Veterans Day is coming up next Monday, Nov. 11. The nation will honor all the brave men and women who have been, and those who still are, willing to serve their country.
I’m sure there will be observances and programs held locally, across the state and throughout America that will recognize our veterans. That includes all veterans.
The Oklahoma Veterans Memorial Wall at the War Memorial in Veterans Woodland Park in Shawnee honors more than than 7,000 men and women from Oklahoma alone who have made the supreme sacrifice from all the wars and conflicts.
The memorial was an endeavor that began a number of years ago by a group of several men who dedicated themselves to making the memorial a reality. Some of those men have passed on.
I’ve known lots of people who have served in the military. My dad and a couple of his brothers and an uncle on my mother’s side all served in World War II. The uncle I was closest to joined the Air National Guard and served our country later.
I spent 13 years in the U.S. Army Reserve as a member of the 95th Division.
I had a few high school classmates who joined the military following graduation and one in particular who was accepted to the Naval Academy. He retired at a very high rank in the Navy.
There was another kid in high school a year younger than I was who joined the service and he ended up with an extremely high rank in the U.S. Naval Reserves.
Several I knew from high school served in Vietnam.
A kid who lived across the street from us for a while when I was growing up not only served in the military but he also gave his life for this great nation.
His name was Reggie King. He was about a year and a half younger than I was and went to a different high school than I did. He and I ran around some before we moved several blocks away during February of my senior year.
I lost track of him because when I entered college I came to Shawnee and was home on weekends my freshman year.
Reggie’s dream was to be a Marine. He talked about it all the time we were around one another. He wanted a career in the military and the Vietnam War was going on strong at the time.
I was either in or had just finished my junior year of college when I learned that Reggie had been killed in the war. His mom was still living in Oklahoma City in our former neighborhood and had informed my mother about his death.
When “The Moving Wall Vietnam Veterans Memorial” came to Shawnee in August 2009, I went and viewed it. I also took that piece of paper they gave us and etched on it his full name, Reginald D. King.
I placed it in my desk drawer at home where it lies today.