Written By: Heather Vollhardt|
Photos By: Heather Vollhardt|

This year’s Veterans Day fell on a Sunday, but regardless The Morgan School took the time on Monday, November 12, 2018, to recognize those who have served and given their lives.

The assembly was full of emotion as stories were shared, but for those lucky enough, more stories could be heard at the luncheon held for the veterans.

Each year The Morgan School culinary classes prepare an amazing lunch for the veterans and their families.

This year there was a great assortment of soups and desserts for the veterans to enjoy. The soups provided were chicken noodle soup and French onion soup with homemade stock. Desserts included banana bread, chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies, and a coffee cake-like bread.

I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with a few of our local veterans who shared some amazing stories.

Veteran Ray Szewczyk talked about one time when he was serving in Vietnam and was in Da Nang Harbour. He was on the deck of his ship when he saw a couple of helicopters coming towards him. Excitedly, he tried to take a picture of one of the helicopters when the pilot looks at him. Before Ray could get the shot, the pilot waggled his finger in a “You can’t” manner and flew off. He claims that it wasn’t anything crazy, but it was really cool.

Fellow Veteran Tom Kehoe recalls one of the most famous aircrafts he worked on. This aircraft was known as “Puff the Magic Dragon” and was one of the first of its kind. He recalled that it could fire approximately 4000 rounds a minute.

Although all the veterans had different experiences, they all were proud to talk about the bonds that they made while serving. They say that the bonds are what enabled them to work so well. 

Veterans are a great source of first-person experiences and should be thanked for everything that they sacrificed for our country.

If you would like to hear some of these amazing stories for yourself check out these videos that the Henry Carter Hull Library shared called The Stories that Veterans Tell