PUTNAM COUNTY
A wet weather forecast for Nov. 11 pushed back a scheduled VFW-led Veterans Day program at the Putnam County Veterans Wall of Honor Park to Monday under cool, but bright, clear skies.
New VFW Commander Sherrel Nicole Barker said she spent about 45 minutes in drizzling rain on Friday turning away folks who didn’t realize the original ceremony had been postponed, but she was encouraged by the sizable turnout on Nov. 14, at the tidy park just west of downtown Eatonton.
“It turned out to be not that bad, just a lot of light rain, but I probably ran into 15 or 20 people that didn’t get the message,” Barker said. “So, I was just telling people that I was sorry and to just enjoy the park and to come back out today (Monday) and it looked like quite a lot of them did.”
Approximately 50 people attended to hear a 15-minute speech from keynote speaker U.S. Army General (ret.) Stewart Rodeheaver, who touched on duty to country and fellow service members.
“It really is a blessing to me to be able to do this because I get a chance to look at people eye-to-eye and say thanks. A lot of these folks did a lot of hard jobs that they’re not the glory jobs. They’re not big jobs where you get a lot of recognition, not the jobs that they make movies about, but they’re jobs that were extremely important,” Rodeheaver said afterward.
The owner of Vizitech USA in Eatonton, Rodeheaver said he gives similar speeches quite often and particularly enjoys hearing from former soldiers who served under him in active duty.
“It’s always good to hear how successful they’re being and what they’re doing and what they’ve got going on,” he said.
Rodeheaver also peppers his down-to-earth approach with humor, humility and honesty about sometimes tough subjects to discuss.
“But I’ve also spent a lot of time working with soldiers because we’ve got us a very severe problem in the military with active-duty people and reservists who are committing suicide,” he said. “This morning I got a note that says since 2001, we’ve had 30,000 soldiers take their own lives. That’s just amazing to me, so I’m doing everything I can to help fix that and I hope everybody else will, too.”