Loretta Helen West was born on September 16, 1938 to Raymond and Helen Hough of Treynor. She grew up in the small house the Houghs lived in on the farm of Bill Orr outside of Treynor. When she was old enough, she started babysitting the neighbor kids and her sister, Janet, and took this as a great responsibility, which carried on later in life.
 
Loretta attended Treynor High School. She graduated in 1957 as the class valedictorian. After high school, she moved into an apartment with a friend from school and started working at Council Bluffs Bank.
 
During this time, she was asked to go on a double date by one of her friends. She reluctantly went along, and her date was a young man from Missouri, Everett. After that first date, Loretta fell in love with Everett, and they were married on September 22, 1961.
 
Everett and Loretta moved to Omaha, first to a small house in north Omaha, and then decided to build a house in West Omaha. Starting up in a cornfield, the house was built in what is now Montclair. In the meantime, Loretta came to the Bank of Millard, and became their proofer. Back before the time of computers, Loretta was in charge of balancing the books of the tellers at night; sometimes having to stay very late to make sure all money was accounted for at the bank.
 
This all changed in February of 1968. Loretta had contacted the Nebraska Children’s Home, in order to adopt, and on February 10, 1968, Loretta and Everett adopted a one-month-old little boy, David. Loretta quit her job at the Bank of Millard, in order to care for her son full time.
 
Through the 1970s and 1980s, Loretta did just that, making a loving home for her husband and her son. Though some of David’s friends saw her as strict, he knew she was just protecting him from the world.
 
Loretta’s world was about to start to unravel, however. While cleaning the house in 1994, she got her leg caught between the chair and the sofa, falling and breaking her hip. It was at that time, after medical analysis, it was determined Loretta had osteoporosis.
 
Between 1994 and 2004, Loretta had three hip surgeries, and went from being 5’2” in height to 4’8”, due to compression fractures of her spine. She was in constant pain, something she had never been able to tolerate well.
 
In April of 2004, she had fallen and broken her good hip. Due to this, she was spending time in a nursing home rehabilitation center until June 17th. On that day, she suffered a brain hemorrhage, and on Wednesday, June 23rd at 8:00pm, she left this world to be reunited once again with her parents.
 
Loretta is survived by her loving husband of 43 years, Everett Leroy West; her son, David; and her sister, Janet Morgan. Any and all who knew her will miss her love.

I got this from a friend of mine:
 
Perhaps someone can explain this more clearly! Same facts but opposite conclusions. Here's a set of thoughts comparing the overseas messes of the past decade or so and placing them in a somewhat clearer, but still confusing, light. I'm trying to get all this political stuff straightened out in my head so I'll know how to vote come November.
 
Right now, we have one guy saying one thing. Then the other guy says something else. Who to believe. Lemme see, have I got this straight?
 
Clinton awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Yugoslavia - good...
Bush awards Halliburton no-bid contract in Iraq - bad...
 
Clinton spends 77 billion on war in Serbia - good...
Bush spends 87 billion in Iraq - bad...
 
Clinton imposes regime change in Serbia - good...
Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad...
 
Clinton bombs Christian Serbs on behalf of Muslim Albanian terrorists -good...
Bush liberates 25 million from a genocidal dictator - bad...
 
Clinton invades Haiti and attacks Serbia without UN approval,congressional support or  public backing - good
Bush invades Iraq with UN approval andoverwhelming congressional support - bad
 
Clinton bombs Chinese embassy, some empty mud huts in Afghanistan, and apharmaceutical plant in Sudan  - good...
Bush bombs terrorist camps - bad...
 
Clinton commits many felonies while in office - good...
Bush lands on aircraft carrier in jumpsuit - bad...
 
Clinton says there are mass graves in Serbia - good...
Bush and entire world says WMD in Iraq - bad...
 
No mass graves found in Serbia - good...
No WMD found Iraq - bad...
 
Stock market crashes in 2000 under Clinton - good...
Recession under Bush - bad...
 
Clinton refuses to take custody of Bin Laden - good...
World Trade Centers fall under Bush - bad...
 
Clinton says Saddam has nukes - good...
Bush says Saddam has nukes - bad...
 
Clinton calls for regime change in Iraq - good...
Bush imposes regime change in Iraq - bad...
 
Terrorist training in Afghanistan under Clinton - good...
Bush destroys training camps in Afghanistan - bad...
 
Serbs who committed atrocities still free - good...
Saddam in custody - bad...
 
Ah, it's so confusing! 
 

I have joined Blogs for Bush, a listing of the various blogs out there on the Internet that support the reelection of George W Bush as president.
 
I was for GWB before he ran the first time. I am still for him, and nothing the liberal media does will persuade me otherwise. I do not want a closet nazi running this country.
 
Wait, you may say. The Left always says the conservatives are nazis. What do you mean by this?
 
National Socialism, aka Nazis, had three basic tenets to their philosophy as expoused by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf:

1. Government should control all key industries, through either direct control or regulation
2. Government should protect all state goods from foreign competition
3. Jews control the banks, and thus the economy and are therefore against us

Now, look at George W Bush. Does he believe in ANY of those three? Nope. Therefore, he cannot be a Nazi.
 
However, look at John Kerry and his supporters. Gee, well...they want #1 and #2, and the organization MoveOn.org has put together protests where signs were stating #3.
 
Therefore, rationally, you must conclude that Kerry's supporters, at a minimum, and most likely Kerry himself agree with those three statements. This then means Kerry qualifies as a Nazi under the TRUE definition of the term. And since he now has a Josef Goebbels figure next to him in Michael Moore, a lunatic Herman Goering figure in Wesley Clark, a pretty boy Rudolf Hess spokesman in John Edwards...seeing the trend here, folks? He's even got a lapdog foreign leader in Jacques Chirac, like Hitler had with Benito Mussolini.
 
So, I am not afraid in calling Kerry a nazi, because he is one. His supporters calling conservatives such is a way to deflect any sort of scrutiny towards their own beliefs.

On April 28, 2004, my mother, Loretta West, fell and broke her hip. She has had osteoporosis for the past 10 years, and this was her third hip break during that time. During that time, she also had shrunk in size from 5'2" to 4'7". She was always in constant pain because of her fractures, but I never could have guessed what was going to happen next...
 
After getting a pin in her hip, she was sent to Montclair Nursing Home to rehabilitate. She did not like being there, but she coped, actually becoming more friendly with those that ate with her than I had seen her be in years. She was getting better, her leg stronger so she could walk with the walker.
 
I went to eat with her on Mother's Day at the Nursing Home, and we got along fine. Memorial Day weekend, my dad decided to go visit some relatives, so I visited mom more, helping to put her to bed at night.
 
Mom was going to get to go home on June 25th...
 
But that didn't happen...
 
On June 16th, at night, she seemed a little bit out of it. I took her to supper, like I always did, and then left. She just didn't seem right to me, but she was smiling and talking to everyone like normal. Dad called me that night with the same concerns, but we really didn't think nothing of it. In hindsight, we could have saved her life...
 
June 17th, in the morning, she had a seizure, and was taken to the hospital. She had a second seizure on the way in. However, she was still coherent...but not after the third one that she had in the emergency room. She went into a vegitative state, because the blood thinner medicine, Cumadin, that she was perscribed had caused a spontaneous hemmorhage in her brain. She never recovered, and got progressively worse. On Tuesday, June 22, dad and I made the fateful decision to follow mom's living will wishes.
 
On Wednesday, June 23rd, at 8:00 pm, Loretta Helen West left this world for a better place.
 
I've cried and cried. I was very close to my mother. I loved her dearly, and losing her has hit me very, very hard. As an only child, all I have left is my dad. I'm not married, don't even have a girlfriend because I am too shy and geeky. Except for a few other close relatives, I have had no one to lean on during this time except dad.
 
I'm crying right now as I write this. It has hurt so much.
 
I will post mom's eulogy I wrote in the next day or so, as well as her obituary.
 
I still cannot believe she is gone from my life.

Once again, I have not been posting much on this blog, but there is a reason for this. I'll be putting three posts together in short order after this one, one to explain my lack of updates, then a couple of rants that I need to get off my chest.