StumbleUpon is the Internet’s finest addition. If you don’t use it already, you should. By acknowledging your interests, it directs you to an assortment of sites.
When "Stumbling," I was directed to a website that outlined a map of Iraq. Set on a timer, seconds would tick and red dots would flare, signaling a U.S. death throughout the entirety of the war. It was appalling really that this is how deaths are perceived. It isn’t faces or names, but the numbers we affiliate with Iraq and Afghanistan. Deaths have become fact and figures, rather than real life.
So many have not fallen short in disagreeing with the effort we have made to rebuild Afghanistan and weed out corruption in the Middle East. Rarely does one take the time to empathize with the men and women who put their life on the line for our defense.
With this niggling in the back of my mind shortly thereafter, I volunteered at best-selling author Lee Woodruff’s book signing for her autobiography, Perfectly Imperfect. Down to earth, inspirational and a mother of four, Woodruff is the epitome of transforming tragedy into hope.
In 2006, her husband, journalist Bob Woodruff, suffered serious head trauma in an explosion with an IED (improvised explosive device). He was working for ABC as a reporter in Iraq at the time. After 36 days in a medically induced coma, and four years of rehabilitation, the couple became the poster children of an effort to give aid to those wounded in the current wars.
ReMIND, also known as the Bob Woodruff Foundation, put faces and names to fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, amassing more than $8.5 million dollars in relief and continues to work studiously today, aiding those who’ve been wounded in war.
The trauma that soldiers face on a day-to-day basis in the Middle East is far more than any one person can conceive, and our soldiers do it for months at a time. Our appreciation should, and now does (thanks to the Woodruff’s) extend beyond national holidays. They don’t fight the two or three days that we allot for their recognition via national holidays.
Two rather simultaneous events, ‘stumbling’ on the Internet and a volunteer opportunity have allowed me to see the war effort in a new light.
Change isn’t limited to law making, revolutions or international organizations. In some cases, the biggest differences are built from the ashes of misfortune.
As Lee would put it, “People take their grief and do amazing things with it. That’s what makes the world go ‘round.”
Send your hope to Brittany at bemorri1@asu.edu
