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Lyndon Dellis - Signed Articles of Agreement November 28, 2008, 3rd Learner

United States Army

This is my beginning to My Life, My Lineage, My First Paperback Book. I invite you to read my journey as I compose each chapter of the 14 Level Reintegration Program. My success is your success and our community's success. Thank you for your courage and support. To post comments you must register with our community. You can view this outline  I am using to map out my progess. Thank you for your comments, I value them.

  • Wednesday, January 28, 2009 17:55 | Lyndon Dellis

              March 20, 1951. Abilene, Texas. Time? Around midnight or at least thats what I have been told. My date, time, and place of birth. Shortly after this my Dad graduated from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene and my folks moved to southern California to a little town called Banning where I would grow up. I grew up in a home of readers and have had a lifelong love affair with books.  I consider myself self educated even though I have sixteen years of formal education. I firmly believe that no one can "get" an education. For of necessity education is a continuing process. If it does nothing else, it should provide students with the tools for learning, aquaint them with methods of study and research, methods of pursuing an idea. We can only hope they come upon an idea they wish to pursue.

               It is constantly reiterated that education begins in the home,as indeed it does, but what is often forgotten is that morality begins in the home also.

               It also begins in the car seat, where many a budding criminal career is born when the child not only watches his parent repeatedly break traffic laws, but hears him lie about it when caught. The example is not, supposedly, expected to infiuence the child. Thankfully this was not the case with my folks. They practiced what they preached in every area of life and required their children to do the same. In any case I came into the world with two priceless advantages: good health and a love of learning. My own reading choices tend to history to a great degree, both ancient and modern with most of that focusing on military history. And historical novels are, in my opinon, the best way of learning history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more. Due to such books, and other reading I have done over the years, I found that no matter what country I visited or whom I met, I knew something of the history or romance of the country, or about a person's homeland.

              These days there is no reason why anyone cannot get an education if he or she wants it badly enough and is persistent. Most cities in the United States have libraries and besides books libraries almost all offer access to the internet these days as well as access to books of all kinds.

             It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived , for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

             What many people do not understand is that a child in growing up repeats in his early years much of the life history of man upon the earth, and it is necessary that he or she do this to become a human being.

              At first a baby is simply a small animal that eats and sleeps, but there will come a time when he will want to build a shelter, to find a place he can crawl into, even if it is only a blanket over a chair or table. Then there will be the time when a child plays capture games, wants a bow and arrow or a rifle or pistol, or perhaps a spear or other weapon. By acting out those early years of mankinds history, children put that history behind them. Most violent criminals are cases of arrested development where, for one reason or another, they never grow out of that period.

              Much of this early violence can be sublimated through reading. What so many of us who abhor violence often forget is that we have peace and civilized lives because there were men and women who went before us who were willing to fight for our freedom to live in peace.

               It is always well to remember that many of us sleep safe at night because there are people out there cruising the streets and on call to keep it so. As many have discovered, violence is with us still, and no one is immune to a sudden strike in the night.

               Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by archeologists of the future.

               Surely, the citizens and the rulers of Babylon and Rome did not see themselves as a passing phase. Each in its time believed it was the end-all of the worlds progression. I have no such feeling. Each age is a day that is dying, each one a dream that is fading.

               Someday, men--or some other intelligent creatures--will stand on the sites of New York or Los Angeles and wonder if anyone ever lived there.

               We know so little of the past, and what we have discovered is largly what lies above water. Yet once, sea level was lower, and no dought there are cities of which we know nothing which once existd there. If something were to happen now, nothing might remain of our world but the faces on Mount Rushmore or the figures on Stone Mountain, and perhaps the foundations of some of our freeways.

               Of the hundreds of plays written by Euripides, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and others, we have but a few. At least two hundred plays, whose titles we know, have vanished, and if so many plays, how many books on history,medicine, or other subjects, with probably fewer copies released at the time, are missing? Books as books must be preserved. There is an effort now to preserve everything by mechcanical means, but of what use will they be to a man who has no power? No means of producing the sounds or the words? A book can be carried away and read at leisure. It needs nothing but an eye, a brain, and the ability to read. If in some distant future, someone should come upon the remains of a library of ours, even if he could not read, he could through illustrations rediscover much otherwise lost. He would have no machine to play a tape; he would have no source of power.

              Nations are born, they mature, grow old, and almost die, but after some years they rise again, and we in this country, as in all nations, need leaders with vision. Too few can see further than the next election and will agree to spend any amount of money as long as some of it is spent in the area they represent. I heard it once said that "Men who think in lifetimes are of no use to statesmanship."

               Now with the vast distances of space opening before us, and the length of the journeys into outer space, we must begin to think in terms of generations and centuries rather than in years. Even with increased speeds and ease of travel, many of the exploratory journeys will be very long. It may also be important to consider trying to return some of the planets to livable worlds. We have many plants on earth that live in extreme deserts or on the fringes of icecaps, surviving under seemingly impossible conditions. Such plants might be given a trial in likely spots and leave the rest to time. There is evidence that there was once water on Mars, and very likely there are ice caves in some of the lava beds, just as we have here on earth. So I believe, that all that has gone before is preliminary, that our real history began with our first voyage to the moon.progress at first may be slow, but man will not be held back. There will always be those few who wish to push back the frontiers, to see what lies beyond. And so, my parents who also loved to read had their largest impact and influence on my life by passing on their love of books and the printed word to me and my three sisters.

  • Tuesday, December 30, 2008 12:27 | Lyndon Dellis

          October 1962. The supersecret U.S. U-2 spyplane has discovered nuclear tipped long range ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba, able to hit any city in the continental U.S. Just the year before,shortly after the Berlin Wall was erected, Nikita Krushev General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, at the opening session of the United Nations, had taken off one of his shoes and after banging his shoe on the lectern had declared that Soviet Russia and its "Communist Utopia" would be the agents of consigning western capitalism and democracy to the "ash heap of history"!

    Witnessing these events as a young boy set me on the path I was to follow as an adult.

    November 2008. Discourged and disgusted I hung up the receiver of the pay phone outside the 7/11. I had read of a new Vets Service Center that had just opened up on 1st November in Fallbrook and had gone there. It was almost noon on a weekday and the place was locked up tighter than a drum. So I got the number off the door and with almost my last half dollar had called that number and gotten voicemail! I left a detailed message, but really didnt expect an answer. You see I am a Vietnam Era Veteran and although I served God and Country proudiy, ( and would do so again without hesitation or reservation ), it has been my sometimes bitter experience that, it seems like anyway, most other Americans really aren't much interested in what happens to the combat veterans of that godforsaken fight against the " Red Menace".

            I picked up my Vietnam Era camoflage style rucksack, threw it up on my shoulder, turned, and started to dejectedly walk away.

            I had been laid off from my job in July of that year. Having already lost my truck and cell phone through lack of funds I was about to be evicted from where I was living and I was desperate. I made about two steps and that pay phone went to ringing. I turned and started to pick it up and I thought "nah" that could'nt be anybody getting back to me that fast. But I was desperate so I thought "what the hell" and picked it up anyway. And so thats how I had my first conversation ever with Albert Renteria founder and CEO of South West Veterans Resource Center. He let me know when the center would be open and we made an appointment to meet in the next few days.  I was very impressed with Mr. Renteria before we ever met. He was at a meeting in Vancouver Washington to set up a Veterans Center up there and yet he got back to me in less than a minute. So I knew right up front that he was serious about reaching out to his fellow veterans. When we met he laid out his fourteen point program and filled me in on his vision and plan for enabling veterans to reintegrate into civilian society. I discovered that Al Renteria was a retired U.S.M.C. Warrant Officer. He has a heart for his fellow veterans, is very patriotic and is determined that none of his fellow veterans will be jobless or homeless. So I had my orientation, signed my learners contract and here I go! I already know that with all the benefits that are available to me as a veteran that everythings gonna come out good. I am currently volunteering at the center and will soon be back on my feet. We Vietnam Veterans are known to be able to land standing up! And so here I am beginning to write my life story. Al says people are really interested in it although I personally don't know why. Anyway here we go and my only hope is maybe in some small way I, personally, can be of some assistence to a needy fellow veteran.

  • Monday, December 29, 2008 11:09 | Lyndon Dellis

    Last week during some of that heavy rainfall we had, as I was walking down the street with my umbrella up, I heard someone call my name. Looking around and seeing a large, new SUV at the corner I said to myself, who is that? At that point Fallbrooks honorary Mayor Rebbeca Waranch, stuck her head out the window of said SUV and said "hey Lyndon hows it going"? The Mayor had been kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to attend my contract signing ceremony at the Vets Center a few weeks previously. Anyway she asked me when I would be making my first entry on the new book Im writing.

    Her obvious interest in my journey has prompted me to make this entry today to let her and anyone else who may be interested, know that I have been composing my thoughts and will make my next post very soon.  Thank you Mayor for your interest and I invite you and anyone else who may be interested to make comments at whatever time is convenient. Thanks in advance for your time and interest.

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