Veterans Day ceremony scheduled for Smithville

Veterans Day services will be celebrated at the Smithville Veterans Memorial on Sunday, Nov. 10 at 3 p.m. In the case of rain, the event will be cancelled.

The ceremony will commence with a bugle call to assembly. The speaker will be Harold Fulton, who enlisted in the Air Force at age 17 and served a total of 28 years active Air Force and Air National Guard service, retiring with the rank of senior master sergeant. He is active in the 555th Honors Detachment and the Disabled American Veterans and is a volunteer at the Air Force Museum in Dayton. In 2016 he was selected as Wayne County’s Veteran of the Year. The topic of his speech will be “Veterans, Our Quiet Neighbors.”

The event also is time to reflect on the life of the designer of the memorial, the late Jodi Shilling, who was an art teacher at Smithville High School. In 2014 she stepped up when the call came to create a design for the Veterans Memorial, and her design was not only for the veterans, but also for a remembrance of her artistic talent that she shared so willingly to Smithville. Shilling, also a Smithville High grad, passed away late last year.

This service is to honor those who gave their time and lives so the country can have the freedom it enjoys.