FVC Represents at School Garden Project in LA

Here’s a message we got this evening from Michael O’Gorman, FVC’s Project Director:

All,

Here are a few pictures of today’s amazing event in Inglewood, California. I and three young vets helped put in a school garden in a poor part of Los Angeles as the first of 1000 schools that Kelly Meyer, wife of Universal Studios President, Ron Meyer, is spearheading. Yesterday my son, Greg, my daughter-in-law Rachael, my grand-kids and two other vets spent a long day filling the beds with soil. One of the vets, John McLaughilin, 27 year-old Army Vet and Purple Heart grew up on a 1200 acre farm outside of Merced. Jose Soto went to Iraq at the age of 17, saw some of the worst battles and lost a lot of friends.

Today we planted the gardens with 700 kids. In the afternoon there was a star-studded assembly.

The first picture is Jose, me and Tobey Maguire, who talked about being a vegan.

The second picture is Kelly introducing me to speak.

The third is John, Gabby Reece (beach volley ball star), me, Derek Fisher from the LA Lakers, Peggy from Growing Great (a project that supports school gardens) and Tobey.

The last one is my son planting with a group of kids.

It was a great day, to put it mildly.

The school is 60% Hispanic, 38% African American and 2% other. I asked the kids how many had family or friends that went to Iraq or Afghanistan and somewhere between one third and one half raised their hands.

After the assembly one teacher brought up an eight year old Hispanic boy that was fighting back his tears. She said he was sad because his Dad was getting sent to Iraq. She asked him if he wanted to meet any of the celebrities. He said no, he wanted to meet my son. Greg knelt down in front of him and held his hands. “Your Dad will have lots of friends that will look after him for you”, he said. “Make sure you write him and send him lots of pictures.” An emotional scene for me at the end of a long two days.

(Click image to enlarge)

Addenda:

Access Hollywood covered the event (because there were celebrities involved, obviously) but gave it good publicity. And participant Gabby Reece described the event in her blog.