Operation: Care and Comfort
Our club meeting will focus around Operation Care and Comfort. To tee us off, our guest speaker would be Marv Tuttle. Here's what Marv has to share with us in terms of his introduction:
I was born and raised in California. I graduated from high school in Santa Cruz, CA. In 1967. My wife Connie and I got married in 1968. One year af ter our marriage I was drafted into the Army. I served in Viet Nam for four
teen months. I returned home in 1971 and a few years later we started our family. We have a grown daughter and son, six grand kids and one great grand daughter.
I worked in the power tool business for thirty years for the same company and was very successful. In August 1998 I was involved in a motor vehicle accident and sustained a spinal cord injury. I am paralyzed from the waist down. As a result I was able to retire in 2003, from a paid job anyway. I studied and became a peer mentor for new spinal cord patients both civilian and military veterans. For the past nineteen years I have been both a scuba diver and guide at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was certified to scuba dive in 1972. While at the aquarium I co-founded a non-profit organization called “Day of Discovery” (www.specialkidsscuba.org) where we take one hundred plus special needs children into the aquarium for a scuba experience. We are able to cover the cost of the family’s way into the aquarium and for their special needs child to take part in my program. Many of my families could never afford to do this.
I was blessed with my service dog Yara in November of 2010 and now Goose. I waited for ten years to apply thinking that I didn’t deserve one of these amazing dogs. I was wrong. My Yara and Goose help me in so many ways regarding my P.T.S.D. and my work with special needs children. Thank you one and all for your generous support of veterans. If not for you many others including myself would never have the opportunity to assimi late back into the real world. True service dogs for veterans has greatly helped to minimize the currant suicide rate for veterans as well.