Good Things Are Happening in Our Face of America Project

By: Tony Mussari
Photographs By: Kitch Loftus-Mussari
Copyright: Mussari-Loftus Associates, LTD

The essential condition of everything you do must be choice, love and
dedication. George N. Parks

When I was in college, I enjoyed watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports. I liked Jim McKay’s opening narration: “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport…the thrill of victory …and the agony of defeat…the human drama of athletic competition. This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports. ”

Our search for the face of America on its best days has been a classroom in the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Status Report

We are 23,000 miles away from where we began. We are driving our third Toyota Prius. Our five-year-old Cannon Rebel is beginning to show the wear from the 57,000 digital images it has recorded in all kinds of weather. We have accumulated more Hilton Honors points than we ever dreamed possible in three months, and our credit card statements are longer and more expensive than we would like them to be.

We have visited approximately 170 cities and towns, and our video archive contains interviews with people from 40 states and the District of Columbia.

We have had five laptop computers since July and five portable drives. One of the two portable drives that were damaged by the Toshiba Satellite laptop is still at the data recovery center. It contains thousands of the original photographs from the first three months of our journey

Good News

If truth be told, the news of this day is all good as our friend Julie Marvel would say, and we are pleased to be able to share it with you.

Since last we met in front of our computer screens, we leased a burgundy red Prius from Toyota to get us from place to place. Our friend and supporter Gerry O’Donnell and his team at MotorWorld made that possible.

Our lifetime friend Sean McGrath successfully guided us through the challenging waters of selecting a new insurance carrier. This week we will have an insurance policy that is in our best interest. We will have an insurance policy that reflects Sean’s his Face of America attitude that a successful transaction is built upon customer satisfaction first and financial gain second.

Our Face of America visit to Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts during the Labor Day weekend was successful on many different levels.

In Boston, we were guests of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. It was a memorable experience made possible by Erin Donovan. We interviewed several people on the sidewalks and streets in the shadow of Fenway Park. We had a beautiful chance meeting with a woman who lost her brother in the World Trade Center. It was a moment Kitch and I will never forget.

Inside the ballpark, we interviewed two young men who are part of the Home Base Program. Co-sponsored by the Boston Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital, this program provides medical treatment and other services to veterans who return from Iraq and Afghanistan with the invisible wounds of war. One of the most poignant moments of our journey took place during an interview with one of the veterans who suffers from traumatic brain injuries. We will be writing about this experience in the book we will publish about our journey.

In Kent County, Rhode Island, we had a wonderful visit with Jim Connors at the newest and most modern courthouse in the state.

In Connecticut, we were hosted by the parents of one of our former students. During our visit with Gene and Elaine Ryan, we learned a great deal about one of the core values of our project, integrity, and we were given a powerful ear witness account of the events of September 11, 2001.

In The News

Last week our work with the North Plainfield Cheerleaders caught the attention of a reporter from the Newark Star Ledger, Kristine Snodgrass. Her article focused the spotlight on the cheerleaders, their wonderful community service projects, and the major role they played in our annual visit and screening in Shanksville. You can read the article at this address:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/nj_high_school_cheerleaders_to.html

The President of the Senior Class at North Plainfield High School, Guedis Cardenas, wrote a review of our documentary, Visiting Shanksville in the Rain, and our recent visit to Shanksville. You can read the review at this address:

http://faceofamericawps.com/articles/

A few days ago we received a call from a journalist who works for the intranet service for State Farm Insurance employees. She asked for permission to publish a story about our experience with State Farm following our accident in Minnesota. The company would like to use the story as a model for their employees in the Claims division. We were more than willing to help.

Another delightful bit of news came a permissions editor for Jossey-Bass Inc, the publisher of Dr. Stephen Post’s new book, The Hidden Gifts of Helping: How the Power of Giving, Compassion and Hope Get Us Through the Hard Times. Dr Post would like to use a quote from one of our Face of America commentaries about a very special person, Elisa Nelson. We interviewed Elisa while we were at Stony Brook, New York. We were pleased to help.

In October, we will be doing an interview with Brianne Carlton a writer for American Cheerleader magazine. The North Plainfield High School cheerleading squad has been chosen as the Squad of the Month. It will be a wonderful opportunity for us to celebrate the cheerleaders and their school.

In November, Toyota Today, the national magazine for Toyota dealerships in the USA, will publish an article about our Face of America Journey.

If you check out Greg Mortenson’s Blog, you will find our Face of America Commentary about Greg and his lecture honoring our beloved Judge Max Rosen:

http://gregmortenson.blogspot.com/

Greg is the author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones to Schools. In our opinion, Greg Mortenson is the quintessential Face of America on its best day.

Helping Hands

In August, we received word that Best Life Designs would become a sponsor of our project. The company is owned by Dr. Mollie Marti. We met Mollie during our visit to Iowa. You can learn more about her work and her company at this address:

http://www.bestlifedesign.com/

Nate Marti, a 15-year-old entrepreneur and founder of Reflections Apparel, is now a friend of our Face of America project. You can find see what Nate is doing at this address:

www.reflectyourlife.com

Another piece of good news comes in the form of a proposal that we submitted to a company that dots the landscape of America. Thanks to the good will of several people including my son-in-law, we were able to draft a proposal for corporate sponsorship. We are cautiously optimistic, but we are not wearing rose-colored glasses. We need a corporate sponsor for many different reasons, but because our project is so different this has been the agony side of the drama we referred to at the beginning of this article.

Looking Ahead

This morning we made a presentation to 21 members of the Masters Leadership Program of the Wilkes-Barre Leadership program. Norene Bradshaw is the program director. Kitch and I always enjoy opportunities to talk about our journey. After the meeting, we were deeply touched by the affirming words of a woman who decided during the presentation to help us in a very thoughtful way.

In the days ahead, we will make our way to a number of states in the south. We are looking forward to this trip with great anticipation. Somewhere in the south, we will reach the 24,000 mile mark, and we will be able to say that we literally drove around the circumference of the earth searching for the face of America on its beat days.

We will return to Massachusetts for a very special event honoring our friend George Parks, and we will begin writing our book.

We will begin the planning stage for the first of what will be a series of national premieres of our Face of America Project. One of the best days of the past seven weeks was the day the City Manager of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, wrote to invite us to have a premiere event in Money Magazine’s Best City in America. That clearly is the ecstasy of the equation.

Coach Vince Lombardi was right:

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”

Until the next time, we hope that all of your stories have happy endings.

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