Hello, my name is Duane. I served in Sasebo, Japan, between 1995 and 1998. I was stationed on a minesweeper, and to this day, those were some of the best years of my life. I loved serving my country. I truly believed in what I was doing, and if I could go back, I would have stayed in and made it my career. Back then, I felt like I had purpose, stability, and pride in who I was.

After leaving the military, I met the love of my life, my wife Jennie. We have been together for 23 years. She has stood beside me through every good moment and every nightmare life has thrown at us. We have had good years, hard years, and years where we barely made it, but nothing has broken us the way these last few years have.

In 2022, my mother passed away. In her will, she left me the money for a house. My sister was put in charge of handling the estate. She chose the house, chose the town, and told us that if we left everything behind and moved there, she would help us get established. Because she controlled the estate, the house was put into her name instead of mine. At the time, we were already struggling with rising rent costs and trying to survive, so we trusted her and moved our family.

Then, in 2023, everything fell apart.

While trying to rebuild our lives, I was hit head-on by a drunk driver going the wrong way on the interstate. The driver was undocumented, uninsured, had no driver’s license, no address, and no phone number. Truthfully, I don’t even know if the name we were given was real. Because of that, there will likely never be any justice or accountability for what happened to me and my family.

That accident destroyed my life.

I spent five weeks in the ICU fighting to stay alive. During that time, while I was laying in a hospital bed broken and unable to defend myself or my family, my sister sold the house that had been bought for us and gave me five dollars from my inheritance. Five dollars. At 50 years old, after serving my country and spending my life trying to do the right thing, that is what my family was left with.

The injuries from the accident left me unable to walk for over a year and a half. I am still trying every single day to relearn how to walk and regain some kind of normal life. Some days I honestly do not know how much more my body can take. I believe I may now also be dealing with MS on top of everything else.

But as hard as my own pain has been, watching my daughter suffer has hurt even more.

My daughter has special needs. She has Autism, ADHD, DDD that required double spinal surgery, and now Functional Neurological Disorder. She deals with seizures and daily struggles just trying to hold on to any kind of normal childhood. As a father, there is nothing worse than watching your child suffer while feeling powerless to fix it.

And now, after all of this, my family is facing eviction.

We have fallen behind on our bills and simply cannot catch up. We are exhausted. We are overwhelmed. I lie awake at night terrified of what is going to happen to my wife and daughter if we lose our home. I never thought my life would end up here. I never imagined that after serving my country, after working hard my entire life, after trying to be a good husband and father, I would one day be begging for help just to keep my family from falling apart.

Serving my country was one of the greatest honors of my life. Outside of my wife and daughter, it is the thing I am most proud of. I am not asking for pity. I am simply asking for help because I do not know where else to turn anymore.

https://gofund.me/48a69a0af