Okay, silver doesn’t tend to have the actual glow of gold or sparkle like diamonds, but in this case, it definitely has a special sheen. The particular silver won’t ever hang around my neck or that of most people because it belongs to an Olympic silver medal. Several years ago, someone contacted the South Dade News Leader, the community paper I wrote regularly for and still contribute to occasionally. They told the editor there was a kid who went to their church who was a great gymnast and could possibly make it to the Olympics, but even more so, the family had a wonderful story. I was sent to see what the deal was and it was one of those heartwarming situations that makes you want to cheer. At the time, Danell Leyva Gonzalez and his parents, Maria Gonzalez and Yin Alvarez, didn’t know how far Danell could go as he was working through the competitions for an eventual shot at the Olympic team. I was so impressed with them, I did a post for the blog after I wrote the article for the paper. This is a family that left Cuba with nothing when Danell was a toddler. Both Maria and Yin were national gymnasts, but for them, life away from Communism was more important than their own glory. They were finally able to open a gym in South Miami where a huge Olympic banner hung. Their point was it does take a certain level of talent, but determination and the willingness to work hard with the proper coaching were more important than belonging to a prestigious program. As Danell grew and honed his skills, he did indeed make the 2012 Olympic team and brought home a bronze medal.

Fast forward to this year when my husband looked up from the paper and said, “Hey, your guy just missed making the Olympic team, but one of the other guys was injured so he’s back on.” I knew immediately which “guy” he was talking about. Perhaps it was Fate stepping in, perhaps not, yet Danell has won two silvers this time and I’m not certain what other events are on the schedule. For him, his family, and his country, these are proud moments. You can Google him and watch the video clips if you want to see his terrific performance.

“Okay, why would someone who is assigned to Hawaii come to Key Largo to get their scuba certification?” When Hubby is notified about an upcoming class, he’s provided as much background as is available, but in some cases, that isn’t much. In some cases, details get a bit mixed up, and when he was told there were some Navy guys from Hawaii he would be doing an Open Water Certification for, that seemed odd. Open Water is the basic step in certification and there are dive shops all over Hawaii. However, once he learned the situation, it not only made sense; it is a particularly cool  story because of a professional connection.

For starters, the individuals are in Key Largo to receive critical training for something else and the timing was right for them to dovetail scuba classes with that training. Okay, sure. The professional reason they’re taking scuba is because they are members of a unit called Joint Task Force Full Accounting. This isn’t a well-known unit in general, but they do make the news periodically. When you read or hear a story about the long lost remains of American military being located and returned home, in all likelihood, JTF Full Accounting is involved. Their mission is to follow every lead and physically go around the world investigating missing service members and recovering the remains whenever possible.

Their capability is fascinating and while military personnel of all services (that’s the Joint part) rotate through the unit, there are civilian experts who have been there for years. They are forensics and other experts such as in military equipment. Based on their experience, they can take scraps of metal or pieces of fabric and determine what type of aircraft or uniform the items came from. The teams from JTF have been up in mountains, deep in jungles, and in tiny villages where planes might have crashed or wounded servicemen might have died and been hastily buried. As technology advances and more places in the world are accessed, there are increasing discoveries of information about missing military personnel. Being scuba certified comes in since some of those missing includes personnel who perished underwater.

Neither Hubby nor I have been personally involved in a recovery, but a good friend of ours was with JTF Full Accounting while we were in Hawaii and we had the opportunity to learn details about their work. For some families, they vaguely knew where a member was lost, but the resources to pinpoint and bring the individual home did not exist at the time. For them, even decades after the loss, to have that loved one honorably returned to them is incredibly important.

I wrote routinely for our community newspaper, the South Dade News Leader for a couple of years. I met a lot of interesting people since my focus was on human interest stories and history of the area. There were plenty of uplifting stories and among them were women who made quilts to send to deployed troops. I had met some of them when doing research for the Small Town Lies quilting series and that led me to hearing about the other project for the troops. That, in turn, led me to learn of the Quilts of Valor Foundation (http://www.qovf.org). It is a national foundation based in Iowa with this as their mission: “The mission of the Quilts of Valor Foundation is to cover service members and veterans touched by war with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor.” In some cases they send quilts to hospitals and at other times, make direct presentations to military members selected in special recognition.

Yesterday, I attended a luncheon where six active duty soldiers and one retired naval officer were given quilts and it was a great pleasure to do so. The woman who linked multiple organizations together had created one of the quilts. There are several different quilting groups around and in this situation, there is a “mini-group” within the larger group and they focus on the Quilts for Valor contributions. There are also different organizations that are comprised of retired military and/or those who have a connection to the military. May is Military Appreciation Month and presenting the quilts at the May meeting of the MOAA has now become a tradition. (MOAA is Military Officers Association of America). The soldiers were present (two with their wives) and the retiree was unable to attend, but his wife and daughter were there. A short paragraph was read about each individual; particularly about a combat event in which his actions were notable. The Colonel who was reading the paragraph made an interesting comment before he began about how none of the men there viewed their actions as “special” in the sense they all did what they expected each of them to do under those circumstances. And not surprisingly, none of them chose to speak, but merely to smile and say, “Thank you for this honor.”

I don’t have a photo of the individual quilts, but as you can imagine, there was definitely a “red, white, and blue” theme. Each of the quilts was carefully “packed” inside an “pillowcase” that had also been crated as a holder for it. There were all double-bed/queen size.