By Curt Hendel
Veteran Writer
On May 14, 2014, in the Memorial Day edition of the Nobles County Review, a project I had been working on with the Review staff made its debut. The Veteran’s Honor Page ran for the first time, featuring profiles and photographs of area veterans. We made the goal of running twelve pages over the next year and then see if it was worth continuing. Well, obviously, it was well worth continuing.
We have now run over fifty of these pages and highlighted the service of more than three hundred of our area veterans. From the beginning this was not an Adrian project, we have profiled veterans from the towns of Adrian, Ellsworth, Lismore, Rushmore and Wilmont, effectively covering western Nobles County.
We also had another goal from the very beginning. That was to compile all of the profiles we could come up with into book form when the project was over. The book will include brief histories of the area Legions involved and other bits of local and national military history.
The decision has been made to move forward with ending this program and starting on the book. Our new goal is to complete the book and have it printed for next summer’s Christmas in July celebration in Adrian. In order to do this we will have to finish gathering and writing all of the profiles for future pages very soon, with the rough date being set for March 1st of this year. The monthly page of veterans profiles will continue to run as long as we have these prewritten profiles “in the bank” and ready to go.
Argonne Post 32 will be commemorating its centennial during the celebration, but I need to stress that the theme of the book of profiles will be to highlight all five towns and their veteran’s organizations. The book will be available for purchase beginning on that weekend.
I know that there are a lot of veterans left out there and I would love the opportunity to get each and every one of you. I would love to have over a year of profiles written for the book that still need to make the paper. Many of you I have talked to, and you will be hearing from me soon. If I haven’t gotten to you, stop in at the Review office and pick up the forms to fill out, they are self explanatory and very simple to do.
Thank you to all who have gotten you or your family member’s information in to us, and a huge thank you to all who have sponsored this page throughout the years. I have said it before, and I will say it again, it has been an honor to write all of these profiles about those from our corner of the world who have served our great nation.
