The 27th annual Veterans Day Assembly was held Monday in the Perry Performing Arts Center, with the posting of the colors by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2060 opening the 10 a.m. ceremonies.
World War II veteran and Legion of Honor recipient Sir Mahlon Conaway of Perry then led the assembled crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung by the Perry High School Select Choir under the directorship of Jenn Nelson.
Bosnia war veteran Mike Powell performed the duties of master of ceremonies for the 22nd year running, welcoming the audience and delivering brief opening remarks about the origin of America’s Veterans Day traditions and Perry High School’s local ceremonies, which began as a panel discussion among World War II veterans in 1989 and expanded into its current form in 1998.
PHS Senior Class President Quin Mahler-Moreno gave the annual reading of “What is a Veteran?” by the Rev. Dennis Edward O’Brien after the choir sang “A Tribute to the Armed Services.”
Sir Mahlon was then presented with the 2024 VFW Veteran of the Year award by Matt Bramer of the Floyd Foster VFW Post 2060 in Perry. The 99-year-old veteran was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944 and received infantry training at what is now called Fort Hood, Texas. He shipped out overseas, landing at Omaha Beach in September 1944 and serving as a rifleman and driver in the 36th Infantry Division, 142nd Infantry Regiment, Company G, in France.
Sir Mahlon was awarded a Bronze Star for heroic or meritorious achievement or service, with three Battle Stars. In 2015 he received the National Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest military distinction awarded by the government of France.
A Quilt of Valor was then bestowed on Second Gulf War veteran Eduardo Diaz of Perry, with Perry Piecemakers Pat Mundy explaining the origin of the Quilts of Valor in 2003, when Catharine Roberts of Seaford, Delaware, sewed a quilt for her son deployed in the Second Gulf War. Mundy said more than 400,000 Quilts of Valor have now been awarded worldwide, including more than 50 in 2024 by the Perry Piecemakers.
Keynote speaker Kathy Powell of Perry, the mother of MC Mike Powell, described her experiences as the wife of a Vietnam war veteran and mother of a Bosnia war veteran. Kathy Powell has herself performed extensive public service as a public health nurse, as preident of the Perry School Board and on numerous civic and charitable organizations.
There followed the roll-call slide show, “Perry’s Band of Brothers and Sisters,” featuring Perry soldiers from the era of the U.S. Civil War to our modern military engagements, which brought a warm response from the crowd.
PHS Bluejay Congress President Owen Myers delivered a reading of the World War I poem, “In Flanders Field,” which commemorates the Nov. 18, 1918, Armistice that ended the Great War, in which about 20 million people died. The poem, written by the World War I Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, reads in part:
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Additional musical interludes were followed by closing remarks by Michael Powell at “Taps,” played by PHS students Janette Willet and Xavier Fernandes. The retiring of the colors closed the program.
