We were last in the same place on Memorial Day in 2007, as we gathered in front of the Chappaqua Train Station to honor our town’s latest Fallen Soldier, SSgt. Kyu Hyuk Chay.

I suggest that you can Honor The Memory of SSgt. Chay in two ways: first, by making a contribution to a scholarship fund in his memory that has been established by his brother Tae; second, leading by example to encourage others to make their own contributions.

By the way, I am running for the open seat on the Chappaqua Library Board, as part of my volunteer efforts on behalf of the Delites US project. Our mission is to DELiver Internet Technology to Educators and Students in the United States.

thanks,
dave

The sender asked how to donate to help educate Sgt. Chay’s surviving children, so I drove to downtown Chappaqua, NY, to deliver a note at the dry cleaning estalishment that is the family business, asking that Kyu’s surviving brother give me a call.

A few hours later I got a call from Kyu Tae Chay. He told me that contributions to the scholarship fund can be made by sending a check made out to him to:

Kyu Tae Chay
1063 Edgewood Avenue
Fort Lee, NJ, 07024

I told him that I was laid off by IBM on February 26 and am currently employed.

I also promised him that any money that came my way that I made either on my own, or as a partner of a small company that I hope to join soon, would be donated to the scholarship fund, though I would delay the contribution until I had first taken care of my family’s needs. [1]

Tae said the Cathy and the children are doing as well as can be expected. Jason is now seven, so he has memories of his father. Kelly is now two. She was born soon after his brother’s death.

I encourage others to contribute to the scholarship fund.

There is no finer cause.

There is no man, save any of Sgt. Chay’s fellow Fallen Soldiers, more deserving of a contribution to honort heir memory.

Sgt. Kyu Hyuk Chay – May His Memory Be A Blessing.

thanks,dave

Note:

1. The company offers internet-based solutions to k12 schools and libraries. I promised to contribut all after-tax income that resulted from contracts with schools, libraries, and other non-profit organizations in Westchester County, New York.

This is the first such link I can recall. I hope there are more to come.

These soldiers willingly put themselves in harm’s way, knowing their lives would be at risk, and also knowing that some of them would die as a result.

They did this so their surviving families and countrymen could enjoy the fruits of freedom.

One of the greatest fruits of freedom, and a necessary condition to keeping a country free, is freedom of expression.

Here is an example of such a free expression. It was written by retro@retro.net:

As much as I’d like to see a woman president, I don’t trust Hillary as far as I can throw her.

Enjoy your freedom, retro. I sure hope you appreciate what you have, for many have died to give you the right to enjoy that freedom.

They won’t get to enjoy that freedom.

They are dead.

You aren’t.

Think about that.

This is to announce the formation of “The Chay Project” (TCP), and to seek your participation in it as a co-founder.

I sent the following note to several trusted colleagues and friends on September 26, 2007. I then forwarded a copy to Cathy Min Chay, SSgt. Kyu Hyuk Chay’s widow.

This is to announce the formation of “The Chay Project” (TCP) and to seek your participation it in as co-founders and, at your discretion, also as a member of the Chay Project Core Team (CPCT), the group that will be responsible for the day-to-day work of the project.

I have set up an email account for the Core Team, chayprojectcoreteam@gmail.com, as part of this project.

By way of background, I live in Chappaqua, New York. I attended my town’s Memorial Day ceremony this past May, as I have done for many years.

As I took my seat I noticed that both Bill and Hillary Clinton, fellow Chappaqua residents, were present, as was Nita Lowey, Chappaqua’s member of the U.S.House of Representatives. Hillary attended the ceremony in 2005, as did I.

I then saw a photo and flag in front of our Soldier’s Monument and realized the reason why there were so many luminaries present — we were adding a new name to the Monument, the first since the Vietnam War.

There were several hundred people present. Realizing I was probably the only one of them who was an active blogger, I decided to pay careful attention and published a post about the event later that day:

Chappaqua Memorial Day 2007: Staff Sgt Kyu Hyuk Chay

See also

Postscript: Chappaqua Memorial Day 2007: Staff Sgt Kyu Hyuk Chay

The dead soldier’s name was SSgt. Kyu Hyuk Chay. He grew up in Mount Kisco, the town just to the north of Chappaqua, and his family has for many years run a dry cleaning business in downtown Chappaqua. SSgt. Chay was killed in action by an IED in Afghanisgtan last October.

Within a day or so of publishing that post I found that if I entered his name, “Kyu Hyuk Chay” to Google then my post was the first result displayed.

Several readers posted comments to that post, the most notable being that of his widow, Cathy Chay. Recently I had an e-mail exchange with Cathy that, with her permission, I published as:

Letters from Cathy Min Chay

My post has remained the #1 hit to this day. Though I take some pride in this, I also say it with great sadness, as I have come to appreciate from Cathy’s recent notes that:

Cathy noted in one of her recent e-mails that, “I eventually would like to create a website but I’m far from doing that.”

Simply put, the goal of the Chay Project is to help to create that website, and to do so in a way such that other surviving families can take as a model create their own web sites.

Key to the project’s mission will be to provide instruction and technical guidance on creating these web sites.

The intent of the project is to use WordPress.com as much as possible. No charges are required, the underlying software if open-source, and WordPress is so good that I think it safe to say the free services it offers will be available for decades to come.

The project will use the existing open-source infrastructure provided by WordPress.com as much as possible , and will make available any changes and extensions to thatsoftware that it produces as part of the project’s work under a widely accepted open-source license compatible with the license used by the WordPress project.

The project sees these web sites as having two components:

1. Content about the fallen soldiers: their stories, photographs, links to articles about them, remembrances from friends and colleagues, some hopefully in the form of recorded interviews, and so forth;
2. Blogs in which the survivors can share their own thoughts, and in so doing provide support for others that share the same lifelong burden.

Though (1) is the more obvious goal, my own guess is that the real benefit may come from (2).

I lost a niece, Janet Perloff Fossett, to cancer a few years back, and I know she found comfort by participating in mail-lists with other cancer victims, as only they knew what she was going through. [1]

With this note I am asking you to join me as a co-founder of TCP. Co-founders can at their discretion become active members of the Core Team. New members may be invited to join the Core Team only with the unanimous consent of the then active members.

The project will be governed using Apache rules and practices.

I hope the work of the project will survive for many years — hopefully decades — to come, and so suggest we provide all web content exclusively via WordPress.com, as I am confident it will be with us for many years to come.

We need a team to do this work; hence the present note.

WordPress is free, but if any additional costs are needed to pay for additional support and services from wordpress.com then I will pay for them out of my own pocket.

Feel free to share this note with others, but I ask your discretion in doing so as I have yet told Cathy about the project.

You need only devote as much time to the project as you wish.

I’m inviting you to join me as co-founders since yours were the first names that came to mind when I thought of the skills that were needed — and the people I would most like to join me on this project.

Within a day I realized that there was no need to create a Core Team of a select few, as anyone who makes any contribution to the project, even if only by knowing about it and telling someone else about it, becomes thereby a member of the project.

I do expect that some will step forward and offer help to manage the day-to-day affairs of the project, and invite any interested parties to send a note to that effect to the email address give above.

Yet anyone can step forward at any time, in their own way, and in so doing become a co-founder — by telling others about the project, posting comments to the project’s various web sites, offering support to the survivors in their own personal way, and so forth.

Though the project grew out of an effort to honor a Fallen Soldier, it of course is intended to help anyone who has Fallen. Soldier, Sailor or Marine; Soldier fallen in battle or Veteran who came home from service in Harm’s Way; or Civilians such as those murdered on September 11, 2001; or anyone else who had death thrust upon them by the forces of evil.

Also, every Veteran is but an individual who returned home safely only to become a Fallen on the day of their death.

By their untimely deaths, some yet to occur, the Fallen have left — and will leave — us a heavy burden: to honor their memories and to help their survivors.

They deserve our help, and we will become better as we accept that burden, in ways that I am sure will cause us to grow in ways we cannot measure — that is their legacy to us.

So let me thank you in advance, and I look forward to working together to advance this noble cause.

The deaths of the Fallen have damaged our world. We need to repair that damage. No effort is too small.

SSgt. Kyu Hyuk Chay and the other Fallen — May Their Memories Be A Blessing.

Notes:

1. It was during a conversation with Janet many years ago in the playground at West 93rd Street and Central Park West, that she called me “Uncle,” in a way that made me appreciated that, since she thought of me as her uncle, I was truly an uncle for the first time. It was a moment of joy then, and every time since that I have recalled that conversation.

She died of breast cancer just over three years ago.

I miss her dearly.

She was a treasure beyond measure, as all who had the good fortune to
know her can attest.

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