Letters To The Editor
HMO Taking Off!

Hello, CCHS Alumni:

Our Hometown Mentors Organization (HMO) is making progress.

The concept is to bring the life and career experiences of CCHS alumni back to Cameron County to help future generations. This is a mentoring program to fit in with the CCHS students' graduation project and help in their decisions about particular career paths.

I'm finding it difficult to keep up with the enthusiasm from both the mentor side of the aisle and the students.

We have already connected one, and possibly two, mentors with students at CCHS. One team is working in the area of archeology and the other recent graduate of CCHS had an interest in event planning, so they are developing a mentoring plan in that area.

Each volunteer mentor jumped at the chance to help a novice. One lives in South Carolina and the other in the Emporium area.

This is so exciting - you can live anywhere in the world and still be connected through modern technology. I recently had e-mail of encouragement from Dean Jordan (Class of '56). He was sitting in an Internet cafe in West Africa!

I was also contacted by Dick "Gus" Johnson (Class of '59), who has 35 years experience as a mentor. He has volunteered to help train the mentors.

Our next steps are to gather a steering committee, form a non-profit corporation, and continue developing the group site on the web. We also must gather information for our database by surveying the students' interests, find suitable mentors in the career areas, begin the training, develop a plan for administration, etc.

It is an awesome endeavor that demands time and interest. If you are willing to participate, please let me know of your interest through our website, g r o u p s . m s n . c o m / hometownmentorsorganization

Cathy J. Ostrum

Alexandria, Va.

Veterans' Health

Care

To the editor:

As Veterans Day approaches, I am reminded of the extreme sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform. These brave people have answered the call to duty to protect our nation and to defend our way of life.

Over 1 million troops have served in the current "war on terror" and more than 20,000 of them have been injured in the line of duty.

Their sacrifice should be rewarded with the care, respect, and honor they have earned. Yet, Congress recently tried to slash the budget for the VA's traumatic brain injury care and research centers which many of our wounded troops are counting on. Worse yet, the Department of Veterans Affairs, which handles health care and benefits for our returned soldiers, currently has a backlog of more than 800,000 claims and cases pending with no plan to reduce it.

Those 800,000 cases represent real people - veterans who've served our country and their families - who need our help and are not getting it.

I call on Congress to honor the extreme sacrifices of our veterans by fully funding veterans' health care and benefits. It is the least we can do to thank them for everything they do for us and for our country.

Capt. John T. Rowan

(Ret.) Veterans of Foreign Wars