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The Dear Calvin Project is a charitable organization within the non-profit Survived Inc. that creates testimonial/tribute videos for the families of fallen servicemen/women. Founded in 2017 by former Marine SSgt. Charles T. Jones.

Background
On February 23, 2013 Charles Jones received a phone call while attending a Blackhawks game. The call came from a former colleague of his active duty time, Dave Wilkinson. Dave called to inform Charles that their mutual friend/colleague SSgt. Jonathan D. Davis was killed in action in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. During convoy operations, Davis's unit was attacked by insurgents which included small arms fire and an IED. Davis was critically wounded by the explosion and was pronounced dead at about midnight, on February 22. He was survived by his wife Helena Davis and his 4 year old son Calvin. After the funeral, John's wife messaged a few of the men that he was particularly close with, asking them to write a letter to his son about who John was as a man and as a Marine. Being too painful to write initially Charles put down the letter and eventually forgot about it. On the 4th anniversary of John's death while talking about him, Charles realized that he had not written the letter yet, and immediately reached out to Helena. After apologizing profusely for forgetting, Jones promised to get the letter done by the following weekend, which he did. While writing the letter, Jones tried his best to communicate exactly how much John meant to him, but felt that the written words fell short of telling the whole story. Jones wanted to really capture and communicate his feelings about John, so he came up with the idea of video recording himself either reading the letter, or just talking about him in general. Still feeling that one man's opinion was too superficial, he began to contact other Marines that knew John well and asked them if they would be interested in being interviewed about John. After a few days, Jones found 8 other marines that were willing to come together to be interviewed. In February 2018 Jones paid to fly out and put up 7 marines (the 8th was unable to attend) in Atlanta, GA to film the project. Dave Pickett (of Spectrum Grading) a well respected and accomplished media colorist, and a personal friend of Jones, called together a few of his friends in the industry who all agreed to donate their time and craft to help put together a high-end production. After a few months, Dave, his crew, and Jones had created a 4K professionally edited/colored/sound engineered video and unveiled it to the family on Memorial Day weekend, 2018 at a golf outing fundraiser held at Old Orchard Country Club in Mount Prospect, IL.

Mission
The Dear Calvin Project is an organization that creates lasting memories of fallen servicemen/women. They do this by locating and contacting colleagues of the fallen, interview them about the fallen, and create a video testimonial/tribute for the gold-star family. Through this action, they wish to accomplish the following goals:


 * Give the family a life-long lasting documentary about the one they have lost. The children especially will be able to go back to it as many times as they wish, to remember the man/woman they lost. This will mean something different to them every time they watch it, especially over the years.
 * Provide at least a small amount of closure to the family. It will also provide some closure to the colleagues. Emotions around death, especially for warriors is very difficult to process and for some It is so hard that it never gets addressed.
 * Create a network of Gold Star families allowing them to get in touch with each other and draw strength and support from the group.

Founders
SSgt. Charles T. Jones Dave Pickett

Cast of Pilot
Creator: SSgt. Charles T. Jones

Co-Director: Les Umberger

Co-Director/Colorist: Dave Pickett

DP: Tom Pritchard

Editor: Nathan Bohall

Audio: Kenneth Lovell

Interviewees:

GySgt. Timothy Diamond

GySgt. Ector Garza

SSgt. Charles T. Jones

SSgt. Daniel Sankey

SSgt. Chad Bernardo

SSgt. David Treadwell

Sgt. Derrick Nelson

Sgt. Jon Barge