Welcome to our web site!  Uncle Sam is calling us to stand mission-ready before the next terrorist attack, natural disaster, pandemic, or large scale community crisis! Please join a veteran post of your choice, support their Homeland Security projects, and work closely with your local law enforcement, fire fighters, and emergency government professionals.

Message from Rich Woldt

Commander VFW Post 8337 

Lifetime Member AMVET Post 51

American Legion Post 527

Affective 1-1-08 this site will be a static site not updated on a regular basis!

As part of Phase VI of a 10 year Homeland Security Research and Development project focused on building public-to-private emergency response protocols, this site will be parked in the R&D library at  www.RMLearningCenter.com while its merged into the National VFW website system and the International Credit Union Risk Management network. Credit union Risk Managers should go through their Chapter and League officials to  gain access to RM and HLS R&D files and research paper. Phase VI through Phase X will finalizing international RM performance standards in the International Credit Union Movement and launching "Private Sector" emergency response protocols through veteran organizations to include, but not limited to, the Veterans Of Foreign Wars (VFW), the American Legion (AL), the American Veterans (AMVETs), and The Marine Corp League.

State of our project mission - January 1, 2008!

Al-Qaida terrorists continue to recruit disgruntled citizens from both the public and private sector of societies around the world. They've franchised operations through a network of extreme political factions who share their political ideology and support their cause. They continue to use the internet to reach employees holding key positions within the business community, specifically in banks, credit unions, and similar financial institutions. Once contact has been made, terrorist actively look for any opportunity to extort, intimidate, or coerce employees into joining their cause and supporting their avowed goal to disrupt the economic infrastructure of a community, region, or country. Terrorist target' objectives include a maximum body count, vulnerable secondary targets, maximum disruption of communication links, and forced housing-in-place or mass evacuations. Their strategic plan includes using any violent act, natural or man-made disaster, pandemic, or large scale community crisis as a trigger and "cover" for future attacks.

Theater of Operation - Strategic Action Plan - 2008

Terrorist are primarily targeting the economic infrastructure of any country that does not accept their political, social, moral, or ethical ideology. Consequently, our "theater of operation" is the world and the world credit union movement will provide an organizational structure through which we'll teach "Incident Command and Control" at a regional level, provide basic Risk Management training, and promote international performance standards for local, chapter, and regional "Critical Incident Response Teams (CIRTs) and an intelligence collection network known as VIPER squads (Visual Intelligence of Persons and the Environment Recon Squads). 

Click here to reach VFW websites and monthly veteran briefings!

Tips for using this site during 2008!

If you have any questions, call me on my cell phone at: 608-712-7880

Use this website for links to US veteran posts and national associations. For training purposes, links to local law enforcement, emergency governments, fire fighters, etc. are listed below. BUT, always call 9-1-1 when under duress or to summon local first responders.

Door County Veterans -

Standing Guard at Deaths Door!

Click here to reach our bulletin board (not supported after 1/1/08)! Click here for most current Door County Veteran Emergency Response briefings.

Door County Veterans: Click here and become familiar with our Door County Sheriff's Department website. Since the 1500's in Europe, it has been the "Riff-of-the-Shire," in the US the Shire-Riff, who's empowered to enforce the laws of the land. Little has changed in the past 300 years. Click here to reach the Sturgeon Bay Police Department web site and Click here to learn more other law enforcement agencies serving Door County.

All veterans should become familiar with on-line emergency government support available through our government web sites. Click here and make this site a quick link on your desk top.

Firemen and women will be first on the scene. Click here to learn more about our highly trained and mission ready Door County Firefighters.

Our veteran' Homeland Security sites will merge in 2008!

During the first quarter of 2008, this website and the sites we established for Door County VFW, American Legion, Marine Corp League, and AMVET posts will all merge into our International Credit Union Risk Management Learning Center site at www.RMLearningCenter.com and our headquarter site for US veterans at www.GuardianVets.com.  All homeland security R&D sites will continue to support basic Event and Contingency Planning, Community and Regional Threat Assessment' training as well as tutorials on managing PRIVATE-sector staging areas and Emergency Operation Centers, and creating public-to-private partnerships prior to the next terrorist attack, natural/man-made disaster, pandemic, or large scale community crisis. Research papers written during our five year Homeland Security project (9-11-02 to 9-11-07) are filed in our library at www.RMLearningCenter.com under building public-private partnerships, standardized private sector' emergency response protocols, or managing veteran deployments under standardized mutual-aid agreements. To access our R&D files, contact either your post commander or credit union league, CUNA Inc., or WOCCU Director of Education.

During the first quarter of 2008, this site will merge into our International Credit Union Risk Management Learning Center at www.RMLearningCenter.com through our International Veterans Crisis Management site at www.GuardianVets.com. Our incident command and control R&D site at www.DoorCountyVeterans.com/vfw8337/index.htm will merge with our national VFW site through www.vfwwebcom.wi.post8337 and provide links to our Incident Command and Control basic training and AIT tutorials.

A message specific to Door County Veterans: FYI: All Door County public sector personnel involved in this project were coded so unless researchers had access to the project key-codes, the identity of those studied was kept totally confidential. Also, know this study involved many public sector agencies from around the world so statistically those from Door County represented less than 1% of the total personnel logged into our R&D data base. All private sector emergency response tutorials are based under the assumption that the public sector emergency governments, law enforcement, and fire fighters are properly equipped and professionally trained to internationally recognized standards. Our Door County public sector emergency response professionals rank as some of the best equipped and properly trained in the country. Any papers written, surveys conducted, or visuals used in our tutorials and publications that came from Door County were used only for training purposes. Please remember this has been a five year study so it's safe to assume concerns discussed in case studies have long since been corrected and appropriate process improvements have been implemented.

Anyone wanting to reach me or discuss this project should either call my cell phone at 608-712-7880 or go through our local VFW Post 8337 web site (click here) or go to our VFW Wisconsin site at http://www.vfwwebcom.org/wi/post8337

Rich Woldt US Army - Vietnam

We used this site to benchmark public-to-private partnerships, their personnel and protocols. We also used this site to study how the internet can be used to manage private sector response assets, staging areas, and EOCs as well as how the internet can be used to deploy veterans using a "unified" incident command system tailored to the private sector. To read incident reports, white papers written, operation briefings and debriefings go to www.RMLearningCenter.com.

Phase III of this project will implements private sector response protocols tested during Phase II. This site will than become a static pass-through or "pull-site" and be merged into a network of veteran web sites focused on developing public-to-private Homeland Security partnerships around the world. Throughout Phase III, project updates will be available through our State Post 8337 web site at www.vfwwebcom.org/wi/post8337 and our local VFW Post 8337 homepage at www.doorcountyveterans.com/vfw8337/index.htm.  Our VFW Post 8337 site will promote a joint command first with VFW Posts 9290 and 3088, than with all VFW Posts in District 8, than Wisconsin and finally with VFW posts from coast to coast and boarder to boarder. This will all be driven through a master domain to be announced in 2009.

Veterans! Attention! At ease! Use this site as you see fit.

Rich Woldt - Commander VFW Post 8337

Rich Woldt CEO - The Risk Management Learning Center

VFW Post #9290 Fish Creek, WI

VFW Post #3088 Sturgeon Bay, WI

 Click here for a January briefing from VFW Post #8337 Liberty Grove WI

Website:VFW Post #8337 Liberty Grove WI

Standing Guard on the Great Lakes during the five-year Homeland Security Risk Management R&D Project 9-11-02 - 9-11-07.

Your efforts to document the service record of our veterans and your participation in our "Voice of Democracy" and "Patriot's Pen"  programs are much appreciated. Please use the research links we've provided on this and our VFW Post 8337 home sites. For example, from this site you can tour our Wisconsin Veterans Museum, the Metal of Honor website, and study at the Military History site, as well as sites run by  veteran organizations and our active military. Students might also benefit from the public broadcast' system (pbs) veteran history project which includes interviewing WWII vets (click here). We also encourage you to interview veterans in your family and  Click here to complete a short on-line survey while interviewing our veterans. It will help us log veterans into an excel spread sheet we can than use to honor their service and come to their aid when needed.  Thank You for your help!

Rich Woldt - Commander VFW Post 8337 - Viet Nam 68-70

VFW Post 8337 salutes the students of Gibraltar for their Patriot Pen and Voice of Democracy essays. You make all veterans proud! Debriefing Click here for a personal thank you from veterans who rode in our "Fall Color Ride."

Click here or page down for our salute to High School Students. to meet students supporting our troops.

Click here to learn about our Blue Star programs for Veterans in Iraq.

Click here to meet our Medal of Honor vets who visited Door County.

 us log veterans into an excel spread Site Briefing! Please know that this site is primarily a Homeland Security research and development (R&D) site created to mobilize US veterans during any crisis that overwhelms or neutralizes our public sector response and recovery assets.

This is a "pass-through" site meaning it's designed to lead you to veteran sites Risk Management Learning Center' faculty  have found especially helpful for veterans. To help vets unfamiliar with internet navigation, I've written "click here" when hyperlinks are not obvious. I've also placed more material than is recommended on each page so you can more easily copy, print, and share the contents of each page. Students, when you're visiting vets in a hospital or retirement home, I recommend you make sure their support staff is aware of this site. Ask them to place a link to this site on their public access desk tops.

While all veteran organizations in the US were included in the five year Homeland Security R&D project, the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW) and specifically Wisconsin based VFW posts where used to formulate "unified" incident commands, field test operational protocols, and write "private" sector operation procedure manuals. I owe a debt of gratitude to all levels of the Wisconsin National Guard, Emergency Government, and Law enforcement for their mentoring and cooperation throughout this R&D project. 

Deliverables from this five year project included the design and deployment of  "Critical Incident Response Teams (CIRTs), VIPER squads (Visual Intelligence of Persons and the Environment Recon squads) , SWATs. (Special Weapons Action Teams)  and International Risk Management (RM) performance standards for financial cooperatives, specifically the world credit union movement. Go to www.RMLearningCenter.com details.

Our strategic plan from 9-11-02 to 9-11-07 built an alliance between public and private sector homeland security professionals.

Our strategic plan for 2008 and 2009 includes regional field training in the private sector through the international credit union movement. Focus will be on three primary Homeland Security missions:

1. Training 24/7 VIPER squads focused on identifying, measuring and controlling life threatening incidents at the local, regional, and district/chapter levels.
2. Training CIRT (Critical Incident Response Teams) to be mission ready to implement 72 hour standalone protocols during the next terrorist attack, natural/man-made disaster, pandemic, or large scale community crisis.
3. Provide regional training in Incident Command and Control to include how to establish a private sector "unified" command, manage predetermined Staging Areas and Emergency Operation Centers, and how to form and manage  affective and efficient public-to-private partnerships during a large scale community crisis.

Our motto "United we Stand - Divided we Fall" (adopted shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9-11-01) will continue to be our battle call throughout 2008 and 2009.

During 2007 VFW Post 8337 nominated Liberty Grove Fire Chief Chris Hecht for the Firefighters Gold Medal award and Door County Sheriff deputy John Cook for the Law Enforcement Gold Medal award. Both are national VFW Gold Metal Awards.

Click here for debriefings:                                                                                         

Emergency Medical technician Gold Metal award: 

Law Enforcement Gold Medal award: This is for any individual who serves in a municipal, county, state or federal unit tasked with enforcement of the laws pertaining to their area of responsibility. This award does not apply to individuals employed by private companies or security services.

Firefighters Gold Medal award: This is for any individual who actively fights fires as a member of any public or volunteer company organized to fight fires and give assistance to our nation's citizens.

Rich Woldt Commander VFW Post 8337