VA Facilities Nationwide to Mark Veterans Day

WASHINGTON — Department of Veterans Affairs facilities across the country will observe Veterans Day (Sunday, Nov. 11) with events including parades featuring military bands, wheelchair races, motorcycle rides, aircraft flyovers and appearances by celebrities and political leaders.

The variety of local events occurring over this weekend will be in addition to those taking place around the nation’s capital, including the traditional wreath-laying ceremony on Sunday morning at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.   A special Veterans Day Observance early Sunday afternoon at the Wall will mark the 25^th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and will feature a keynote address by Gen. Colin Powell.     

“There are events taking place just about everywhere in our country to show our nation’s veterans how proud our people are of the service and sacrifices they have made for our country,” said Acting VA Secretary Gordon Mansfield. “We at VA are honored to help organize and take part in these activities because our mission is to provide the best possible care, treatment and benefits for our nation’s veterans.”

Highlights include:

• A “Veterans for Veterans Motorcycle Ride and Show” at the Shreveport, La., VA Medical Center.  Last year, 350 motorcyclists rode in the parade to the medical center.
  
• The appearance of nationally renowned stuntman and former Green Beret Spanky Spangler as Grand Marshal of the 2007 Veterans Day Parade in Phoenix.  Other Grand Marshals for the parade will be Medal of Honor recipients Silvestre Herrera and Fred Ferguson.
  
• A speech in Columbia, Mo., by Dr. James Toombs, a primary care provider and director of the VA Medical Center’s Pain Clinic.  Toombs recently received the Army’s Bronze Star Medal for his efforts while deployed in Iraq to help create a system to track soldiers with multiple head injuries resulting from explosive blasts.
  
• A “Dancing with the Stars” show, featuring local employees and professional dancers at the Battle Creek, Mich., VA Medical Center.
  
• The appearance of former prisoners of war John W. Trotter, Dr. Juan Guadelupe Rodriquez, and Robert L. Hoover as Grand Marshals of a parade in Lexington, Ky.
  
• A “Parade of Heroes” featuring a flyover, followed by a Houston Freedom Fest, featuring country singer Lee Greenwood, best known for his song, “I’m Proud to be an American.”
  
• A ceremony to recognize women veterans at the Alaska VA Healthcare System and Regional Office. Alaska is the first and only state to have an official day of recognition to honor women veterans.

A Veterans Day Message
From the Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Gordon H. Mansfield

On this Veterans Day 2007, we come together as a Nation to thank our veterans for their service and to let them know that their service and sacrifices will never be taken for granted. 

Americans are blessed to live in a Nation of democracy and freedom.  For these blessings we thank our veterans.  Here and in communities across this great country, we honor veterans for protecting and securing democracy and freedom throughout our history.

Veterans are everyday men and women we know as friends, neighbors, relatives and colleagues who have served our Nation in extraordinary ways.  They have preserved and strengthened our country and made sacrifices beyond duty’s call.  Even as we honor them this Veterans Day, their successors are courageously defending our freedoms at home and abroad.  Veterans and their families are truly among our finest citizens.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, we are proud to fulfill the solemn pledge of President Abraham Lincoln, who during his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, set forth our obligation to care for those injured in body and spirit in their defense of our Nation and for the families of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.  The VA and the over quarter-million men and women serving in it give daily endorsement of President Lincoln’s commitment, and do so in a spirit of compassion, respect, sensitivity and gratitude.  Let us today, therefore, remember Lincoln’s charge to us:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” 

#   #   #