Coweta Veteran of the Year to be named on Friday

Coweta Veteran of the Year to be named on Friday Image

Published Wednesday, November 09, 2011 in Local

The Newnan Times-Herald

The Coweta County Veteran of the Year will be named Friday during the community Veterans Day program in Newnan.

Each year American Legion Post 57 names a Veteran of the Year for Coweta. Last year's honoree was World War II veteran Jim Goodrum.

The Veterans Day program will be held at 11 a.m. at Veterans Memorial Plaza in the city park at Jackson Street and Temple Avenue. Dick Stender, who helps organize the annual event, said the eighth grade chorus from Smokey Road Middle School will be singing.

The Newnan High School JROTC will provide a color guard for the event.

In the event of rain, the program will be moved to the chapel of McKoon Funeral Home, which is next door to the park. A meal will be served after the program — from 12:30-3 p.m. — at the Coweta Veteran's Club on U.S. Highway 29 north of Newnan.

In addition to the program in Newnan, there will be a Veterans Day observance in Grantville on Friday. The program will start at 9 a.m. in the park across from First United Methodist Church of Grantville.

The Grantville program will honor the "Four Boys From Happy Hollow," Grantville residents and neighbors who were killed in World War II. A monument honoring the four will be dedicated.

The four men — Ralph Cleaveland Glanton, Jim Austin Lambert, James P. Rainwater and Eddie Rivers Thornton — were also honored at Memorial Day services in Newnan in 2005.

Several Coweta County schools are holding Memorial Day programs this week or have already held them.

The University of West Georgia will participate in Remembrance Day National Roll Call, a nationwide effort to honor the American troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past decade, on Friday. Volunteers will gather on the main campus in Carrollton at the fountain near the UCC building.

They will read the names of more than 6,300 service men and women who have died in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, now called Operation New Dawn.

The roll call will begin at about 9:30 a.m. At 2 p.m. — or 11 a.m. Pacific Time — there will be a nationwide moment of silence. In 1918, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month marked the temporary cessation of hostilities between the Allied nations and Germany in World War I.

"It's a great way to honor our veterans and those who have died," said Corey Rumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Collaborative Support and Intervention and the director of the College Student Affairs program. "It's a way to recognize their sacrifice. It's important. Too often we forget to thank them for their service and let them know they are supported and welcome on college campuses."

The public is invited to attend the program at UWG.

The names will be read in chronological order. The roll call will take about six hours to complete. A table will be set up for anyone wishing to write letters of encouragement to military personnel who are currently serving.

The Veterans Knowledge Community of NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education is sponsoring the national roll call. So far, 163 schools representing every state in the United States and the District of Columbia have signed up to participate, according to organizers.

"We wanted to rally campus communities across the nation to send a powerful message to the troops currently serving that their peers have not forgotten their sacrifices, or those of the fallen," said retired Army Lt. Col. Brett Morris, the National Roll Call coordinator.

"The reading of individual names is very poignant because it emphasizes the significance of each and every life lost," said Morris, the associate director for veterans affairs at Eastern Kentucky University.

Coweta Veteran of the Year to be named on Friday