Feeling the Music in Tennessee

Meeting Nashville singer and songwriter David Ball (composer of the Ballad of ThanksUSA), Andy Leftwich, awesome fiddler with Ricky Skaggs and the Kentucky Thunder and his beautiful wife, Rachel, in Nashville, Tennessee really brought "Music City" to life for us as we journey across the United States. We predict that Andy will have a great solo career one day, and we can say we knew him on his way up the charts.

We hope that our home video captured our sing along with David Ball as we all belted out The Ballad of ThanksUSA. A tour of Opryland in 100 degree humid heat followed by a visit to the awesome Nashville aquarium kicked off our first full day on our drive for dollars for military scholars. One of the hostesses at the Aquarium restaurant had a family member in the National Guard so we gave her a ThanksUSA treasure hunt clue book, with the website so she could visit it and check out the scholarship opportunities. We've also met lots of nice folks from all over the country who are visiting Nashville, like members of the Knights of Columbus who are attending their convention.

We really hope that Andy and Rachel Leftwich and David Ball (and his wife and daughter) attend our second annual ThanksUSA gala on Oct 3 in Washington, DC to raise funds for the next round of military family scholarships. We even managed a call-in radio chat with Tara , hostess of Army Wives Talk Radio. What a great service her radio program each day is providing to the families of the troops across America. Sorry for the noisy background, Tara.
We've gotten to know the fine folks at Army Wives Talk Radio through America Supports You, a wonderful organization that acts as a clearinghouse for the many varied military support organizations around the country spearheaded by Allison Barber and her team in Washington, DC.

Next stop, Memphis, Tennessee...."We're going Graceland" (to quote Paul Simon's famous song) to help celebrate the King's birthday!

Our next entry will be from Texas....Austin and San Antonio (we hope to visit Brook Army Hospital) and meet our former neighbor and one of our inspiring heroes, Army Lt Col Lanier Ward. How is your summer Allie? We will meet several of our Texas scholarship recipients in those two cities. We can't wait. That's it for now.