Stevie Nicks will at all times encourage us along with her music. Nonetheless, she will encourage us in different methods too, particularly by means of her charity work. For many years now, Nicks has made it her mission to make sure that a sure group of individuals by no means really feel forgotten. She’s really achieved this so many instances that she holds a file for doing it so regularly. After we thought it wasn’t doable, Nicks goes and offers us another excuse to like her.
Stevie Nicks holds the USO file for most time spent visiting injured veterans
In line with Military Times, Nicks holds the USO (United Service Organizations-a non-profit charitable company that gives leisure to the members of the USA Armed Forces and their households) file for “the most hours spent over a five-year period visiting combat-wounded service members.”
For all their dedication to the USO through the years, Nicks, Peyton Manning, and writer Sebastian Junger had been honored with the Excellent Achievement Award on the 2015 USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore thirty third Annual Awards Dinner. The occasion additionally honored 30 Medal of Honor recipients for their heroism in World Struggle II, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
Nicks mentioned she didn’t know what she was moving into initially, however she figured she had the time. “Once it began, it never ended until almost five years later,” she mentioned. Nicks has been visiting injured veterans since 2004.
Nicks’ first assembly with an injured soldier had a profound impact on her
On the 2015 USO banquet, Nicks talked about her first go to with an injured soldier. On the finish of that preliminary go to, there was a boy. Their assembly had such a profound impact on Nicks. After that, she knew she needed to proceed visiting injured veterans.
“I went into his room, and he was laying up against the white pillows and very quiet, and his eyes were closed,” Nicks defined. “He had actually lengthy eyelashes. I believed he was asleep and I walked over to him, and he didn’t open his eyes, and I mentioned, ‘Hello,’ and I put my hand sort of on his coronary heart, and I checked out his household or whoever was within the room and mentioned, ‘Why isn’t he opening his eyes?’ They mentioned, ‘He doesn’t wish to open his eyes, we don’t actually know why,’ and that simply fully freaked me out as a result of I believed so he’s seen-something he has seen has made his eyes stick closed.
“So I just kind of reached down and whispered in his ear that you know, ‘I know you’re going to be OK. You have to-I promise you; you’re going to be OK.’ That was it, that was the beginning, and I knew that from that moment onward that I would come back whenever I could.”
Nonetheless, spending hundreds of time visiting injured troopers isn’t all that Nicks has achieved for U.S. service members.
Nicks wished to present the veterans she visited a memento to elevate their spirits
Throughout her USO visits, Nicks got here up with an concept for a basis, Stevie Nicks Band of Troopers Basis. Whereas visiting the troopers, Nicks wished to depart them with a memento that will increase their spirits and encourage them. So she bought lots of of iPod Nanos that she loaded with music hand-picked by her and autographed them.
In line with ABC News Radio Online, Nicks gave the iPods to veterans recovering on the Walter Reed Military Medical Heart and Bethesda Nationwide Naval Medical Heart. Later, Nicks additionally held a charity drive to lift cash for the iPods.
“You’re in a room with about 25 to 40 soldiers who have all been left without limbs and you’re told that this young guy has lost both his legs and all his friends were killed by a bomb,” Nicks mentioned in a statement. “It modified me ceaselessly. They’ve prosthetic limbs and lots of of them want two years of rehab. You may’t think about how costly that is. I left considering, ‘What can I do?’ I can’t precisely take my guitar, which I play very badly, and play for them.
“So I’m asking people to give me money for iPods and I’m going to fill them with my favorite songs and I’ll take the iPods with me every time I go back and the music will help them with their rehabilitation. It makes them happy.”
Nicks mentioned in an interview with ABC that her work visiting veterans is “not like anything else, it’s not like the Grammy. This is something that I do by myself. It’s the thing I’m most proud of.” We’re fairly positive listening to a personally curated playlist from Stevie Nicks herself might elevate anybody’s spirits.