March 6th finally came and went after much anticipation. That was the date we hosted an event at Camp Pendleton where the four branches of the Armed Forces came together in a pankration (Mixed Martial Arts) event. The Marines were the "last man standing" having defeated the Army, Navy and Air Force teams in the preliminary matches. The Camp Pendleton team was left to fight in the finals, the United States Marine Corps fight team out of 29 Palms. Yup, Marines fighting Marines for the championship. Exciting matches, coming right down to the last man in each team facing off and the Camp Pendleton team winning and standing tall with the trophy. I will say that there was nothing but good sportsmanship from all the participants especially the winning team. Made me very proud to be associated with these young men and we are already getting geared up to host the next one.

The entire event was filmed and should be seen soon on a few cable networks. I'll keep everyone posted as to which ones will be showing this extremely entertaining event. I'll also post more pictures as I get them. The one above came from the Marine Corps but our own guys took a ton and as soon as I can I'll post them.

Well, here it is the new year 2010, unbelievable for us old vets who wondered in the jungles and rice paddies 45 years ago if we would make it another day and now here's one of them writing in a "blog", trully unbelievable. But it's okay, my family is healthy and growing, (I now have a new son-in-law), and we have a major event going on with the Marine Corps the first week in March. More on that as the time grows nearer. I'm going to design a new booth for our charity www.rearareasupport.com and book as many events as possible in order to send out more and more care packages to our troops this year. My brother-in -law Dennis is going to concentrate on targeting businesses and corporations to help fund our mission. Our efforts last year met our goals but we want to do so much more. Any ideas out there let us know, we're the first to admit we're new at this.

One of my new Years resolutions is to keep up this blog.