Laura Bowman, a highly experienced grade school teacher said that she too wanted to get involved which was great as Laura knows kids, and really adds tremendous insight into the future little heroes.

Then I told one of my neighbors, Dr. Ken Romano, a retired Air Force Officer about Operation Red, White and Bike and he also wanted to get involved. Ken has connections with VFW and American Legion and access to great resources at the University of Phoenix, where he teaches.

The Board

So all in all, we ended up with a six member Board of Directors each of whom is committed to our vision and bring to redwhihteandbike.org complementary skills, disciplines and experiences. We had our first meeting at Jim’s magnificent house; our meeting was informal but focused. Because it was a combined social event/business meeting, we included our spouses and quickly learned that they also brought really useful knowledge and experience. Strangely the laws prevent spouses from being board members in a non-profit organization. Of course everyone participated in our meeting and we all benefited from each other’s ideas. It was decided we would all learn more from doing so we developed an action plan so that we could move quickly to our first event.

Our First Event

Liberty was beginning to shape up as the most logical place for our first bike presentation, and having our second meeting there would provide all the Board the opportunity to check out the town. We had our first family and little heroes, an outline plan, so we then identified a number of venues. I honestly cannot remember how we learned about Brenda Cone, Vice President First Liberty National Bank (FLNB), but I called her and Brenda kindly arranged for us to meet in the community room at the bank. We met some really nice and interesting people, and Brenda was one of the best. Aside from everything else, Brenda and her husband ride cruising motorcycles.

After the meeting, when I called Brenda to thank her I asked her if she knew how I might contact someone who knew Sgt. Eli and Ashley Rich. A few days later Brenda called and told me that Ashley’s mother, Lisa Heim, worked at the bank and Lisa wanted to talk with us.

Focus

I should also mention that during our Liberty board meetings we refined our purpose, process and message. Specifically, we came away being clear that the children of our soldiers, especially those soldiers who have been wounded or would not be coming home, make a special sacrifice that we most wanted to recognize. We also articulated that Operation Red, White and Bike is about recognizing this incredible sacrifice that is too often overlooked. We would do this through a gift of a world-class bicycle. Specifically, we would focus on what we call the little heroes, the young sons and daughters of our country’s Purple Heart recipients. And we would focus on those soldier’s who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The term “little heroes” was the idea of one of Jim Yates’s friends who naturally is a marketing guy. By now dozens of people were directly or indirectly involved, and each grew more enthusiastic as our vision becomes a reality.

We did a lot of collective work on funding, legal issues, insurance requirements, logo, fund raising ideas, bike purchases, and bike presentation logistics. In the coarse of that we decided that we wanted to be unique in a number of ways. We agreed our principles were to:

- Have the children select their own world-class bicycle.
- Focus on small towns, where America’s heroes mostly come from.
- Engage American bicycle companies and associations.
- Do our fund raising over the Internet to keep costs low.
- Work with and involve community business people.
- And most important, maximize the number of awards to the little heroes.

Principle into Practice

To date Blaine and Jessyca Rich have selected their bikes from the US based company TREK Bikes and we have ordered them from BikeSport in Houston, Texas for our now arranged Liberty presentation on January 24, 2009. Our initial funding has been through board member contributions. We have a working web site redwhiteandbike.org and are now focused on having the Liberty presentation, scheduled to take place at the Daniel Pavilion on the square in Liberty, be our “signature event”.

Our plan is that this first ceremony will effectively jump start our charity by helping us refine and get the message out about who we are and what we do. If we are successful, people will hopefully share our excitement and help us facilitate the growth of Red, White and Bike.

Though it is a long ways away, our refined vision for Operation Red, White and Bike is that it should ultimately be nationwide, but with strong Texas grounding – starting here in Southeast Texas. The more we work, the more we believe we have an important role and a compelling message. We are convinced that community support for Operation Red, White and Bike will grow and our grassroots approach will build momentum.

After the Liberty ceremony we will have an update on our activities. We hope you can join us in our work to recognize these little heroes and the sacrifice they have made. We also invite you to join us in Liberty when we honor Blaine and Jessyca.

We promise that this will be an exciting day, a day that will make you proud to be part of something special.

Come join us on this incredible journey!