Yesterday, our own Jon Wayne Taylor went under the knife. Thankfully, he wasn’t sick. Instead, he was participating in something called the DOVE (donor outreach for veterans) program that supports vets who are dealing with end-stage renal failure and there are far too many of them. DOVE searches for willing living kidney donors and matches them with veterans in need.
JWT has the rarest blood type of all, AB negative, making his organs particularly valuable. He signed up to be the first guinea pig for the local program here in Austin and he’s now down a kidney.
Good news: the surgery went well and he tells us he’ll be going home this evening. I asked him if he needed anything. I was thinking, you know, reading material…a quart or two of Blue Bell ice cream…maybe a medium rare cowboy ribeye.
This was the text I got back:
No I’m good thank you. Except for Federal primers. I want Federal small pistol primers.
Recovery from surgery like this will take weeks (he has four incisions) so he’ll have a lot of time on his hands. Time that might be well spent cranking out some cartridges. If only he had primers.
He’s usually well fixed for components, but as you’re well aware, these are unusual times in the ammunition business. His timing was bad, recovering during The Great Great Ammo and Component Run of 2020 and he’s fresh out of pistol primers with no way to get more. I’d give him mine, but all I have are shotgun primers, so I’m no help.
JWT isn’t someone who normally sits still for very long, but he won’t have a choice over the next month or two. He’s got to stay put and recover.
So, given the historic component drought, we thought we’d see if there’s someone out there with a healthy supply who could help us reward a dude who just did a very good deed. It would also allow him to stay sane during the long recuperation period (his family will no doubt appreciate keeping him busy, too).
If you have some primers you can spare — I know…I can hear the laughter from here — and would like to get them to JWT to keep him busy while he gets back on his feet, send us an email at [email protected] with PRIMERS in the subject field. And thanks.
