Sunday, May 13, 2012

To my local hero. Glen Cunningham

Growing up as a young kid I never realized many things. My next door neighbor Glen Cunningham was always this soft spoken friendly loving person who had a love for life and friends and a laugh you could hear a mile away and know it was his. I can remember playing video games in the middle of the night with my best childhood friend  Kyle Cunningham waking up Glen to him screaming and yelling at us the most craziest things.. Like "Get Down" or "What the hell is going on."  We never thought much of it and prob thought he was just cranky..I never knew Glen was in the Military or let alone that he was a hero. When I grew up and I left for basic training he has no words of advice for me just said I am proud of you. So when I got leave to come home and saw Glen he pulled out a binder and said have a look at this. My jaw dropped to the floor. Two purple hearts and many other award he had received. Glen went on to tell me the stories of hell he went through with losing friends left and right. He told me stories of these men and experiences he shared with them. I had a hard time soaking this all in. I choked up many times seeing Glen have a hard time talking about this. Its hard to read this story on here but a quick version is his Unit was getting overran by the Vietcong. Glen took shrapnel hits and many shots to his abdomen but kept on shooting on the machine gun and saved many men in his unit..Glen was one of four left in his unit after that mess.. Glen received his first Purple heart for that. The second came in almost identical fashion only Glen got shot in his chest and got his shooting finger shot off which he thought his machine gun was jammed but little did he know that it was not his gun that was messed up but that he lost his finger. Glen has seen hell and back and makes me proud to know this man and to see how you persevere through the toughest experiences and make the best out of life. So I Salute you Glen in your service and thank you for making me a better man.


Rip..This is Glens brother whom he always talked about on a bad ass Indian.
Glen told me he would ride wheelies on that thing for as long as he wanted..
Pretty awesome.

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