Gallery - Veterans to Dancing Dolphins

 A startling variety of pics for this week's Gallery, from the return of an Honor Flight from Washington, DC, to Dolphin-dancing off Florida's Gulf Coast. 

What is an Honor Flight? you ask. There is a local group that flies elderly veterans—most from the Vietnam War—to see the Memorials in Washington, particularly the Vietnam Wall.

Our Cassidy has been in Police Explorers since before she joined the Air Force Junior ROTC and has been a faithful member in each, rising to commander of the Honor Guard, which met the return of the latest Honor Flight at Sanford International Airport. In the video below, you will also catch glimpses of her father (red shirt) taking photos of the event.

Cassidy, in front

For a link to the video of the Honor Flight vets returning to Sanford International, click here.

And yes, this is the same airport where Cassidy is continuing her flight training. As her high school years came to a close, her parents decided they should capture Cassidy in some Pilot Pin-up poses. (Is that expression still in our modern vocabulary? I grew up with "Pin-up" meaning a glamorous movie star pic that soldiers and sailors in WWII pinned to the walls beside their bunks to keep their spirits up.) Below, several Cassidy Pilot Pin-ups, using "her" plane as a backdrop.

 

If you're thinking this can't be the same girl as the leader of the Police Explorers Honor Guard . . . I, her grandmother for seventeen+ years, swear it really is. (Needless to say, her two older sisters are ready for all the hoopla to fade away.)

**********

My hairdresser operates her own business out of a building that rents individual cubicles with all the necessary equipment—chair, sink, storage, big window, etc. Which is why my hairdresser can bring her four-month-old puppy to work. Below, Bentley, whose soulful eyes I didn't quite manage to capture. Bentley is both charming and well-mannered, an enjoyable bonus to getting my hair cut.

 

And in a classic sunset finish, a photo from Florida's Gulf Coast, where I lived for 25 years before moving to Orlando to be near my daughter and the three grandgirls. 

Dolphins dancing off Ft. Meyers Beach

~ * ~

 I thought I should choose an intrepid heroine for this week's featured book, and Rogue's Destiny leaped to mind (even though I've featured it before). I based the heroine's father on my own 4 or 5-greats grandfather, Peter Demo*, which would make him Cassidy's umpteen-greats grandfather. And since he lived to be 112 and one of my mother's "greats" lived to a hundred (passing on about the time I entered high school), the family has oral history far more vivid than could be expected about someone who was a drummer boy for the French at the Battle of Quebec (September 13,1759).

*If you would like to know more about a man who lived a truly remarkable life, click here.. for "An Amazing Bit of Family History" (May 30,2015).

 

In previous books in the Regency Warrior series, Jack Harding has suffered a broken heart, a close brush with the hangman, and continued his uncertain history with females by letting yet another woman slip through his fingers—this time to his employer, Terence O'Rourke. It would appear Jack is never to know the joy of true love—until he meets a feisty young French Canadian heiress in need of a knight in shining armor. A role at which Jack excels.

WARNING: Although the story in Rogue's Destiny stands alone, it contains major spoilers for the previous books in the Regency Warrior series: The Sometime Bride, Tarleton's Wife, and O'Rourke's Heiress.

~ * ~

 

For a link to Blair's website, click here. 

 

Thanks for stopping by,

Grace (Blair Bancroft)