Today is Veterans Day. We were reminded of it by the prayer of the Senate Chaplain, but I hope we don’t have to be reminded of it, because this is a special day of thanks and remembrance for those who served.
Originally, what we call Veterans Day was called Armistice Day at the end of World War I. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, it was all quiet on the Western Front, and I believe there was a movie named that way.
For my hometown of New Hartford, Iowa, where I’ve lived my entire life… [we are] reminded of this sacrifice that we honor today [by] the two names “Geyer-Bickner,” two New Hartford residents who lost their lives in World War I. The American Legion Post is named after them.
Veterans Day, as I said before, is a time of remembrance for the sacrifices of brave men and women who have made that sacrifice to preserve freedom and liberty here at home, and to broadcast liberty and freedom around the world.
Veterans sacrificed for our country. So then, it’s our responsibility to take care of them when they come home. Now, everybody has that responsibility, but for those of us in public life, through lawmaking and oversight and casework, I work to ensure Iowa veterans have the resources they need, and I work to hold the federal government accountable to the promises made to those who served in uniform.
Just one of the projects that I have for veterans is my office hosting a Veterans History Project event around Veterans Day to collect stories from Iowa veterans. [I] submit those stories to the Library of Congress to honor their service for generations to come, but also for any American that wants to know what it is to serve in the military, and particularly in wartime – they can go and understand those same stories that I understand when I receive them from the veterans.
So, this past Friday, my office’s Veterans History Project was held at the American Legion Post 403 in Van Meter, Iowa. So far, including last week, [as a result of] our several years of interviews, I’ve submitted over 100 stories from Iowa veterans to the Library of Congress.
So, I say to all veterans, thank you for your service.
