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A little rest and relaxation
Man behind Operation Open Arms helps make leave special
for Southwest Florida soldiers
By
Tiffany Yates
Thursday, March 16, 2006
At age 9, John Bunch was head over heels.
It was like a classic movie moment. The girl, a few
years older than he was, came riding up to him on a
beach near the coastal Carolina town where Bunch’s
family was living.
“I was more in love with her than all the Snickers
and Pepsi-Colas I had ever consumed,” reminisces the
Pine Island charter captain wistfully.
Her sudden appearance on the beach, a beautiful girl
riding bareback on a horse, rendered the usually
garrulous Bunch all but speechless, and in a classic
foot-in-mouth moment, all he could come up with was a
disparaging remark about how easy riding bareback seemed
to be.
Moments later, after the object of his affections
called him on this bravado, Bunch found himself flat on
his back, having been “knocked stone-out,” as he puts
it, when the horse threw him. He woke to find a bevy of
kids standing around him, asking, “You think he’s dead?”
The episode won him his lifelong nickname: “Giddyup.”
But it was also a turning point, as Bunch remembers it.
“It was a story about learning a life lesson,” he
says. “About putting your mind in motion before putting
your mouth in gear.”
- - -
Decades later, it’s not clear whether Bunch has fully
incorporated the moral of his childhood story.
As the single-handed force behind the creation of a
nonprofit organization called Operation Open Arms, Bunch
hatched the idea for the program in an instant, and
immediately started putting intention into action before
he had thought out the concept at all.
On April 16, 2005 — Bunch clearly remembers the date
— he was at the Double Nichol Pub on Pine Island,
enjoying a post-fishing-charter refreshment.
An old salt since his early days, literally fishing
for his supper off the coast of South Carolina where he
grew up, Bunch has since found his way to become a local
charter guide and resident fishing expert for several
southwest Florida publications, a contributor to Gator
Country 101.9’s fishing report, and cohost of the
Sunday-morning TV program “Southwest Florida Outdoors.”
That afternoon in Saint James City, a man with a
brush-cut hairstyle and an earnest face — not much more
than a boy, really — approached Bunch as he relaxed
after another day at sea.
“I know you’re the guy that fishes on TV,” is Bunch’s
memory of Spec. Travis Downes’s first words to him.
Downes apologetically told Bunch he couldn’t afford to
hire him for an excursion, but he begged for a little
advice on where to fish from land along the Pine Island
shoreline. The soldier was in the area on a brief leave
from his tour of duty in the Middle East.
Three days later, Bunch canceled a paid charter he’d
had on the books. Travis Downes’s father flew in from
Colorado, and Giddyup Bunch took both men on a fishing
expedition at his own expense.
After a full day of what Bunch says was “the best
fishing day I’ve ever seen — the bait could not hit the
water without fish exploding out of it” — Giddyup pulled
into the dock and dropped the men off with hands full of
fish.
You just have no idea what this day has meant to me,”
Downes thanked Bunch profusely.
“When I saw the look on this kid’s face, I felt so
good about what I did I got on the cell phone and
started telemarketing for captains right there,” Bunch
relates.
Thirty minutes later he had gotten verbal commitments
from five other charter captains, and before he stopped
to think about what he was doing, Operation Open Arms
was born.
- - -
The concept is almost ludicrously simple: Local
businesses and shops sign on to donate goods and/or
services. The sponsors are listed on the organization’s
Web site — at www.operationopenarms.com — and visiting
military servicepeople on leave simply log on, pick what
they’d like to take advantage of, and call the donors
directly.
No money is exchanged, and there is no fee to anyone
involved.
“We don’t collect anything,” says Cherri Wood, a
retired government employee who, as a program sponsor,
donates her time, Web-building skills, the domain name
and hosting fees for the Web site. “We’re the
middleman.”
Although at first the participants were almost
exclusively charter captains — and the program is still
heavy in that department — now, nearly a year later,
sponsors range from restaurants to dentists to
babysitters to computer repair shops.
“Once you start doing a little bit, you want to do
more,” Bunch explains. “It’s sort of like an insatiable
desire to make a tangible difference.”
Bunch’s drive may stem from his own experiences in
the service. A former Marine, Bunch recalls being in a
Washington, D.C., airport during the Vietnam War when a
group of war protestors spit on his uniform and “started
pushing me around,” he relates. “It was quite an ugly
scene for a minute.”
Afterward, Giddyup made himself a promise: “I swore
that if I could help it, no American serviceman would
ever be treated as I was treated.”
Once he realized that so many people would be eager
to be involved, Bunch shifted into high gear to set up
the program. He and Wood launched the Web site, and
Bunch kept making calls to sign up additional sponsors.
“It was the easiest sell in the world,” he says. Only
one person he approached ever said no.
- - -
Rob Wells, general manager of the Tarpon Lodge on
Pine Island, where Bunch often picks up charter
customers, was an early recruit.
The 22-room hotel and restaurant overlooking Pine
Island Sound faces west over the water, the perfect
setup to take in a matchless Gulf Coast sunset. The
resort’s main building is a converted 1926 single-family
residence with glowing hardwood floors and fireplaces.
Out French doors and across an immaculately landscaped
stretch of lawn and tropical greenery is an adjacent
building with more rooms.
Wells offers free lodging to visiting servicepeople,
often in combination with a fishing charter from another
donor. The usual room rates range anywhere from $125 to
$165, but as long as he’s has space, Wells hopes even
more people will take advantage of Tarpon Lodge’s slice
of paradise — “before they end up going back again to a
place most of us wouldn’t want to go,” he says.
At the Farmer’s Market Restaurant in downtown Fort
Myers — “the oldest operating restaurant in Lee County,”
owner Bill Barnwell says proudly that any visiting
active-duty serviceperson and their entire family can
enjoy as many meals as they choose to have for the
duration of their stay. Completely free.
Bunch praises Barnwell’s “unimaginable generosity,”
but the restaurateur is self-effacing about his
contribution.
“These guys are over in Iraq, Afghanistan — that’s
about as bad as it gets,” he says. “I for one certainly
appreciate what they’re doing.”
- - -
Bunch operates his program regardless of politics or
people’s feelings about the war in Iraq, and most of his
sponsors are similarly oriented.
“(Military personnel) are over there getting shot at
and risking their lives —regardless of how you feel
about the war,” Bunch says with a rare ruffling of his
feathers.
“There’s a lot of controversy going on about people
in the war,” agrees Capt. Kristi Dean of Family
Tradition Guide Services, another OOA sponsor. “We want
to stand up and say (to the soldiers), ‘Thank you.
You’re doing something for us — let us do something for
you.’”
Dean recently took Spec. Tony Vincent and his wife,
Brandy, on a half-day fishing charter during Vincent’s
break between service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Vincent had been stationed for a year near Baqubah,
Iraq, a place that was “hit with mortar pretty much
every day or so,” the 25-year-old relates with an almost
disturbing matter-of-factness. “It makes you really
appreciate every day in life.”
Dean’s family business would usually charge $400 for
the excursion, but she and her father, Capt. David A.
Dean, aren’t worried about the lost income.
“Us losing four hundred dollars isn’t a big deal,”
she says. “These people could have lost their lives.”
Another soldier, Spec. Jesse Pond, was more than
ready for a little R&R on his recent leave in Fort
Myers, after an IED (improvised explosive device) hit
the truck he was riding in north of Baghdad. The vehicle
flew into the air and “kinda moved backward,” Pond
relates. Then it rolled three times down the bank of a
canal and into the water.
The driver was hit in the leg. Pond was unharmed. He
celebrated his near-miss during his stay in southwest
Florida with OOA-sponsored parasailing, fishing and
golfing excursions, as well as being the guest-of-honor
at a Florida Everblades game — along with his mom,
stepfather and 5-year-old son, Spencer.
- - -
Even after a rash of media attention — Bunch was
featured on the “Today” show and on local network
affiliate stations, plus as the subject of a slew of
area publication stories — Giddyup is still concerned
that word isn’t getting out to the military personnel he
hopes to serve.
“If there is one obsession or fear that I have, it’s
that there’s some kid in Collier or Lee County who
doesn’t know about this program,” he says.
Bunch and Wood have been trying to publicize the
organization, especially in Collier where they are
focusing on expanding their services.
While, as Bunch puts it, “We don’t turn anybody down”
— provided they can show military ID and orders to
return to their foreign duty station — the program does
try to focus on local residents. “Our first priority is
Lee and Collier County,” he says.
“He is very strong-minded about the program,” Dean
says about Bunch. “He supports the military like you
wouldn’t believe and wants to give something back.”
Bunch’s version of his motivation is simpler: “We can
provide (our military personnel) two weeks of heaven
before they have to go back to hell.”
© 2006 Naples Daily News and NDN Productions.
Published in Naples, Florida, USA by the E.W. Scripps
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