Galveston Gift & Resort Merchandise Show: Fill & Download for Free

December 17th 1993. It was a Friday. The last day of school before Christmas break. I was so excited.You see my grandparents, who we only saw a few times per year, were making the drive from Santa Ana, California to where I lived in Perris. They were going to take me to their house for the weekend to do some “work” and earn money to buy Christmas gifts for my family. Normally we only saw my grandparents on birthdays or Christmas Eve. So I was very excited.School got out, and I hung out for a few minutes with my friend who was in the after-school program. Then I hurried home. My grandparents were waiting when I got there. Luckily, I had already packed a bag the night before. I hugged my parents goodbye, and we headed back to my grandparents house. On the way we stopped at a store and did a little bit of shopping. I don't remember any of the gift I bought except for one. I got a little figure or toy of Baby Bop, a character from the Barney & Friends show.I got the Baby Bop toy for my sister, who was eleven-years-old but had recently developed a love for Barney. Of course nobody else liked Barney and we all made fun of the show which prompted her to scream at us but I knew she would like the toy. After a quick bite to eat, we went back to my grandparent’s house and I went to sleep.My grandparents woke me early the next morning. Around 7:30 or 8:00. They told me to get my things together, and that there had been an accident. Immediately I knew, I just KNEW, that my idiot sister had gotten hurt. The entire ride back to the house I'm trying to think of what she is done. Climbed up onto the swing set and fallen, breaking her leg? Did she get mauled by a dog? There were quite a few that got out of their yards and wandered around. Did she put her hand through a window?Nothing that I thought up came even close to the truth. When I got home my parents set me down and told me that my sister was on life support. The night before, my best friend and two other girls were having a sleepover with my sister. They were in the backyard at the fire pit. The fire pit was an old washing machine tumbler my father had welded legs to. The rest of my family was in the house getting ready to watch Bram Stoker's Dracula. But my sister didn't want to watch it because she was scared.So instead the four girls were in the backyard burning scrap lumber. After bit the fire started to die down and they didn't have any small pieces of kindling to throw on to it so my sister did something she knew she wasn't supposed to. She went to the shed and grabbed a can of Coleman's fuel. I'm sure you can guess what happened next.She squirted the liquid onto the fire and it flared up. She did that a couple of times and then squirted a really long blast onto the fire. Unfortunately the fire traveled up the stream and when she released the sides of the can it sucked the flames inside. The bottom of the can blew out from the force of the contents catching fire, and doused her in liquid flames. According to the girls that were there, she had hardly enough time to choke out the word ‘run’ to them before she was engulfed in flames.My brother was on the phone with his girlfriend and heard a loud pop. He looked out the back window expecting to see the backyard on fire, and instead saw my sister on fire. He bolted outside followed by my sister's twin brother and the rest of my family. Her twin tried to knock her down but he wasn't strong enough.The neighbors who lived behind and over one lot from us were outside enjoying their own campfire with friends. The husband was a retired Navy officer. He jumped over the top of the fence like Superman while his wife hosed down blankets and handed them over. Meanwhile my brother the one who had been on the phone tackled my sister and knocked her to the ground. Using the wet blankets the neighbor smothered the fire on my sister.The girls were screaming, my parents were panicked and freaking out, everybody was in shock. Somebody called 911. A Life flight helicopter came and landed in the field next to our rural desert home. My sister was taken to the hospital and put on life support. They didn't expect her to live. As she stabilized, they discovered staph infections. They told my parents that she was improving but really they were just pumping her full of pain medications and waiting for her to die.Miraculously, a man named Ned Smith who was part of the El Bakkal group of Shriners heard about my sister's accident. He came out and looked at her charts and saw the true state of things. He ordered her immediately transferred to the Shriners special burn unit on the island of Galveston, Texas. They told my parents it was a long shot but they thought they may be able to keep her alive. She was in a coma and they figured they could probably get her healed enough with skin grafts and other surgeries to bring her out of the coma around April.Instead, my sister came home in April.She came out of her coma early and progressed so well and so quickly that she was released in the spring. We all had to learn take care for her as she still had a lot of open wounds from the burns. They were places on her body where the fire had melted her muscle down to the bone. 80% of her body had needed grafting. She needed to be washed, and dressed in a special job suit. She couldn't feed herself. And she couldn't clean herself after using the bathroom.As time went on she became more and more self-sufficient. She had over 46 surgeries. Cornea transplants, skin grafts, you name it. At one point she even had a surgery to widen her mouth which didn't work very well. She learned to drive and got a license. She inspired everyone she met.I remember one time she asked my mother why this had happened to her. My mother told her that if it had been anybody else, we wouldn't have made it. That out of all of us, God knew that my sister was strong enough to survive it.She passed away 10 days before her birthday, in September of 2017. We had a very tumultuous relationship throughout our lives. I refused to treat her any differently after her accident. I mean I made allowances for the physical changes but I didn't treat her with kid gloves. We were estranged when she passed away and I miss her terribly.

I want to add to Mr. Frost's answer which is very good. One of the biggest reasons Johnson Space Center is in Houston is pure politics. Humble Oil, the predecessor to Exxon owned a lot of shrub land near Houston and close to Galveston Bay. The Sterling family which owned most of Humble Oil, were large contributors to Johnson. A deal was put together whereby Humble Oil would gift about 1600 acres of that land to Rice University. Those 1600 acres were then leased to NASA and became what is now Johnson Space Center.Of course, Humble Oil owned most of the surrounding land around JSC. Humble Oil then formed the "Friendswood Development Company" to develop the land. If you trace the title to most of the land in what was called "Clear Lake City," the title all goes back to Humble Oil. As a matter of fact, Exxon owns the mineral rights for the land under my house.

We have a wonderful museum district with several different museums and a zoological garden nearby.Houston Museums | Science, Art, Children's & HistoryAlso, in this same area is the often overlooked Japanese garden, which was a gift to Houston from our sister city in Japan many years ago. It is a traditional Japanese garden with koi fish and other features of interest.JGarden - GardensPlease take the time to visit the Orange Show which is on the near south side of downtown Houston in a neighborhood. It is quite unique and fascinating.Orange Show Center for Visionary ArtThere is also the Rothko Chapel, in the Montrose area and the deMenil collection of art.Something different would be the NASA space center south of Houston in Clear Lake. Galveston Island has an awesome attraction called the Moody Gardens with pyramids and a rain forest.Really you should stay longer to see everything.Enjoy your stay !