Great Lakes Garrison & Base

Hey all,

I'm Alex, and I just recently joined the 501st (woo!) I also just graduated from UM Medical School in Ann Arbor and will soon be starting my residency in Internal Medicine, also at the UM Hospital. One of the main reasons I joined the legion was so that I could do hospital visits, and I would love to do a troop at Mott Children's Hospital in the near future (before residency starts would be super awesome).

For those that have trooped at Mott before, how did they get in touch with you? Or did you reach out to them? I've got some internal connections that should make stuff like this pretty easy to set up from Mott's end, but I want to make sure I do things properly as far as the 501st is concerned.

Any tips would be helpful! Thanks in advance!

Hey Alex, congrats again on your approval. Way to dig in and get going on events, Trooper!

Generally, the host (in this case probably a representative from the hospital) would need to fill out the Appearance Request Form, found here: http://www.501st.com/request.php

From there, it will be forwarded to our Garrison Event Liaisons who will make first contact with the host, and create the event thread here on the forum. At this point we consider the event "Unconfirmed [UC]".

When a Trooper volunteers to be the Event Coordinator, the event becomes "Confirmed [DB]" and the Event Coordinator takes over communication with the Event Host, and keeps the other troopers signed up for the event up to date on all information regarding the event.

The further out they can request the appearance, the better. Sometimes hospitals require us to fill out volunteer forms or do background checks, so this all needs to be considered in the amount of lead time. Also, weekday events benefit from more lead time so people can adjust schedules accordingly.

Our man Blasty does events at Mott as the Wolverines Trooper™ so he may be able to give you some particulars about working with them.

It's been one of my favorite troops to date. Really looking forward to all future ones. We can basically sit back and wait for the next application to trickle down.

Grimmy wrote:It's been one of my favorite troops to date. Really looking forward to all future ones. We can basically sit back and wait for the next application to trickle down.

Yes. Motts schedules us to appear approximately twice a year, depending on the year and their scheduling. Same thing with Royal Oak Beaumont children's hospital (about twice a year). Devos childrens hospital in Grand Rapids is the bigger one for this, since they have us around 6 times per year.

Byron (our contact with Mott) asked me to email him early next week, as he's in the middle of a huge fundraiser.

I'm shooting for June 17th for a visit. The mom of a 3 y.o. that's having his 3rd open heart surgery on June 12th, and she wants me (as Wolverines Trooper) to visit him as he recovers.

Sounds awesome! Although I'm not 100% sure if I'll be able to make it on the 17th; I have orientation activities basically all day (even though it's a Saturday), and I won't know my full schedule until probably a week from now. Not that it should be scheduled around me. Maybe I could make an appearance later in the evening, though it would be awesome to start meeting you all in person.