What does Veterans Day mean to you?

 The Northern Light held a roundtable discussion with veterans at the Blaine Senior Center on what Veterans Day and being a veteran means to them. Below are their responses, edited for clarity and brevity.

The Blaine Senior Center holds a monthly breakfast for veterans at 9 a.m. on the fourth Friday of every month. Opportunity Council sponsors the breakfast and provides information on local resources and programs for veterans. Attendees do not need to be senior center members.

Robert Cutler

Retired U.S. Air Force major

My father served in World War II and I got to learn about WWII, being young enough to know about who veterans were, but too young to have fought in WWII.

I have to think of Veterans Day as Remembrance Day and that’s something carried over from WWI. The question is, what are you remembering and who’s doing that? 

The story is a kaleidoscope. Each of us have a different facet of it, and I want to just simply focus on the fact that I’m grateful to have been able to receive my veteran’s benefits.

One thing that permeates my entire military experience is the common bugle call, “Taps.” All services respect that. “Taps” is a unifying, spiritual message about what Veterans Day means.

Sandy Phillips

Retired U.S. Army master sergeant

I’ve got some pretty strong feelings about Veterans Day. We have in the United States, unlike many other countries, two veteran holidays. Memorial Day is specifically for honoring and remembering our dead. Veterans Day is intended to honor all veterans, living and dead. Which brings us to, who is a veteran?

There’s a lot of misconceptions out there. Do you have to have been in a war to be a veteran? Do you have to be deployed overseas to be a veteran? 

I’m here to tell you, you have to raise your right hand and swear allegiance to the government of the United States. And once you put that uniform on, be it reserve, National Guard, active duty, male or female, you are a veteran. Each and every one of those people is a veteran and entitled to all the respect and all the benefits that a veteran gets.

We end our Veterans Day ceremony with a bugle call called “To the Color,” rather than “Taps,” because it encompasses living folks as well and it used to be played at the raising of the flag.

The meaning of the flag, or the bugle call, is rendering honors to the flag of the United States, which is what every veteran has done since 1775.

Kate Logan

I’m a fifth-generation American Indian veteran. I think a lot of people don’t realize the contributions that American Indians have made. In order for my great-great-grandfather to get citizenship into this country, he had to give up his tribal rights, and by doing that, he was able to join the military to get citizenship.

Military on the Choctaw Nation, which is my family, is a vital piece of our heritage, as it is in so many families. I think people have the perception with the diversity of the military, or non-diversity in the military, that they’re excluded from benefits or the picture of being a veteran. Bringing more information to those populations that have served, or their families, is a part of it.

We should be proud of our diversity in our families in the military. There’s been a lot of trials and hardships to overcome with diversity in the military but I think there are a lot of good things in place now, or at least working to include more people.

Especially locally, recognizing those people of diverse backgrounds is important because they’re excluded from the picture. Veterans Day is recognizing everyone, not just the monoculture.

Carl Garlow

Retired Air Force major

I joined the Air Force during the Vietnam War with the sole purpose of making sure that I didn’t serve in Vietnam. It was a war I didn’t think we should have been involved in.

I had a 20-year career and spent all of it in the United States. I negotiated contracts for the Air Force for advanced weapon systems. I had a four-year tour as a missile combat crew commander in the Armstrong Air Force Base, where I was in charge of a squadron of nuclear missiles.

The military has taken good care of me and my family. We have excellent benefits as a retiree and all of our medical costs are covered 100 percent.

Veterans Day for me is recognizing a huge number of people who served in the military but did not retire and therefore did not get the advantages of the retirement benefits that you get if you do the whole 20 years.

Veterans Day is a day that we all should remember for the people who have sacrificed everything, or were willing to sacrifice everything, to serve the country, which is not the case for a lot of people that get much more recognition in today’s society than veterans. There’s a lot of veterans who served, not because they wanted to, but because they were drafted. But they all did in a manner that other citizens haven’t.

Ray Sipes

Former Navy pilot

My experience was pretty much all good. The Navy gave me four years of college, and then they sent me through flight training. Two friends were killed in a flying accident, which was difficult. My son went through military experience in the Army. My stories are cheerful and happy. I’ve read that it’s a good thing war is so terrible, because otherwise we’d love it too much. I married my wife just as I was getting out of college, and that’s a lot of moving around.  

Tom Dorsey

Atomic veteran

I went to boot camp and advanced training right after high school. I’m considered an atomic veteran. I had three tours and was in a specialist instructional reservist program in the San Jose, California Armory. I was eventually considered a staff sergeant.

I lost five of my closest buddies in the establishment of Checkpoint Charlie in East and West Berlin. We were fired upon by renegade Russian Chechen rebels. They used the motor pool as a shooting gallery and I barely escaped. A guardian angel, in the form of a young Marine, pushed me to one side and the slugs went right to where I was standing.

I was sent to Bikini Atoll on an observation ship furnished by the Navy 20 miles off the coast of Bikini to observe those awful hydrogen tests. I feel for the people locally as well as my veteran friends.

I was at Yucca Flat, north of Las Vegas, for doomsday tests. We were only a mile from ground zero, where they were doing drop tests and ground tests.

Since I’ve moved to Blaine, I’ve attended every ceremony, both Memorial Day and Veterans Day, at the police station, and tour the cemeteries where veterans are interned. I got an honorary membership to American Legion Post 86 and value it so much.

It makes me sad to see what these awful inventions are doing to this wonderful planet, our veterans and everyone else.