E.G. - ND's Creator/Admin's Comments

Was'sup EG? Seems like things are growing nicely...sure would be nice to get some of the members we don't hear from involved again....

Am thinking about having some "I support NavyDads.com" tee-shirts made to wear around the area....a little publicity! Have a great day...and remember it's not only Holloween, but also Nevada Day (Oct. 31, 1864)! Paul

Hello EG, you have done a good job setting up this site. I saw a commercial about navy moms on tv and I checked out the site. Later that night I just typed in NAVY dads and there you were so thank you.
Justin is on deployment now and as a parent you worry but as he said to me (Dad its my job , got some good marines with me) That is all I needed to hear. God knows Im proud of him and also all the other young men and women that is in the service. God bless them all !!! Thanks for your work again Sincerly Darwyn

Glad to be here. I wasn't going to join, but after reading the Q&A and the tone of this site I decided it fit my personality a little better than the mom site. And I don't know how to explain it so as not to offend any moms that might read this!

Thanks EG. My wife encouraged me to join the site, she is on Navymoms. This is a great idea, I must admit, I am not too swift on a computer but you have made this easy. If I can do this anyone can. I couldn't be more proud of Andrew's decision and can't wait to hear from him (a letter would do). I just hope he is as excited about the Navy now that he is in week 3 of BC as he was when he left. Thanks again, Dave

Thank you for creating this wounderful site, I know it has made my dad happy. I hope I can be of some assistance to someone.

Hi EG,

Thank you for the great welcome message to NavyDads.com. I glad my daughter Kelly recommended this web site to me as it will keep us close during her new adventure. Her mom Peggy just enrolled at NavyMoms .com. Thank you for your support. ..Tom

My mother in law is vice president of the local Blue Star Mothers, and she had indicated that there should be something out there on the internet for Dads. So, I had my wife check, and this is what we found. Thanks for your contribution that no doubt will help many. I will let my son know that he has a lot of support, and I hope that you can tell your son as well that we appreciate his service.

Wht do you hear from the Evan on the cruise?

Thanks for the Comment. I have spent most of my time on NSC. I know of n4m and heard about n4d. I hope I can learn more about what my Grandson is going through. Unfortuntly most of my comments will be very and no reference to my GS. He is in BUDs not and most of that is privite. Hope I can help some in generl terms.

Very well written. Thank you.

what did you change?

Thanks for the welcome!
Bruce

from the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday:

Recruiting Web site for Navy helping to bring moms aboard
By Carol Ann Alaimo
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
If Mama's not happy, nobody's happy.
That old Southern truism about family life is being embraced by the U.S. military in efforts to attract recruits.
The Army was the first to target parents with recruiting ads. Now the Navy is a following suit with a Web-based campaign aimed specifically at mothers — an idea so innovative experts predict it will one day be copied by other branches of the military.
About a dozen Tucson moms are in on the ground floor of the new Navy effort, navyformoms.com — a sort of MySpace for military matriarchs.
The site was launched in response to research that showed mothers were more likely to believe other mothers than recruiters, a Navy official said.
In Tucson and around the country, moms are linking up on the interactive site for information and moral support before and after their offspring enlist. They post photos, empathize, compare notes — and sometimes brag — about their sons and daughters.
East Side resident Melissa Murray said the site helped ease the angst of sending her son off to boot camp.
"I felt like I was giving him away to people I didn't even know. I dropped him off and cried all the way home," said Murray, 54.
"No matter how old they get, they're still your babies. Nobody understands that like another mom."
Her son, Matthew Murray, is a 2001 graduate of Sahuaro High School. The 26-year-old left Monday for his first wartime deployment — a six-month stint on a guided missile destroyer in the Persian Gulf.
Initially, Melissa Murray said, she wasn't keen on the the idea.
"Being of the Vietnam generation, I never wanted my son to join the military because I saw how badly those veterans were treated when they came home. I was one of those people who said I'd send my son to Canada before I'd turn him over to the military," she said.
Chatting online with other Navy moms helped put her anxieties in perspective, she said.
For example, she said, the mothers often talk online of increased maturity they've noticed in children who enlist. And the moms constantly remind one another that America's military is well-trained to cope with danger — though in today's wars, most sailors don't face anywhere near the risks that soldiers or Marines do.
Joyce Slabaugh, 50, of the Northwest Side, stumbled upon the new Navy Web site shortly after her son enlisted. Bryan Slabaugh, 19, a 2007 graduate of Flowing Wells High School, is in training to become a gunner's mate.
"All of a sudden I'm seeing these conversations between mothers whose children are in boot camp or getting ready to go to boot camp. And it was like, 'Oh my God, these are people I can connect with,' " Joyce Slabaugh said.
"Whenever I had questions, I could ask other moms instead of feeling like you're up against some huge bureaucracy."
Recently, she arranged a weekend gathering in Tucson for about a dozen moms from different states who had all met online through the Navy site.
Lee Buchschacher a spokesman for Navy recruiting headquarters in Tennessee, said NavyforMoms was launched in February in response to research that showed moms with questions about enlistment put more stock in advice they received from other moms than in what recruiters said.
Within a few months, Buchschacher said, demand exploded through word of mouth. More than 5,000 mothers are registered users, and thousands more people are unregistered users. The Navy has hired a public-relations firm to run the site and monitor postings so officials can act quickly to counter misinformation, he said.
The Navy plans to launch a national TV advertising campaign this week to promote the Web site.
Recruiting expert David Slotwinski, a former chief of staff for the Army Recruiting Command, said the Navy's new tack is ingenious and unrivaled among the services.
A major benefit, he said, is that it creates transparency in the recruiting process.
Any promises recruiters make, for example, instantly can be cross-checked with other Navy families, which should discourage what's known in recruiting circles as "overselling" — promising more than the military can deliver.
Harnessing the energies of military moms has enormous potential, said Slotwinski, a retired Army colonel with a leadership-consulting firm in Olympia, Wash.
"What the Navy has done here is, they've built a huge recruiting network in the hinterlands of America simply by using the connectivity of the Internet.
"Those 5,000 mothers are going to tell 5,000 others, and they will go out and tell 5,000 more, and pretty soon you've got 25,000 moms out there spreading the Navy message. The Navy can't buy that kind of advertising.
"It's a great idea, and I believe it will be copied," Slotwinski said. "If I was still the chief of Army Recruiting Command, I would be asking, 'When are we going to do something like this, and how can we make it even better?'
"Actually, I'm surprised the Navy beat the Army to the go on this," he added.
The importance of reaching out to parents is more crucial now than in peacetime, Slotwinski said. Parents tend to become more involved with enlistment decisions when their offspring face the prospect of going to war, he said.
Recruiting expert David Segal agrees.
"In the past, parents were not much of an obstacle," said Segal, a sociology professor and director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, who has spent years studying military recruiting trends.
"Since the advent of the current wars, parents have been much more active in not letting recruiters through the front door or hanging up the phone when the recruiter calls," Segal said.
From a military standpoint, the NavyforMoms site is "a marvelous idea," he said.
That's true from a mom's standpoint, too, said Joan Brooks, 44, of Tucson's Northwest Side.
Her 19-year-old son, Bryan Siwick, a 2006 graduate of Flowing Wells High School, finished Navy boot camp in July and is training to become an air-and-sea rescuer.
"I have a lot of mixed feelings," Joan Brooks said of her son's decision to enlist in wartime. "It's one of those things that keeps you up at night sometimes."
To cope, she said she tries to focus on the positive — "the fact that I'm proud of him for serving his country" — and the kinship she has found with other Navy moms.
"I think the Web site is great," she said. "It's a support system that a lot of us need."

Navy Dad Creator, I couldn't locate the forum that you mentioned in your E-mail. I copy and pasted the one that I posted earlier this morning. Here it is. Luis
Hell yeah I am passionate about America!


Ohio Homeless Driven to Polls to Vote Obama


Tuesday, October 07, 2008

CLEVELAND — Volunteers supporting Barack Obama picked up hundreds of people at homeless shelters, soup kitchens and drug-rehab centers and drove them to a polling place yesterday on the last day that Ohioans could register and vote on the same day, almost no questions asked.

The huge effort by a pro-Obama group, Vote Today Ohio, takes advantage of a quirk in the state's elections laws that allows people to register and cast ballots at the same time without having to prove residency.

Republicans have argued that the window could lead to widespread voter fraud because officials wouldn't have an opportunity to verify registration information before ballots were cast.

Among the volunteers were Yori Stadlin and Vivian Lehrer of the Upper West Side, who got married last week and decided to spend their honeymoon shepherding voters to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

Early today, Stadlin's van picked up William Woods, 59, at the soup kitchen of the Bishop Cosgrove Center.

"I never voted before," Woods said, because of a felony conviction that previously barred him from the polls. "Without this service, I would have had no way to get here."


For more news, entertainment and sports coverage, click here for NYPost.com
Share

EG Thanks...I was floored with the Navy Personnel I met yesterday. America would be stronger if more of our children were as polite, honorable and confident as the "children" I served BBQ to yesterday.

Almost forgot- I spoke today with Kat's and Eric's mom...I had her sent the video link of Our Sailor's when you first generated it....she told me was so impressed! Keep at it!

Ahoy EG- I gotta take a minute and let you know how much I've enjoyed NavyDads since I found you guys. Guess I had been searching for a group that had the same experiences and questions that I had....it would have been so nice to have someone to answer my questions when Kat went off to Great Lakes in '05. Knowing what to exepect made it a little easier when Eric headed there in '07 and I know that all the help and assistance we give each other has made the voyage easier for parents just now going through that. So anyway...just wanted to say thanks and that you deserve a "job well done" and a Bravo Zulu of your own for everything NavyDads has become. Regards- Paul

Just found the site and am so thankful for the source of information. I'm new to the military but am so proud of my son for choosing this path. He is in a 900 group I learned from my first letter yesterday so guess he's getting to march a little more--I think it's a performance group. Blessings,
David

EG,

Thank you for the welcome and starting Navy Dads. I watched, and will continue, over my wife shoulder as she communicated and learn information about the goings on for my son. My son is in Pre-BUD's and in class 275, which is why I will only call him 'M' for now. We have been told not to refer to him nor ourselves by name for his sake. Last week they really gave the riot act to a young man for his "face book" and "u-tube" stuff. Apparently they use anything they find on the boys as "training" information. Thank you again for a place for us dads to go and thank your son for his service to this great country.

EC