Time With My Brother

Friday, we left early to Corpus Christi since we were attending the 2nd Annual Remembrance Honoring Driscoll's Fallen Heroes on Saturday.  We first visited in Driscoll with Manuel's oldest brother and his wife.  While there, his oldest sister came by.  We had a nice day in Driscoll.  We headed to Corpus Christi at about 3 p.m.  We arrived at Holt Company to visit with my Brother, Jesse.

We had a great visit.  My Brother has been with The Holt Company for 38 years and you can tell he truly enjoys his job.  

We asked him to arrange a meeting with Mark Martinez, a co-worker, as we wanted to thank him for all his thoughts and prayers all these (10) years that Manuel has  been fighting cancer.  We had always communicated via messages through my brother, but today we got to meet this thoughtful Man.  What a pleasure it is to know Mark.   

As you may expect, this was a very touching and emotional moment for us.  Again, we are so thankful to have friends like Mark Martinez.  Thank you, Mark and Jesse.

After about an hour of visiting, we left Holt and will get together later with my brother and his wife for dinner. 

We left Holt; went to visit Manuel's younger brother, Robert, but he was not home.  Again, his older sister was there and we visited some more.  Seems like we were following her.

At 6 pm, we drove with my brother to have dinner at the U & I Restaurant.  I took pictures as we drove on Ocean Drive.  Corpus is So beautiful!

Food was great and so was the company.  Thank you, Brother and Berta.  It was awesome...

While we were visiting, Manuel showed them the coin he had received from "A Grateful Citizen" and told them how this had really made his Christmas....

     

My Brother pulled out this coin that someone had given to him also.  My Brother is a member of the Patriot Guard Riders of South Texas and he is assigned to carry the POW-MIA Flag to  the functions honoring Veterans.  He, too, said that was a very touching gesture by that citizen.  He proudly serves this group.  Sorry I could not get a good clear picture.

     

Manuel and I have been researching my Father's Military background since he just never talked about his days serving during WWII.  We have found so many interesting things and we made a folder with all the info found.  We ordered records, medals and patches from the government but they said they could not get some  of them.  We visited several bases here in San Antonio and were able to find every medal and patch he received while serving in the Army Air Corp back in the 1940s.  This prompted us to make a shadow box and present it to my brother this weekend as he has been honoring our Driscoll Fallen Heroes for two years now.  Our Dad survived WWII but Manuel and I thought we would honor him with this special project.  Again, this was a very emotional moment for my brother and I.  He loved it and had no idea we were doing this.  We feel we learned so much from this research.

We got to meet the newest addition to The Family:  Jessica.  Such a beautiful little girl.

We had a great visit with my Brother and his family.  More to come!