Friday, June 5, 2009

Sharon Mooers - Olive Crest Homes & Services for Abused Children

















Sharon Mooers - Olive Crest Homes & Services for Abused Children

It was a great experience meeting Sharon Mooers.  She came over to our studio to be interviewed for a testimonial about her positive experience working with Andrea Heuston and Artitudes Design.  Sharon is a director for the Olive Crest Homes & Services for Abused Children.   Olive Crest is a non profit who is dedicated to saving abused children.  I could not believe it when Sharon said that every nine seconds there is a child abuse report filed in America.  This is a truly shocking statistic.  To learn more about Olive Crest, go to www.olivecrest.org 

Andrea Heuston - CEO of Artitudes Design

















Andrea Heuston - CEO and Founder of Artitudes Design Inc.

I really enjoyed my interview with Andrea Heuston, the CEO and founder of Artitudes Design. 
She is a fantastic leader who is breaking all records for referral business.  I have interviewed some of her clients and they cannot stop talking about Andrea and her team.  The Artitudes Design office seems like such a fun and creative place to work.  Everyone there was having a great time and they were laughing, too.  

Oren Barker - Pilot of P-38 in WW2 - Shot down













RJ with Oren Barker.


Oren Barker enlisted in the Army Air Corp and served in the European campaign of World War II flying the P-38. The P-38 was called the "Lightning" by the Americans and the "Devil" by the Germans.


Oren grew up in Olympia and was very excited about learning how to fly. He was trained with the Stearman bi-planes which allowed him to learn how to do rolls and spins and to do some dog fighting. It wasn't long until Oren saw real combat with the super fast and deadly P-38. On his first combat mission over Belgium his P-38 was hit by flack in the gas tank. He is lucky his plane did not blow up. On one of the big battles in December 1944 Oren was shot down and ended up spending over two years in a hospital. He was knocked unconscious when he crashed, so he has no memory of the day he was shot down. But he was lucky that in one of the hospitals he met his future wife and they were married almost fifty years. I really enjoyed meeting Oren and interviewing him for the Library of Congress program called the Veterans History Project. We have volunteered to interview as many World War II vets for free as we can get. So if you know of a veteran from WWII, tell them to give me a call. After the war, Oren came back to the Northwest and worked in the insurance business for over 30 years. We are lucky to have had guys like Oren serve over there for us. He sacrificed a lot for all of us.