It took over 60 years before Yuma resident Ben Lesesne was able to view a memorial in honor of the 16 million who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II.
Now that he’s seen the WWII memorial in Washington, D.C., he urges other veterans to visit the monument, before it’s too late.
“I’d like for veterans to see this before they pass on,” Lesesne said. “They say that we’re dying at a rate of 1,500 a month in this country. I think every veteran of World War II should see that before they pass on. It only took them 60 years to build it.”
Lesesne visited the memorial as part of Honor Flight Network, an all-expenses-paid program for veterans. Honor Flight has a network of participating programs formed to assist senior heroes, like Lesesne, from all across the country.
Resources are pooled, experiences are shared and alliances are formed throughout America to get WWII Veterans to their precious memorial safely - and free of charge.
“A pilot started this Honor Flight by flying two veterans at a time, until they had more money to spend that came from public donation,” Lesesne said. “The government has nothing to do with this. This is all publicly funded by different organizations and public donation.
“All expenses for the vet are paid, even down to tips. They wouldn’t even let you tip anybody because that was included.”
Lesesne heard about the program after reading an advertisement in his doctor’s office. After inquiring more about the program, he was disappointed to learn that it was not offered in Arizona at that time.
“Last year, they hadn’t expanded enough to include Arizona. They were waiting for more funds. But one day about two months ago out of the blue, I got a phone call saying I had been chosen to go on the next trip planned.

yumasun.com

Required to attend therapy sessions after several outbursts of anger at the base, the painful aspects of his childhood are shown in flashback as the grown up Antwone (Derek Luke) recounts his life in sessions with Navy psychiatrist Jerome Davenport (Denzel Washington).
Antwone is at first unwilling to talk, but when he begins, the floodgates are opened. After his father was shot to death by a girlfriend and Antwone was abandoned by his mother after being released from prison, he was placed in a foster home, where he lived for fourteen years, suffering humiliation and sexual abuse.
According to Antwone, played as a young boy by Malcolm David Kelley, the treatment by his foster mother Mrs. Tate (Novella Nelson) who referred to him only as “nigga” and by his cousin Nadine (Yolonda Ross) was in fact much worse than shown on the screen. The only friend he has is a local boy named Jesse (Jascha Washington), who later in the film only adds to his feelings of abandonment.
It is difficult to build a film around psychiatric sessions but it was done successfully in “Ordinary People” and “Good Will Hunting” with a great deal more dramatic interest, but it succeeds here because of the dominant performances of Washington and Luke, though the film’s attempt to compress 11 years into a few months seems a bit too facile.
Davenport’s humanity and warmth, however, allows Antwone to feel safe enough to discuss his difficult past and Cheryl (Joy Bryant), his new girlfriend, who is also in the Navy, supports him in his struggle to achieve a breakthrough.
With Cheryl’s help and Davenport’s counseling, Antwone develops enough self-esteem to return to Cleveland and begin the journey to try to find his mother in order to complete the past. What comes through in Derek Luke’s incredible performance is Antwone’s longing for acceptance, dramatized in a heartbreaking dream shown at the beginning of the film in which he is the guest of honor at a banquet filled with people who love him.

english.ohmynews.com

(Sports Network) - A pair of playoff-bound teams riding two-game winning streaks collide tonight, when the Orlando Magic host the Washington Wizards at Amway Arena.
Orlando is the third seed in the Eastern Conference and will face the Toronto Raptors in the opening round of the playoffs. It has won two straight and three of four, including Tuesday's 121-105 victory over the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena.
Maurice Evans scored a career-high 27 points and Hedo Turkoglu had 17 points and eight assists for the Southeast Division-champion Magic. Dwight Howard posted his league-leading 69th double-double of the season with 15 points and 13 rebounds in a winning effort.
The Magic finished the season with a 27-14 road mark, and will put their 24-16 home record on the line Wednesday night.
Washington has won two in a row and five of its last six games. It posted a 117-110 triumph over the Indiana Pacers on Monday at the Verizon Center, as Roger Mason drained a career-high seven three-pointers en route to a 31-point performance for the short-handed Wizards.
The Wizards were without Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler. Arenas was held out of the contest for precautionary reasons, and Butler is still recovering from a bruised right knee suffered last week. Arenas is probable against the Magic, while Butler and DeShawn Stevenson (back/tailbone) are both questionable.
Washington, which went 25-16 this season at home, is the fifth seed in the East playoffs, and will face LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round.
Orlando is 2-1 against the Wizards this season, and has won six of the last 10 matchups in the series.
The Wizards are unbeaten in their last two games at the Magic.

sportsnetwork.com

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON – 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel Thursday, an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the U.S. church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.
Benedict’s third day in the U.S. began with a packed open-air Mass celebrated in 10 languages at a baseball stadium, and it included a speech to Roman Catholic college and university presidents.
But the real drama happened privately, in the chapel of the papal embassy between events.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley met with a group of five or six clergy sex abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope. The group from O’Malley’s archdiocese were all adults, men and women, who had been molested when they were minors. Each spoke privately with the pope.
“They prayed together. Also, each of them had their own individual time with the Holy Father,” Lombardi said. “Some were in tears.”
Bernie McDaid, one of the victims, said in an interview with CNN that he told the pope he was an altar boy when he was abused and “it wasn’t just sexual abuse, it was spiritual abuse. And I want you to know that. And then I told him that he has a cancer growing in his ministry, and needs to do something about it. And I hope he hears me … and he nodded.”
McDaid and two other victims said in the interview that the meeting was candid and emotional.
Well over 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950. The church has paid out more than $2 billion, much of it in just the last six years, after the case of a serial molester in Boston gained national attention and inspired many victims to step forward. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy because of abuse costs.

ap.google.com

FOR ANY FOODIE, dinner at the Inn at Little Washington amounts to both a pilgrimage and a feast. The seminal locavore restaurant, 90 miles from D.C. in Virginia, turns 30 this month. Chef Patrick O’Connell will be feted by Alice Waters, Gary Danko and other gourmet types with a downtown gala Wednesday.
» EXPRESS: You were championing local food before it was hip.
» O’CONNELL: We developed a regional cuisine out of necessity, not because it was cool. Nothing was delivered here — you could only use what you could scrounge or grow. But after a couple of years, you started seeing D.C. menus with “Virginia tomatoes” and this and that. Before that, people thought we didn’t grow anything except tobacco.
» EXPRESS: What is Virginia cuisine?
» O’CONNELL: It’s a fascinating juxtaposition. You’ve got settlers from England and Germany, and African influences because of the slaves. It’s a food very tied to the seasons.
» EXPRESS: Which foods represent the state?
» O’CONNELL: The morel mushroom, which some mountain people pronounce “miracle.” And definitely ham. My belief is that no one should come to Virginia without tasting the ham. You see very sophisticated French people coming here wanting to do that.
» EXPRESS: What’s so great about Virginia ham?
» O’CONNELL: It’s got all these nuances — there’s nothing quite like it. I think it got a bad rep because people cooked it with all that red-eye gravy. At the Inn, we use it as a tiny accent, like the Chinese would.
» EXPRESS: How about the wines in the state — are they getting better?
» O’CONNELL: It was an industry that came from nothing, except that the whole idea came from Thomas Jefferson. Now it has a real sense of place. You can give a Californian or a Frenchman something that grew within a stone’s throw of the restaurant.

readexpress.com