Sunday, November 12, 2006

Veterans Day

I attended the Veterans Day services on Cheshire's green yesterday. The brief comments provided by everyone were nice, particularly in light of the fact that we, once again, find ourselves at war.

Besides veterans' comments though, two things caught my attention:

1) No call was made for recognition of WWI vets because the last surviving veteran died about one month ago at the age of 116.

2) the Vietnam Veterans' memorial will be coming to Cheshire. Ralph Zingarella, a teacher at CHS, is spearheading the initiative with his students. I think this is a fantastic idea and one that will hopefully resonate with people both here in Cheshire and in neighboring towns.

Tim White
Town Council, 4th District
TimWhite98@yahoo.com

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is not possible to thank our veterans adequately. Their service, sacrifice, heroism, and humanity is above any expression or acknowledgment. Yet, we must try. Specifically but not exclusively, we must try with respect to our Brothers and Sisters who served in Vietnam because they, unlike other generations, were neglected (or worse) upon their return home.

Please check out the AoG (http://www.bix.com/person/AoG) and the Voices of Veterans. Please post a story or a photo if you can. And please pass along to your Brothers, Sisters, friends and family.

Anonymous said...

According to your father, John White, there's only about ten WWI vets left living in the US. I saw on the news two of them were honored at the Massachusetts State House this Veterans Day. They were ages 111 and 106! And they looked in pretty good shape for their age. God bless 'em all!

Tim White said...

hmmm... interesting. My dad just left my house. I wish I had asked him. Truth is, I haven't researched it. I was just repeating what was said at the ceremony by, I believe, Eric Silver.

111 & 106... wow. That's amazing. I'm sure they've seen a lot in life.

Anonymous said...

The Veteran's Day ceremony on the green is always a nice acknowlegement to our veterans, but I think Cheshire could do more. At the TC meetings we often see commendations given to eagle scouts or occasionally to a person who has served on a committee for the town, but why don't we see our veterans presented with anything at the meetings? We have many young men and women in town who recently returned from Iraq or Afganistan, and there's many older veteran's in town who served in other wars. Wouldn't it be nice if something could be done especially for them at a TC meeting. I'm sure the town hall would be able to track down the veterans and contact them.