Highland Park needs our help

Have you ever felt that your life is guided by a higher power?

I have.

This is not a religious post; the higher power I am talking about can be called a God, an intuition, a gut feeling or fate. Someone, something guides me to take a right turn when the GPS is saying go straight; get off at this exit for gas when the tank still has plenty of gas. I walk into this particular store at this particular time for no apparent reason. I pick up the phone and call Jeannie, my good friend in Texas because something tells me I should. If you’ve ever had these same experiences, then you know what I am talking about.

I don’t normally watch the six o’clock evening local news but last night, 23 March 2017, something told me to watch it.

I am glad I did.

My 6 PM local news comes out of Detroit and if you know Detroit, you know it is huge and encompasses many smaller communities. One of these smaller communities that lie inside Detroit is Highland Park, Michigan. The six o’clock news had a story about the Highland Park fire department. One of their fire engines was destroyed in a fire. It was a thirteen year old fire engine and the insurance will not cover the million dollar price tag of a new fire engine. The Fox News TV anchor says that one of the firemen has set up a “Go Fund Me” page to try and generate the extra funds needed to buy a new fire engine. I expected the next words out of the anchors mouth to be “… and in just a few hours of opening the account they have surpassed their goal… blah blah blah…” like so many other “Go Fund Me” stories end, but not this one. What I saw on the TV screen was like a gut punch. The “Go Fund Me” chart showed $413.00.

Highland Park needs our help.

A life time ago, I along with Wally Schram, Jerry Vida, and Jerry Davis drove down to Highland Park Junior College. There we met up with Mike Chilcutt another one of our Redford Union High School graduates; class of 1965. My older sister worked in Highland Park. My brother also went to HPJC. I got my first drafting job at the Highland Park Engineering – Chrysler facility. I drove through Highland Park every time I took my son, Juan down to some function in Detroit. Juan drove by Highland Park every day on his way to Wayne State University.

I have ties to Highland Park and maybe the same ties that tell me to call Jeannie, told me to watch the six o’clock news. The Highland Park Fire Department needs our help.

Highland Park sits inside the Detroit boundaries and if you’ve followed the news in the past decade you know that the city of Highland Park has been hit hard, economically. The people of Highland Park are poor and have only been able to raise $413.00 on the “Go Fund Me” cause. I am retired and live on a fixed income but I will donate to this cause. Years ago, people at work were wearing the WWJD wrist bands to signify “What Would Jesus Do” and one of the women I worked with, changed that to “What Would Jose Do” when I told her about my helping out some poor family I met at a rest stop. One of those rest stops that I did not need to stop at but something told me to do so. I know what I will do, what I must do, and that is to help out the Highland Park Fire Department.

Here is a link to the story, which has a link to the “Go Fund Me” page.

http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-news/243550405-story

I watched the TV news last night at 6 PM and the amount on the “Go Fund Me” was $413.00, this morning when I sat down to write this blog post, it is twelve hours later. This is what they have raised.

The people of Highland Park and Detroit are poor and need our help.  The contributions that have come in are from six people. I am sure we can do a bit better. My blog is seen by a few hundred people around the world (per the stats map) and my face book page and FB group pages go out to people in Australia, USA, Bolivia, Spain, Germany, UK and I suppose now Russia, so many people are seeing this Highland Park fire engine story. I hope all my friends around the globe will chip in to help with this cause.

Thank You.

Jose from Clarkston, Michigan