Veterans Service Partnership on Veterans Day

As we approach Veterans Day, the Veterans Service Program reminds our VSP Chapters and TU members to do something to honor our veterans. First, if you have veteran friends, remember to thank them for their service. It means a lot to them to hear those words. If you see someone in uniform, thank them, and don’t forget the “greatest generation.” There aren’t too many of those WW II vets around, and their numbers are diminishing, rapidly. My Dad’s turning 91 on November 12th. He’s a WW II vet and not likely to see many more Veterans Days. Second, fly your flag. If you don’t have one, go buy one. I fly mine every day. I started doing this during our son Kevin’s first deployment to Iraq a few years ago. Consider buying a flag for a neighbor. I have a next door neighbor who is very supportive of our military. She’s a single Mom, and she doesn’t have a flag. I have an extra flag, so I offered it to her and offered to put her flag out every day, too. She was thrilled. I have a goal to someday be able to look up and down my block and see all of my neighbors flying flags. In fact, I am thinking that I’ll make it a goal to see how many flags I can have flying by the time our Army officer son comes home from the Middle East next June. I've got 4 houses in a row flying flags now. 10 to go! Third, if you haven’t seen this, check out the Greenlight a Vet program. http://www.greenlightavet.com/ Pretty simple thing to do, really. Take one porch light out and put in a green bulb. I have done this with lights on our front and side porches and on the garage. I’ll have them lit on Veterans Day, and I am not taking them down. There are lots of other things you can do to honor out vet. If you come up with other good suggestions, put them in a comment on The VSP page. For example, yesterday, I was in Barnes and Noble in the mall, and the Marine and Army recruiters came into the Starbucks in the bookstore to get coffee. I bought it for them, and thanked them for their service. Remember all the blessings we have in this country, the freedoms we enjoy, the opportunities we have like our ability to go and fish for trout, and to do the good work that TU does for our cold-water fisheries. All of these things are protected by our veterans. God bless America! God bless our veterans!