The Fourth Annual Blue Star Ride, organized by Four Seasons Blue Star Mothers & Associates of Greater Tehachapi, will be Sept. 26. The event aims to raise funds for a new portrait at Portrait of a Warrior Gallery in Bakersfield.<\/p>\n
Last year, the event funded the creation of a monument honoring local Gold Star Mothers, mothers who’ve lost sons or daughters serving in the U.S. military. The monument will be installed outside the American Legion Hall in town.<\/p>\n
This year representatives from Tehachapi’s Blue Star Mothers said they want to continue honoring Gold Star parents by sponsoring a Kern family to have a portrait of their fallen child made for the gallery.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an important cause for us, to make sure those kids are never forgotten, and that their families are supported.\u201d\u00a0said Tehachapi Blue Star Mothers Finance Secretary and Past President Jenn Settelmeyer.<\/p>\n
Settelmeyer, and the group’s Treasurer Janet Tehee, said the gallery contains portraits of Kern County service members who were killed in action after 9\/11, and several Kern County families are seeking sponsorships.<\/p>\n
The ride<\/p>\n
This year’s Blue Star Ride once again takes place the day before national Gold Star Mothers Day, the last Sunday of September each year, and will welcome anyone with a motorcycle or car to participate.<\/p>\n
The ride will begin at Keene Cafe, with registration between 9 and 10 a.m., followed by a three-hour ride around greater Tehachapi.<\/p>\n
Riders and drivers will receive a poker card during registration and at each stop along the way they will draw another card to add to their total through the ride.<\/p>\n
The person with the highest number at the end will win $200 and the person with the lowest will win $100.<\/p>\n
The entry fee is $30 and includes a patch and lunch at Airstream Renewables, one of the event’s major sponsors. Passengers will also get lunch and a poker hand for $25.<\/p>\n
New this year, Settelmeyer and Tehee said, will be a DJ and live music from the Mean Gene Band.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited, very excited,\u201d Settelmeyer said.<\/p>\n
Tehee said the event grows by 10 or 20 riders every year and they are hoping that continues this year.<\/p>\n
She thanked everyone who’s already contributed to the event with donations and supported it and the organization in general.<\/p>\n
Blue Star Rides past, present and future<\/p>\n
In its first year the ride funded a donation to the Fisher House in West Los Angeles which houses the families of veterans while they undergo intense surgeries at the local VA clinic.<\/p>\n
The Fisher House Foundation builds homes across the U.S. where military and veteran families can stay free of charge while their loved ones are in the hospital.<\/p>\n
The second ride funded the creation of care packages sent to Guam after it was hit by the devastating Typhoon Mawar.<\/p>\n
Guam is a U.S. territory where approximately 24,000 people, or 14% of the population, are veterans, but, with only one small VA clinic, the territory is considered critically underserved in terms of veteran health care.<\/p>\n
Last year’s ride, the third of its kind, funded the creation of a monument honoring Gold Star Mothers, which will be installed in front of Tehachapi’s American Legion Hall.<\/p>\n
Settelmeyer said the monument has been constructed, but due to some unexpected costs related to installation the group may need a bit more funding before it is installed, unless they can find a better quote.<\/p>\n
Because of this, she said, she’s not sure when it will be unveiled, but she’s hoping it will be soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Fourth Annual Blue Star Ride, organized by Four Seasons Blue Star Mothers & Associates of Greater Tehachapi,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[182677,151,153,152,182678,7,182679,66151,735,8672,6316,8239,7780],"class_list":["post-463834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-american-gold-star-mothers","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-blue-star-mothers-of-america","tag-california","tag-fisher-house-foundation","tag-guam","tag-kern-county","tag-monument","tag-mother","tag-tehachapi","tag-veteran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}