March Fong Eu

Written By:  Andrew Eide

March Fong Eu was an amazing woman and our family knew her personally. Her brother, Willie Lee, was our father’s Real Estate agent. The home my father purchased at 4263 Saint Andrews Road in Oakland, California in the early 1960’s was owned by March Fong when my father purchased the home.

March was in the California Assembly as an Assemblywoman representing the 15^th District which covered Oakland and Castro Valley.

In 1974 she was elected to the State of California as Secretary of State where she served well until 1996.

Let me tell you how special March Fong was to our family.

I joined the Navy in 1972. Many years down the road, even into the 1980’s, I would get the urge to contact March Fong Eu to see how she was doing. I would call the California State Secretary of State’s office and the conversation would go something like the following:

ANDREW:  May I please speak to March Fong Eu?

ASSISTANT TO MARCH FONG EU:  Nobody can just call the talk to her. Go through the proper channels and make an appointment like everyone else has to do.

ANDREW:  Look I am a personal family friend of hers. Would you please tell her that Andrew Eide, son of Allen Eide, is on the phone?

ASSISTANT TO MARCH FONG EU:  Okay I will do this but I assure you that she never speaks to anyone just because they call.

* short silence on the phone *

MARCH FONG EU:  Andrew! How are you! I’ve been thinking about you and wonder how you’ve been doing! If you are ever in Sacramento please stop in my office and I will visit with you and you don’t need an appointment!

Do you see how special March Fong Eu is to our family? She was truly a remarkable woman.

March of Dimes

Written By:  Andrew Eide

The organization March of Dimes was founded in President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. It was a program designed to help women stay healthy during pregnancy and to help prevent premature births and birth defects.

The initial concept was to raise money with spare change and over the decades this has worked our fairly well.

If you contrast what the March of Dimes does, as compared to what Planned Parenthood does, you can see the start differences between the two organizations.

The March of Dimes is in place to help mothers stay healthy through their pregnancy and to help them deliver healthy babies. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, is in business for the sole purpose of aborting babies and they do nothing to help a family plan a family.

Please do your research on the founder of Planned Parenthood. Her name is Margaret Sanger. She had some really warped views of things and those warped views have carried on to this day.

Sanger believed that men were vile and evil and should be avoided at all cost. She even advocated eliminating men entirely. She claimed that a baby wasn’t a natural thing to be cherished but that babies were leeches on the woman and therefore should be ripped out of the mother and killed.

Margaret Sanger also advocated forced sterilization of Blacks to keep the Black population down or to eliminate them entirely so she was also a racist.

If you want to give to an organization that honestly cares about women and babies then please consider giving to the March of Dimes.

March Into March

Written By:  Andrew Eide

I served in the United States Navy from March 1972 until April 1990 when I retired from Active Duty.

Other than when in Boot Camp, which is also called Basic Training, you rarely marched in formation except for special occasions such as a Change of Command Ceremony.

There is a saying for the month of March that IT COMES IN LIKE A LION AND GOES OUT LIKE A LAMB. I guess that was a saying from then I was a kid to indicate that after an interesting Winter you entered into March aggressively but by the time the end of March came around things were peaceful and quiet.

I feel that is an adequate comparison to when I entered Boot Camp to when I graduated and went into the “real” Navy. During Boot Camp you are aggressively pushed around, methods and skills are crammed into your head, so it is as aggressive as a Lion coming after you.

Then when you graduate and go into the “real” Navy you find out that 90 percent of the nonsense you had to endure in Boot Camp went away and real service in the United States Navy begins.

I’m happy I served for 20 years on Active Duty so that I have been collecting a Retirement Income since May 1996 after my retirement. Today I am also fortunate to also collect my Social Security Retirement.

Sometimes the end seems too far away but here I am at the end where I receive two retirement checks and the combined about is more than I made on my last full-time job.