May 21, 1991

Dear Family and Friends:

This picture pretty much sums it up . . . . . Daron is finally back from serving in Operation Desert Shield\Storm !!!!

He arrived in Camp Pendleton, California on April 7th, at about 10:30pm and then finally came home to Minneapolis, MN on April 24th, at about 5:00pm. For awhile there, we had high hopes that he might be home by his Birthday on April 10th, but at least he was on U.S. soil!

Before I forget, if you had mailed any letters and\or packages to Daron within the last 2 months, don't worry, we will still receive everything! Now that he's back, all of his mail get's turned around in California first, i.e. it doesn't get shipped all the way to Saudi Arabia before it comes back to us.

There was some initial speculation that his unit was going to be able to come straight back to Minneapolis, instead of landing in California first, but to no avail. So they spent 2 1\2 weeks in California before finally coming home. I'll let Daron add to this letter later on and he can tell you more about this and other stuff. When it came right down to it, we only had less than a week's confirmed notice before we knew when his unit was coming back to Minneapolis. So we had to do some quick planning and decorating for his home coming! We decorated the entire apartment with tons of balloons, ribbons, streamer tape and signs! Then I rented a humongous, white, stretch limo, I mean this sucker was huge!! It sat 14 people! The driver said it was the largest in the state! So we crammed 11 people in it and headed off to the airport, with LOTS of Champagne and Beer! . Overall, there must have been over 200 people that showed up at the airport to Welcome Home the 38 members of 7th MTBN. For our group, there was 20 !! Which was great!! And I'd like to say thanks again for all of you who had to skip out of work that afternoon in order to be there! THANK YOU! We got the whole deal video-taped and with cameras!

It is now March 16, 1992. The 1st page of this letter was never mailed. I just never got around to it. However, I'm completing this for a single person, cuz she's hounding me like an elephant in heat !!! heehee - Grammy! Deloris Stenvold, that is.

The limo ride was great. We all got back and where making quite the scene out in our parking lot! We're on the second floor of this 3-story apartment, and our upstairs neighbor, Al, actually had the nerve to come out onto his balcony, in his bathrobe no less, and bitch at us for making so much noise !!! What a dick-head!!! All in all though, Daron's first evening at home was pretty quiet.

The following weekend, Toni's family had a welcome home bash at their house. It was really nice. They had ton's of food, played croquet and had alot of people show up for it!

If I remember correctly, I think Daron was back to work at Northgate Computers within a month of his return. Oh well, the bills never stop coming even though your over seas!!

Looking back over the past year, Daron has eased back into the mainstream of things pretty easily. There definitely wasn't any of this "Vietnam" crap going on that would make things tuff for the guys coming back !!

Daron's six years in the reserve ended in January of this year. He was givin the option of signing on the dotted line for another term, but opted not to because of one or two extremely dick-headed people in his company. He still has the option though, for I think a year or so, to come back into it without too much of a hassle. It's kind of funny though, his hair is now longer than it has been in 6 years !! heehee

A-ba-dee A-ba-dee A-ba-dee, that's all folks !!