• character

• core convictions

• and beliefs

are often tested in the strangest ways.

Throughout the years people have ask Darla and I how we achieved financial success and to teach them our secrets.

Well, we were always too busy running our businesses, enjoying life and quite frankly we're not teachers, we are doers!

However, a few years ago something happened that changed the course of our lives.

One of Darla (my wife's) good friends "Hope" was blessed with the birth of triplets. All girls. Identical! They affectionately became known as the “triple divas”. Life was great!

However, sometimes unforeseeable events come like cataclysms, and have the power to totally redefine your reality. When the triple divas were close to 4 years old, they were ALL diagnosed with autism. Autism now affects 1 in 45 children in the United States.

The cost for raising ONE child with autism is over $2 million during their lifetime. Now, multiply that times 3.

Hope unfortunately found out rather painfully, getting help for kids with autism is extremely difficult and costly.

My wife offered to help and see if she could find any kind of assistance programs through any local agencies. She too found a lack of programs to assist families living with autism.

What's the old saying,

(OK maybe I just made that up but I applies to this).

Darla dropped EVERYTHING and took the bull by the horns, and did what very few people including most friends would do…

She started an organization, from scratch, to help families with kids living with autism in our community.

The organization which she appropriately named: HopeForThree has become a smashing success and one of the fastest-growing nonprofit groups our county has ever seen...

Raising over $1 million in just a few short years.

However, she didn't stop there, she secured ALL 18 Mayors from EVERY city in our county to participate and proclaim April as Autism awareness month.

Then she secured the brand new baseball stadium Constellation Field to make Sunday of opening weekend as StrikeOut Autism day.

Next her staff secured a national billboard company to donate numerous billboards to create awareness of this national Epidemic and garner support for hopeforthree.org

I'm so proud to have a friend like this and also be able to call this friend, my wife (of almost 36 happy years).

This is the kind of friend EVERYONE should have and we are now extremely excited to have you in our family of friends!

Givers, give… And takers, take!

We are both Givers and have decided to devote the rest of our lives to helping and teaching people.