Buckles was born in Bethany, Missouri. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the beginning of America’s involvement in World War I in April 1917. Only 16 years old at the time, Buckles was asked by his recruiter to show a birth certificate. Later Buckles said of that event, “When I was born in Missouri, they [the state] didn’t [issue] birth certificates, and the only record we kept was in the family Bible, and I told them I wasn’t going to bring that down here, so … they took me.” Before being accepted into the United States Army, he was turned down by the Marine Corps due to his slight weight.

In 1917, Buckles was sent to Europe on the RMS Carpathia, the same ship that had rescued the survivors of the Titanic sinking in 1912. During the war Buckles served in England and France, driving ambulances and motorcycles for the Army’s 1st Fort Riley Casual Detachment. After the Armistice in 1918, Buckles escorted prisoners of war back to Germany. Following his discharge in 1919, he attended the dedication of the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, in honor of those Americans who died in World War I. While there, he met General John “Black Jack” Pershing, commander all U.S. forces in France during the war.

In the 1920s Buckles worked for the White Star Line in Canada (the White Star Line had operated the Titanic). During World War II he worked as a civilian for an American shipping company in the Philippine Islands. He was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and spent the next three years in the Los Banos prison camp. He was rescued on February 23, 1945.

Katherine Flores was born into a family of migrant farm workers in Fresno, California. Her mother died when she was an infant, and she was raised by her grandparents, who had immigrated from Mexico. She recalls working in the fields and orchards as a 4-year-old, picking plums with her family. Because of the inequities she observed as a child, Katherine Flores made an early decision to try to make a difference.

While at Stanford University she began working with national and state Hispanic organizations with the goal of increasing the role of Hispanics in the health professions. Through their leadership and guidance she realized she could become a physician. But leaving home, she says, was an “extreme stress.” During her first few months at college, she would come home every weekend. The Latino culture and sense of familia is “always a blessing,” she says, “but it was something that makes it difficult to go away.”

Flores says that, when she was a child, her grandmother told her that although her mother was gone, she would always intercede for her through the Virgin. They hung a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe in their home, and it went with them wherever they traveled to do farm work. “As a young person, I always felt comfort kneeling and praying in front of this picture,” says Flores. “I could feel God. . . guiding me in a way that was always soothing and reassuring.”

After graduating from the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, young Dr. Flores returned to Fresno and her family to do her residency. Following a fellowship in family practice, she entered medical practice in Southeast Fresno and began teaching at the University Medical Center Family Practice Program.

Though she had not planned on an administrative role as a physician, she gradually became involved with community programs, such as the California Area Health Education Center and Border Health Education Center, was invited to sit on the Community Hospital Board of Directors, and learned more about the complexities of hospital policy and finance.

Dr. Flores is currently a faculty member of the University of California San Francisco-Fresno Medical Education Program. She serves as the project director of the California Health Education Training Center (HETC) and the Latino Center for Medical Education and Research (LaCMER) in Fresno. LaCMER addresses the persistent shortage and under-representation of Latino (particularly Mexican-American) physicians in the practice community and in the medical school faculty.

Of more than 300,000 Latinos in Fresno County in a population of over 775,000, and some 1,500 physicians, only about 120 physicians are Latino. The Mexican-American population of California is more than 30 percent—even higher in the Fresno area—fewer than one percent of UCSF medical school faculty are Mexican-American.

The medical academy programs Dr. Flores established for middle and high school students in Fresno County provide academic support and health science enrichment to young people who might not otherwise be successful in their educational experiences—or even considering medical careers. Promising students are enrolled in a four-year program of intensive math, science, and English preparation. They are assisted by faculty and pre-medical student mentors from California State University, Fresno, and participate in research at area schools and hospitals. And two graduating seniors who satisfy academic requirements will be offered early admission to UCSF’s medical school.

Today Dr. Flores continues to practice family medicine with three other bilingual women physicians. They are extremely supportive of her “other lives” with the university and her family, and provide bilingual and bicultural backup for her patients. She is married to Juan Flores, an educator, and they have two children. Dr. Flores observes that she has been blessed with a wonderful family and extended family, who have been extremely supportive of her endeavors.

Oprah Winfrey Show correspondent Lisa Ling (left) and Volunteers of America’s Winter Shelter residents in Sacramento, Calif.
Volunteers of America works all across the nation to help homeless individuals and families overcome their current situation with a variety of services, ranging from temporary shelter to affordable permanent housing. More and more, situational homelessness caused by unemployment and foreclosure has become reality for many families that once lived stable, middle class lives.

The Oprah Winfrey Show recently featured an interview with the Whitesides family, who are homeless and living temporarily in Volunteers of America’s Winter Shelter in Sacramento, Calif. The investigative piece by correspondent Lisa Ling, titled “Tent Cities in America,” focused on “the new faces of the recession,” including families who have lost their home as a result of the economic downturn.

91 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era. Learn how to make simple yet delicious dishes while listening to stories from the Depression.

Thanks Clara!

What he said:

“The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly,”

“Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and his country. I applaud him for it,”

“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

“I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face,” McCain said. “Today, I was a candidate for the highest office in the country I love so much, and tonight, I remain her servant.”