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Not forgotten
Comments 0 | Recommend 0About 100 people filled the Pettis County Courthouse lobby to honor military veterans despite the rain Monday morning.
State Rep. Stanley Cox, R-118th, the main speaker at the ceremony, said his connection to veterans is personal, since he was the first vice chairman of the Missouri Veterans Commission when it was created 20 years ago.
“I think it’s always important to recognize who made sacrifices for all of us,” said Cox, who served in the Army in the early 1970s.
For many attending the event, the ceremony was a chance to remember why it’s important to celebrate Veterans Day.
“These are things that shouldn’t be forgotten. If we forget what our veterans have done, we kind of loose track of who we are as Americans,” said Mark Rape, 38, who served in th Air Force from 1987 to 1997. “If we don’t honor things like this, our kids won’t have the pride and the ability to stand up and honor the ones who have been out before us.”
Joe Cochran, a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2591 Honors Team and a Vietnam veteran, wants people to understand what they get in return for the sacrifices of soldiers.
“Veterans Day to me means that a lot of our brothers and our sisters and our comrades made the ultimate sacrifice so that we’d have the freedoms we have today,” he said.
Smith-Cotton High School freshman Caitlin Craig participated in the ceremony by reading her essay, “How I Honor Veterans.” Her uncle, Larry Goff, she said, inspired the piece. Goff is based in Houston, where he works on Army helicopters, she said.
“My uncle is in the military, and he’s just like my own personal veteran,” Craig said. “I just wanted to be able to thank all the veterans and this is my way of doing that.”
Although Craig is part of her school’s JROTC program, the 14-year-old said she has no plans to join the military. “I just wanted to join JROTC. I thought it would be fun.”
The projected U.S. veterans population is at 23.5 million, according to data from the United States Department of Veteran Affairs.
Heath Hooper contributed to this story.
