The only celebrity I have ever met

I have met damned few celebrities in my day because I simply do not live my life in circles that most celebrities live theirs in but there is one that I have met a couple of times and I really like the guy.

R.Lee Ermey, known best as the Drill Instructor in 'Full Metal Jacket' shoots at Camp Perry every year and I've met him three times. He's quite a character. He makes me laugh.

He told me that he makes sure that it is written into his contracts that he gets time to shoot at the National Matches every year and often gets 'drafted' to be an awards presenter. The first time I met him was outside the Perry auditoriun after he had presented an award and be had a brief chat and he gave me one of his challenge coins which I have prominently displayed in my room. It is next to a picture of me standing next to him that a kind National Guardsman took and emailed me.

I didn't ask the Guardsman to do this, he simply took the shot and afterward asked me for my email address and sent it to me. What a gracious thing to do!

It's things like that which are the reasons I look forward to going to Camp Perry. The people there are nice as all get-go.

Gunny Ermey also beat me out of ten bucks a few years ago during the Garand match. The bet, of course, was payable to the Toys for Tots program run by the Marine reserves. He's a pretty good shot with a Garand and he whipped me by several points. I challenged him to the ten dollar bet and he really didn't seem too interested until I said that the bat was payable to Toys for Tots. His face lit up and he took the bet like a shot.

Another thing Gunny told me is that he also has one other thing written into his acting contracts. He doesn't work during the month of December because he does charity work that month. He told me he really enjoys that because he gets to meet an awful lot of damned good people when he does charity work.

I'm pretty sure almost all of my readership knows who the Gunny is so I really don't have to say a whole lot about him other than the fact that he's the real deal.

The reason for this post is that today I was dealing with a retired Air Force NCO and he was mentioning that the Gunny visited his unit in Iraq and according to the now-retired airman the Gunny was up for about 48 hours straight yakking with any of the guys that wanted to chat with him. Ya gotta love a guy like that.

An awful lot of the celebrities in Hollywood are just a bunch of jerks that live in LaLa land and have no sense of basic reality. Gunny doesn't fit into this category so it is really refreshing to find a guy like him and I consider it to be an honor to have met him.

Still, I hope I run into him again this year. He's a hoot.

Bet you this year at Perry he drops in on our little radio station.
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