Hi Ya Kids!

I’m in Ann Arbor, Michigan for a few days visiting Doris Dixon. Doris is among the most special people in my life. In some ways, I owe her my life.

Here’s how we met. A thousand years ago I moved to Detroit. (This was 8 years before Jeff). I was the new morning DJ on a screaming rock station, WDRQ. I realized that the tool I had, a microphone, provided a powerful way to teach people about animal protection. I wanted to find an animal protection group and offer them the use of my show. I looked in the phone book and found The Fund For Animals in Ann Arbor. I called. A woman named Doris Dixon answered. I told her who I was. She told me “Get over here within 5 minutes”. And when Doris says 5 minutes, 5 minutes and five seconds is not acceptable.

“He was under my spell the instant we met”, Doris says. During the next ten years Doris taught me everything I know about how to help animals. She turned my anger over their treatment by humans into compassion. She turned my despair into hope.

She taught me to be effective rather than furious. My education continues to this day.

Doris has quite literally devoted her life to animal protection. She has seen things in her lifetime, unthinkably horrible things, that I promise would keep you and me awake for 6 months. Yet, I have never seen her get angry. Instead, she get’s busy. I’ve watched her write letters, make calls, gather signatures, debate animal abusers on radio and TV, launch publicity campaigns and drive people to polling places to vote for animals. All of it grassroots. And that is tough. But her successes are remarkable.

If, in my lifetime, if I accomplish a tenth of what Doris has done for animals, I’d feel I’d done something with what I’ve been given.

Another of Doris’s “kids” is Wayne Pacelle the president and executive director of the largest and most powerful animal protection group in the world, The Humane Society of the United States. She brought him up, too.

Thirty years later, Doris’s house hasn’t changed. Not an ounce. Nothing. The giant stuffed (plush toy) cougar is still lying across the archway to the kitchen. The dining room table is still covered in file boxes.

Books, research reports and folders cover the floor. The 8 foot fold-away table in the living room has never been folded; it’s buried under mounds of letters, newspaper clippings, binders and call lists. The IBM Selectric typewriter on which she wrote literally thousands of letters is still in the same spot where it’s been since rocks. Honestly, her house is a mess. And I love it so much. It’s home. And a place from which action and compassion have beenflowing into the Universe for decades.

Doris wrote a book about her remarkable life. You can get it on Amazon. It’s a fun, light and informative read. I’d love you to buy it. Read it, then give it to your kids. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Compassionate-Terrorist-

Doris has not had the best health lately, so I’ve promised myself I’ll get to Michigan every couple of months. It’s so important. One day I won’t be able to. I can’t imagine that. So I need to come here often. Every time I do, I learn more.

Impossible to describe how much I owe this lady or how much I love her.

Buy the book!

Love,

Jerry