Read before you click on the link
The elderly parking lot attendant wasn't in a good mood! Neither
was Sam Bierstock. It was around 1 a.m., and Sam Bierstock, a
Delray Beach, FL eye doctor, business consultant, corporate
speaker and musician, was bone tired after appearing at an event.
He pulled up in his car, and the parking attendant began to speak.
"I took two bullets for this country and look what I'm doing," he
Said bitterly. At first, Bierstock didn't know what to say to the
World War II veteran. But he rolled down his window and told the man,
"Really, from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you." Then
the old soldier began to cry. "That really got to me," Bierstock
says.
Cut to today.
Bierstock, 58, and John Melnick, 54, of Pompano Beach - a member
of Bierstock's band---Dr. Sam and the Managed Care Band---have
written a song inspired by that old soldier in the airport parking
lot. The mournful "Before You Go" does more than salute those who
fought in WWII.
It encourages people to go out of their way to thank the aging
warriors before they die. "If we had lost that particular war, our
whole way of life would have been shot," says Bierstock, who plays
harmonica. "The WWII soldiers are now dying at the rate of about
2,000 every day. I thought we needed to thank them."
The song is striking a chord. Within four days of Bierstock
placing it on the Web [
http://www.beforeyougo.us/
]http://www.beforeyougo.us, the song and
accompanying photo essay have bounced around nine countries,
producing tears and heartfelt thanks from veterans, their sons and
daughters and grandchildren.
"It made me cry," wrote one veteran's son. Another sent an e-mail
saying that only after his father consumed several glasses of wine
would he discuss "the unspeakable horrors" he and other soldiers
had witnessed in places such as Anzio, Iwo Jima, Bataan and Omaha
Beach. "I can never thank them enough," the son wrote. "Thank you
for thinking about them." Bierstock and Melnick thought about
shipping it off to a professional singer, maybe a Lee Greenwood
type, but because time was running out for so many veterans, they
decided it was best to release it quickly, for free, on the Web.
They've sent the song to Sen. John McCain and others in
Washington. Already they have been invited to perform it in
Houston for a Veterans Day tribute - this after just a few days on
the Web. They hope every veteran in America gets a chance to hear
it.
Note before you play it: Due to the overwhelming response to "Before
You Go", and the strain on our servers, we have had to temporarily
limit the number of times that it can be played on each computer to
TWO times
http://www.beforeyougo.us/
