PET - Personal Energy Transportation

P is for PET.  No it is not an animal or bird kept for companionship or pleasure, it is Personal Energy Transportation.  PET's are heavy duty hand cranked personal mobility devices designed for use by the disabled in developing countries.

I first learned about PET's from my brother-in-law.  For over a year now he has been volunteering at the PET assembly location in Columbia, Missouri.  PET International is a faith-based, volunteer-powered, humanitarian, and world-wide organization.  PET's mission is to provide appropriate mobility for all of God’s children in need. They work with all groups, religious or secular, and seek to provide mobility first for those in greatest need and with least resources in poor or underdeveloped countries.

PET began in 1994 when Larry Hills, a missionary in Zaire, Africa, told Pastor Mel West of the great need for three-wheeled, hand-cranked wheelchairs for victims of polio and landmines. Mel contacted Earl Miner, product designer and long-time friend and mission partner, and the process of the prototype design began.  In 1995, when prototype development was ready for field testing, four were shipped to Larry Hills with the instructions to put these in the worst place you can find, and see if they pass the test. Larry did, and the PETs did.   Since 1995 PET International has grown from Mel West's one stall garage in Columbia, Missouri to over 20 assembly locations. PET's are in use in 100 countries around the world.

The PET's are assembled by an all volunteer labor force.  The Columbia, Missouri location has about 90 volunteers.  My brother-in-law works there a couple of hours a day.  Many of the volunteers work just an hour or two a week, but this all volunteer work force has produced 1470 PET's so far this year.  Since 1995, 40,000 PET's have been built and distributed.

I find the PET organization fascinating.  They focus on helping a group of people that have been neglected.  Each PET is hand built by a team of volunteers who take time out of their lives to make sure that as many people as possible are given the gift of mobility.  Even though all of the labor is donated there are lots of costs associated with the project and donations are appreciated.  Donations can be made on their website.

PET International is an amazing charity that started with one man learning of a need and giving of himself to try to fill the need.  He had one goal; making life better for the poverty-stricken, neglected, rejected and disenfranchised of the world.  Even though he knew that one man couldn't help everyone in need, he knew he could help someone.  Instead of being overwhelmed by the large numbers of people in the world who need help with mobility, an estimated 20 million,   Mel West and all of those PET volunteers are making a difference in as many lives as they can. They can help even more people with your help.

PET international works hand in hand with many charitable organizations.  PET's are provided at no cost to any agencies that will:

1. Send a preliminary request to PET MO Columbia outlining the nature and extent of the need.

2. That agency will then be sent a more detailed application and begin the communication regarding a possible shipment of PETs.

3. If the application is approved and a shipment is made PET will expect the receiving agency to arrange and pay for shipping from the USA coast to the point of need.

4. As distribution is made, provide PET with the names of each recipient and a brief comment about the nature of their need.

5. Send PET photos of 20% of the recipients.

6. Continue in communication with PET as partners in the provision of mobility.

In one of the articles that founder Mel West wrote about PET he included this quote.   “We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holes.” Anne C. Weisberg


The ABC Wednesday Meme is a fun way to see some great blogs.

Daddy - written by Lloyd Lawry

In 1995 my Uncle Lloyd Lawry gave me a number of stories and articles he had written.  Among those was this story of his Daddy, my Grandpa.  This is the story exactly as he wrote it.

My Daddy, Bennie Eugene Lawry, was born February 15, 1895 near Bronson, Kansas. Evidently he wasn't too fond of the "Bennie". By the time I first knew him he had shortened it to Ben.

When he was small he must have had 2 brothers, 2 sisters, half-brother and one half-sister living at home. Grandpa Lawry lost his eyesight in 1888 so they had to struggle just to live.  He attended Stony Point School. I believe he completed eighth grade.

He said he farmed the home place the year he was 14. It was done with a plow and a cultivator that he walked behind as the horses pulled them. He never told me much about his early life.

I do have two tales of his experiences during his horse and buggy days. He had a "moon eyed" horse that ran him in a creek off a low water bridge, and one time he asked a girl if he could drive her home. She replied "you can if you have any harness that will fit me."

He married my mother in 1918, and they went to Santa Rita, New Mexico, where he obtained a job carrying samples of the copper ore from the mines. I think one of Grandpa Lawry's daughters by his first marriage lived there and found the opportunity of a job for him.

He told of an incident which made him think his guardian angel was watching over him. He was walking along in the dark when he felt that something had stopped him. He stopped immediately and lit a match. He was standing on the brink of a deep pit. One more step and he would have fallen, probably to his death.

They came back to Kansas after the war, and I was born at my Aunt Cody's (Cora Hixson) farm. It was a few miles northwest of Bronson, Kansas.

In 1920 Mama and Daddy were living in Mildred, Kansas. There was a cement plant there and Daddy worked as day watchman. He broke his leg getting it caught while stepping over a moving belt.

Daddy ran a restaurant in Yates Center, Kansas in 1924. I don’t know how long he had it, but I think he went broke running it. He fed the prisoners in the local jail and I was in awe of them when I went with Daddy to take their food.

I'm uncertain when mama and daddy first separated but I remember living in Chanute, Kansas when there was just mama and I. Also, I remember living in Wichita, Kansas with daddy and mama. He worked at the oil refinery. They evidently separated again before I was 6 because Mama and I were living by ourselves when I started school.

In March 1926 Daddy was working for a construction company building an addition to a salt plant in Lyons, Kansas. He worked in several places, finally coming to Buffville, Kansas to work in the brick yard. He married Hazel there September 3, 1927.

His job was shoveling shale into metal carts. I believe they were 1/2 cubic yard capacity. They dynamited the shale down and Daddy loaded it with a shovel, picking up big chunks and loading them by hand. He had to push the carts on a narrow gauge railroad track to the bottom of an incline ramp where they were pulled up to the place where the shale was ground. He got 25 cents for each cart he loaded and pushed up the ramp.

In a letter he wrote October 28, 1928 he said "there was two days that I made $6.90 a day each". In the same letter he told of paying $240 to pay off his Model A Ford. When he was thinking of buying it the salesman came out where he was working and helped him load shale all day to clinch the sale. Daddy didn't tell him until the end of the day that he had decided to buy the car before the salesman came out!

In October 1929 the brickyard closed, never to reopen. Sometime after that we moved to a farm east of Buffville where we rented a house with garden space and pasture for a cow. We lived there for several years. Our house burned when I was in the eighth grade and we moved back to Buffville until the owner of the farm bought an old house and moved it to the farm. Then we moved back to the farm again.

Later we lived on similar farms north of Altoona, south of Altoona, and east of Altoona. We also lived in Buffville again part of my senior year in high school.

Daddy didn't want to go on WPA, but finally did when our cash income one month was only $5. He went to broom corn harvest and followed the wheat harvest to North Dakota one year before finally giving up and going on WPA. While he and Grandpa Reeve were working in the Dakotas the old German farmer's wife where they were working had twin babies during the morning and yet got up and prepared their noon meal!

When we were living east of Altoona in 1940, Daddy decided to move to Missouri, so we loaded our possessions on a trailer behind the old Model A Ford and drove it most of the way to Poplar Bluff, Missouri. We lived with Jessie and John Borton in a three room house; ten people in 3 rooms.

Daddy and Uncle John worked for a man who owned a greenhouse for 10 cents an hour. I couldn't find any work so left home in early 1941, and hitch hiked to Texas.

One year while they lived in Missouri, Daddy took the family to Michigan to pick fruit. The family moved back to Kansas and bought 80 acres of farm land with an old house on it. They lived there for several years.

Daddy worked for the W. J. Small Company in Neodesha for 15 years. It was an alfalfa dehydrating plant. Daddy was in his late 40's and his 50's during these years. He sewed sacks and stacked bags of alfalfa meal. The filled sacks weighed 100 pounds and it was terribly hard work. The farm had several miles of mud roads between it and town, so these years of arduous labor were plagued by fighting bad roads and a car which often refused to start until pulled by their team of horses. Hazel and Delbert did much of the farm work while Daddy worked in town.

Daddy and Hazel went to Oregon to pick fruit and vegetables one year. They stayed all winter after picking was over, Hazel got a job and Daddy loafed all winter and read a lot of books.

In the late 60's Daddy and Hazel bought a farm and a few acres east of Altoona. They had a truck farm and raised tomatoes and strawberries as well as other vegetables.

After Bob's family moved to Arkansas, Daddy and Hazel also moved there. Daddy was happy with his chickens and his garden. He would say, "Tell the people you have been to paradise," when we would leave to go back to Irving. He puttered around the garden patch on the day he died.  He died December 2, 1981 of heart complications.

He was a kind, gentle, hardworking, loving man.  I have my Lord’s assurance that at some point in eternity I will again see him in heaven, as he used to sing, “Where they ring those golden bells for you and me.”

The ABC Wednesday Meme is a fun way to see some great blogs.

Aunt Opal's Memories - Chapter 1 - Part 2

We lived with Grandpa and Grandma in Buffville for a while. Daddy and Uncle Pete made a living by driving to Joplin, Missouri, to buy fruit and vegetables to sell door to door. The landlord moved another house to replace the burned one and we moved back there. The first thing I can remember, ever, was there. I remember talking to Daddy and I think we were dressed for Church.  We did have a new Model A Ford. Daddy paid $600.00 for it. They made a platform of something and a bar that slid under the back of the car so they could haul more baskets of fruit.

Later we moved north of Altoona to a big old farm house and I remember a big empty silo. One Christmas Aunt Lola, Uncle Derral, Donald (his brother), Aunt Fay and Uncle Les, Aunt Jessie and Uncle John all came and had a wonderful fun time.  Some of the guys, in the night ate a pie and said it was Santa. They also tied some of the men's clothes in knots. 'We didn't have a tree but Mom gave me a small rubber doll. We had lots of hard Christmases. Daddy saved dimes so we would always have a little something at Christmas. To this day I have to have a little hard Christmas candy at Christmas. No one likes it and I have to throw most of it out, but it wouldn't be Christmas without it.

                     LLOYD, DELBERT, HAZEL, OPAL, BOB, BEN

We later moved back to Buffville. Grandpa and Grandma still lived there and a few other families and Fred's Store. We had a cow and sometimes Daddy would let me ride her when he took her to the shale pit for water. Bob was born there. We called him Bobby Bill as they couldn't decide what to call him-Bobby or Billy.We lived several places after that.

We never knew we were poor. Daddy worked anywhere he could, Hoeing corn or other farm work. Even on WPA awhile. After high school Lloyd was at the CCC camp (Civilian Conservation Corps).

We had a happy childhood, enjoyed our cousins and aunts and uncles coaxing us to visit. We also enjoyed wonderful family get togethers. I had many cousins I loved but I was closest to Uncle Pete and Aunt Osa's family. We went to church at the home of friends in Neodesha. We never had a preacher, just Elder Jones from Fredonia. Daddy was not an Adventist but usually went to church with us. Our other aunts and families that lived close were not Adventists at that time but did join later.

                                  BEN AND HAZEL LAWRY

Our happiest times were when we got to spend the night with each other. Vera and I were the same age and Viola a little older. Delbert and Ivan were about the same age and Leo a little younger. To me it was more fun at their house. We got to ride home in the back of the pick-up truck, go after the cows (which we enjoyed more than they as they had to do it all the time). We played in the water barrels, at the spring, and in the creek. Slid down the calf shed roof ate watermelon in the patch, climbed trees, and sometimes Aunt Osa would make us molasses taffy.

Once we started to get some molasses (they made their own) from a container outside the kitchen but someone or something had the lid off and a poor chicken had gotten into it. She was a sad sight but we rescued her and washed her off so she was as good as new. Once we begged to stay up till midnight and Aunt Osa let us, but it really wasn't that exciting.

They made their own molasses. They squeezed the juice in a big mill run by a mule walking round and round. Then they boiled the juice in a large pan about 3 x 10 with three divisions over an open fire until it was of the right consistency. Aunt Osa would pick wild mushrooms and fry a whole skillet in butter. Yum, Yum!

Daddy always smoked a pipe. But gave it up and joined the SDA church when I was in seventh grade. We attended meetings in Chanute and he became a believer.

When they were first married he went to the Methodist church. Mom would go with him and he would go with her. Lloyd didn't much like that. He never did accept Adventism, but after Jane Ellen was born when he looked at her said, “There has to be a God", so he and Aunt Kathy became Baptists.

                                    BOB, OPAL, DELBERT

When I was in seventh grade we packed all we could in a trailer hooked to our old model A Ford and started for Popular Bluff, Missouri. Uncle John and Aunt Jessie lived there and daddy could work in a greenhouse where he worked. Lloyd drove us. I remember him saying as we drove out of a service station, "If a fly sits on this load we'll never make it." But we did!

Lloyd didn't stay but went to Dallas, Texas, to some cousins and did well. He worked at several jobs then got on with Braniff Airways and stayed until he retired.

We stayed there that winter. We shared a house with Jessie and John, Leland and LeRoy. Tom was born that year. Delbert, LeRoy, and I went to school there (interesting to me, here in Collegedale I met and became close friends with the lady, Thelma, who ran the greenhouse back in Poplar Bluff and her sister was married to Uncle John's cousin).

That Spring Mom and Daddy decided to follow the fruit harvest (John and Jessie had done it.). We started out picking strawberries and went on up to Michigan to peaches, pears, apples, and grapes. Mom was really fast at it and the rest of us did what we could. I had to start school in Hollywood, Michigan.

While there I got my first perm. The curlers were on long electric cords. We got a different car and headed back to Kansas. Guess they did pretty well. They bought an eighty acre farm.


CLICK TO GO BACK TO CHAPTER 1 PART 1

CLICK TO GO TO CHAPTER 1 PART 3

Zion

Z is for Zion.  Zion, to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, represents the perfect, just society ruled by Jesus Christ where all the inhabitants live in harmony, equally sharing all things.  Soon after founding the church in April 1830, Joseph Smith stated that he had received a revelation that designated Independence, Missouri as the center of the New Jerusalem, or Zion.

The Latter Day Saints were driven from Missouri in 1838 as a consequence of the Mormon War and Governor Lilburn Boggs' Extermination Order. After this time the concept of Zion as Jackson County, Missouri was no longer taught.  From Missouri many Mormons moved to Illinois where they bought the small town of Commerce and renamed it Nauvoo. They were never at peace with their neighbors. After Joseph Smith's death in 1844, continuing violence from surrounding non-Mormons forced most Latter-Day Saints to leave Nauvoo. These refugees, led by Brigham Young, emigrated to the Great Salt Lake Valley in Utah.

Utah became the new Zion, and the main desire of new Mormon converts was to reach Zion.  One of those new converts was my wife's great great grandmother, Sophie Peterson.  Sophie was born August 17, 1824 in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Sophie married Peter Peterson. When her children were small her husband died of cholera at the age of 39.

In 1855 Sophie was baptized into the Mormon Church.  She sold her homestead and left Denmark on May 4, 1856 with the promise of reaching Zion.  The voyage by ship took forty-one days and she arrived at New York City on June 14, 1856. She traveled by rail from there to Florence, Iowa.  There Sophie and her children became part of one of the most famous journeys across the United States, the journey of the Willie Hand Cart Company.

Sophie joined the Willie Handcart Company and with her children pulled the handcart across the plains. She had plenty of money to get her to Salt Lake, but she trusted two Elders with her money and they betrayed her trust. Sophie had plenty of clothes for herself and her children, but because each person was only allowed 17 pounds of possessions, she had to leave most of the clothes behind when she joined the handcart company.  Even with all of the hardships she faced, she was determined to go to Zion.

The Willie Company was one of ten groups of pioneers from England and Scandinavia that made the journey from Iowa to Utah by pulling handcarts. The trek was disastrous for two of the companies,  the Willie Company and the Martin Company.  These two companies started their journey dangerously late and were caught by heavy snow and severe temperatures in central Wyoming. Despite a dramatic rescue effort, more than 210 of the 980 pioneers in these two companies died along the way. Fortunately for me, Sophie, my wife's great great grandmother, and her son Otto, my wife's great grandfather, survived the journey.

I can't imagine what it would have been like for a single woman with 3 children ages 2 through 10 to pull a handcart west across nearly impassable terrain and with only a few ounces of flour for food each day.  There are journals of the trip that can be read online at The Travels of the Willie Handcart Company.

In 2011, the story of the Willie Handcart Company was made into a movie, titled 17 Miracles.  The movie is based on the actual experiences of members of the Willie Handcart Company of Mormon Pioneers following their late-season start and subsequent winter journey to Salt Lake City in 1856. It is a very interesting movie and can be rented from Netflix or purchased from Amazon.

As I have researched this story, the thing that stands out is the determination of these pioneers to reach Zion no matter what the cost.  I really admire the determination of these pioneers.

The ABC Wednesday Meme is a fun way to see some great blogs.