Recovering Marine's Parents Thank Neighbors for Support

The parents of Adrian Simone, a lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps from Montville Township who lost both his legs at the knee after he , submitted a letter thanking people for their generosity in the months since their son was injured.

Simone, 19, is recovering at a military hospital in Bethesda, Md., and is learning how to walk using prosthetic legs, his family said this week.

Here is their letter:

A Letter of Gratitude to our Neighbors from the Parents of Adrian Simone

We humans have enormous capacity for both good and evil, and, when one reads in the papers about some of the horrible things we do to each other, it's
easy to become discouraged.  As parents, there's nothing worse than having
bad things happen to your children.  When our son was so seriously wounded
in Afghanistan, our spirits were about as low as they've ever been.

But there's no doubt that good can come from some of the most traumatic
events in our lives and that is what has happened to me and Paul in the past
two months.  The spontaneous outpouring of love, prayers, support and
enormous generosity from our community has been overwhelming. It has
confirmed our basic faith in the essential goodness of our fellow Americans
and made us so proud to be Americans ourselves.  We cannot begin to express
our gratitude to the many, many generous people who have contributed to
helping us and our son—with cards, gifts of food, prayers, and checks.
Words seem completely inadequate, but they're all we have.  So.....to our
community, our neighbors, our dear friends, many of whom we have never even
met.....thank you!

Landi and Paul Simone