[Music] One of the most common elements in rural communities of the High Plains, be it in a park, at the county courthouse, or in the local historical museum, are memorials, displays, and monuments, honoring the sacrifice and commitment of those who served our country.

[Music] For this episode of Cottonwood Connections, we're going to talk about the veterans in Kansas.

Of course, we had one episode talk about Kansas being the "soldier state" with all the veterans after the Civil War.

But that tradition is carried on.

World War I, there were a lot of local people from northwestern Kansas that enlisted in World War I. Also, they even had units of what they called the "home guard."

Then World War II hit, and everybody, whether they were drafted or not, volunteered.

Not everybody, of course, because they had to have some farmers in the area to produce the food for the war and stuff.

And then, of course, the Korean conflict, and also with Vietnam.

That was very controversial.

A lot of people came home as Vietnam veterans and come from Vietnam and get off the plane in uniform.

They were spit on and stuff.

But that did not happen in northwestern Kansas.

They were welcomed back.

They had a job.

And they were still held in very high regard.

Our president of the friends, Tony Haffner, served in the Vietnam era.

After high school, he immediately went into the Army.

Graduated on Wednesday, turned 18 on Friday, and I was in the Army on Monday.

Out in this part of the country, veterans have been remembered or honored.

I think we'd be hard pressed to find a county court asset that does not have a monument to either every veteran that went into the service, some of them from their county.

Most all of them will have a monument that lists the people who died in the service.

In addition to those monuments, we have your American Legion organizations, VFW, the Veterans of Foreign War organizations.

After World War II, World War I, those were really, really strong, prominent local organizations.

Every little town had a post.

That's kind of slipped a little bit now.

There aren't as many posts.

And the legions and the VFWs still provide, some of them, provide funeral services, the honor guard, color guard, firing party for veterans' funerals.

The request is provided free of charge at the American Legion in Grainfield, where I belong.

We probably do 10 to 15 funeral services a year.

In addition to that, those types of remembrances, they have started a program.

They call it the Quilts of Valor.

I am Jan Juenemann with the Sheridan County, Kansas Quilts of Valor.

We started in 2021.

I had one uncle out of seven that was still living.

All of his brothers were also in the service, and they had passed.

And I just felt the need that he needed a quilt.

They needed to be recognized.

That's how I got started with Quilts of Valor.

Quilts of Valor was established in 2003.

There was a mother whose son was overseas, and he was a sniper on the Humvee, and worried about him constantly.

And one night she had a dream that in this dream she saw a veteran that was just chased by demons.

You could tell he was in a lot of distress.

And then shortly after that, the dream changed.

And this veteran had a quilt wrapped around him, and he seemed to be at peace.

And the demons were gone.

And that is what made her realize that maybe that is something that all of us could do, was to present veterans a quilt to let them know that they were appreciated, that it might bring them peace.

The organization has a set guidelines for these quilts.

They have to be, we go by the standard rate of 60 by 80.

They have to be put together using quality fabrics.

We want something that's going to last.

We want something that's going to be heavy.

I've gotten Betty to sew for us.

She is the one behind the seams.

We were working together one day when I found out she was going to retire.

And I asked her, "Hey, Betty, you want to sew?"

And she didn't think so.

She didn't think that was something she wanted to do.

And then you did a presentation for my brother-in-law, Bill Shefry, and it was really very touching.

And after that I decided, "Yes, I would do this because I felt like the veterans deserve everything that they can get."

What I do is she sews them for us.

I give her material and she produces magic with the quilts, tops she sends me.

To put the quilt tops together, I just basically do a design that I think looks good.

I have a panel that I work with.

From there I just kind of add my own little thing.

Sometimes I look at different quilts, different patterns.

The very first one I did went to my brother, which was very touching for him and for me both.

I then put a request in for a long-arm quilter.

They have to be either machine quilted or hand-quilted because we want them to be sturdy, to be able to stand up.

We find people that will put the binding, the edges around the quilt for us.

And then also we put a label on them that tells who the quilter was and where it was put together.

It says the person's name.

It says the date that we honored and gave him their quilt.

So each veteran also knows whose hands touch this quilt in honor to give him thanks.

What we usually like to do is have them nominated.

This program isn't well known in this area, so there's not a lot of people that have known how to go about doing that.

We've had a few people that have called and said, "Hey, I want to nominate so and so."

And we get on it and try to find their records.

I start out by sending them a letter that states, "We're going to be having this.

You have been nominated.

Would you like to receive a quilt?"

I have Karen Lewis and Julia Colson also on our team.

This is where a lot of ideas have come from.

Karen and Julia have put together these panels.

So these are some of the current ones that we know of.

And then these are the Vietnam veterans, and we still are fortunate to have a few Korean war veterans.

And they don't have to be here to be honored.

They can be honored wherever they're living.

So we just keep trying to find more because they all need to be honored.

It's very humbling to know their stories.

Then there's ones that they didn't serve during a wartime, but they don't think that they deserve to have a quilt.

And they do deserve to have a quilt because they gave their time, three or four years of their life, for the service for our country.

So it is important for all of them.

To nominate any veteran anywhere in the United States, they can go on the Quilt of Valor Foundation website.

And there is a form there that they can fill out that will nominate, or they can always call the Sheridan County Historical Society.

We have found that there are other organizations out there that do Quilt of Valor presentations or awarding a veteran with a quilt.

What my goal is, and I think I could say it for everybody involved, is we want to see those veterans acknowledged, and we want to see them thanked.

Whether it's from this Quilt of Valor Foundation, or if it's from a quilt group, anywhere that has a quilt that can find a veteran and tell them thank you for their service and acknowledge them.

The veteran has an option of either doing a public recognition, we'll get a group together and do a whole group.

I've had a couple where I went into their homes, however the veteran wants it.

This is about the veteran.

And it seems the quilts have always managed to fit the personality of the veteran.

We had a chance to present a guy who had an old red pickup.

And the quilt center that I had had an old red pickup in a little bit of a farm scene.

But at the time I didn't know he had a red pickup.

We did not know that until he received that quilt.

We had two panels that the panels were like, the design outside of it was different.

And we had two veterans that had been through everything together.

They were both Marines, and through their service with the Marines years ago and up until, and still carrying on, they had had a close relationship.

And so we were able to give these matching panels to them.

Another gentleman in Selden, he was sitting on the edge, he could see everybody else's, but he didn't see his until we were all finished.

And he turned around and it was an eagle.

His breath was taken away.

And he said, "I collect eagles."

So it's really been awesome how God kind of manages to make sure these veterans are thanked with the right quilt that they need thanked with.

We thank you for your service.

It has not gone unnoticed.

And this is just a small thank you compared to what we would like you guys to receive.

Kansas, the state of Kansas, has what they call the Kansas Honor Flight, which was set up to provide veterans with a free trip to Washington, D.C.

Or once you get to the airport, everything for the veteran is provided is free of charge.

It's all funded by donations.

Well, I was fortunate enough to get to go on, there was flight number 98.

There were about 90, 91 or 92 veterans.

No World War II veterans.

There were five Korean War veterans.

Everybody else was a Vietnam era veteran.

We left Wichita on Monday morning, flew into Baltimore.

And the amazing thing is that when you get off, they give you the water cannon salute as the plane comes in, which is only, I guess, for dignitaries or a significant deal, from what I understood.

When we walked into the airport, there were probably 75, 80 people all lined up welcoming us home.

We toured Baltimore that afternoon, Fort McHenry.

And then the next day we went down to Washington, went into Washington, D.C., went through the mall, which has all, you know, Washington's monument, the Vietnam Wall, Lincoln, World War II, Korea, all those monuments are on the mall.

Then we went to the Navy and the Marine.

And then the highlight for me of the entire trip was getting to go to Arlington National Cemetery.

We were able to go to a Changing of the Guard ceremony.

They let us in behind where the average normal citizen doesn't get to go.

I was probably eight feet from the sergeant of the guard when he inspected the new guard.

At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The sergeant of the guard and the guards where I was standing and some other soldiers or veterans, as they walk by a veteran, if they know it's a veteran, they're not allowed to change their, to salute or, but they have those metal taps on their shoes and they will scuff their heel to salute you.

And that's their saluting event.

And then on Wednesday morning, we got up, came home, and when we got into Wichita, another water cannon salute.

And when we walked in, there was from two to three hundred people there, family members, local people, the mayor of Wichita, band, welcoming all of us home.

It was a complete new experience for me and it was a great trip.

And any veteran that can, you don't have to have gone overseas.

If you're from the Vietnam era, the World War II era, or the Korean War era, you're eligible to go.

All you got to do is apply.

I would say that everybody that was on the flight that I knew or was familiar with were all overwhelmed with the treatment we received.

I mean, it was, it was just an overwhelming experience.

The way everybody, you know, we were wearing a red shirt, set Kansas on our flight and had a hat.

When we got off the bus at the mall on Tuesday morning, there was a bus load up.

It was vacation time or field trip time.

And there was a bus load of kids from some school.

They were junior high kids wearing uniforms.

And that whole bus load of kids came to us, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service.

And that's, and people treated us that way everywhere we went.

And I think everybody that I had visited with, that was overwhelming to a lot of people, a lot of the veterans.

And we were treated, you couldn't ask for anything better.

Well, you talked about going to Arlington and now we have a veterans cemetery in Wakeeney.

So these are being spread out now because Arlington is a little bit too full.

Arlington's full.

They're actually expanding Arlington at this time.

When we do, at the Grainfield American Legion, we do a number of services every year at Wakeeney.

Another thing that they're doing in this area to honor or remember veterans is as Morland, there's a group of people who have gotten together to, they're building a big memorial that they put in the park or beside the park in Morland.

Hi, I'm Mike Frakes with the Morland Community Foundation.

I'm here with Ray Toll, also on the board of directors.

And we're standing in the middle of the Morland Veterans Memorial in downtown Morland, Kansas.

You know, I lived up in North Platte, Nebraska for years and they had a great memorial up there.

And I drive by it all the time and look and I think, gosh, this would be a great thing to have in my hometown here in Morland.

So I approached, kept thinking about it and thinking about it.

And finally, I went, first of all, I went to the city council and they referred me on to the Morland Community Foundation.

You know, just thinking it'll probably never go.

And man, they grabbed a hold of this thing and made it so easy.

I mean, they took it and flew with it.

And so here it is today.

A few years, I think it's probably Mike said we went up and checked with the Sonder Johnson, who is the sculptor on the bronze behind us in December of 2022.

I mean, it doesn't seem possible that we've been working on it this long.

And I say work for what I don't even think it's worked.

These guys took it and went with it.

They just they did everything.

Awesome bunch of people.

Probably the most prominent element in our park is the statue.

And in the statue, when you're in a small community and you start looking for hometown heroes, it's not hard to find.

And the first thing we thought of was several local heroes that had been killed in action, one that was a pilot in World War Two.

And the problem with that is, is that when you when you single somebody out and make a statue of them, then you kind of detract from some of the other guys that gave the ultimate prize.

And so that's why we went to see a sculptor out of Cambridge, Nebraska, Sonder Johnson.

And she had a sculpture of a World War Two navigator and she named her statue the fly boy.

And so we landed on that.

That's the most prevalent.

The second thing is we're going to have our walls of bricks that were honoring each veteran that purchases a brick or their family purchases one.

That project can grow.

This is a living memorial.

It's not something we're going to build once and be done with it.

We're going to continue to add bricks as veterans get out of the service or we add more veterans and then we're going to build more display cases for those veterans.

We wanted all six branches of the service represented.

So we wanted to fly the flags of all six branches of the United States military.

We have inlaid granite tiles that have the seal of each branch of service.

That way when somebody walks into our park they can see which flag they're looking at.

As they look up to the sky, right at their feet will be the emblem and the seal of the military branch that the flag represents.

Plus the national recognized flag for POWs and MIAs, which is a Vietnam War dedication flag.

And then of course our state flag and the flag of the United States of America.

You know we think it's appropriate to have it on Veterans Day too even though we're not exactly done with everything.

And like Mike said we'll never be done with it but I mean the finishing touches here will eventually have it on.

But Veterans Day is a pretty important day for guys like Mike and I. And this memorial here is really important I think for Moreland now.

People are going to talk about our memorial here in Moreland.

I hope and I think they will.

We've already heard nothing but positive comments.

Distinguished guests, veterans, families and members of this community, thank you for joining us today.

We gather here not only to mark Veterans Day but also to dedicate this memorial and Veterans Park, an enduring symbol of gratitude and remembrance forever.

Today is a day of reflection and honor.

It's a day when we pause for our busy lives to remember the men and women who put on the uniform of the United States of America.

Ordinary citizens who made an extraordinary choice to serve something greater than themselves, to serve, protect and defend our Republic, our way of life and our freedom.

[music] You know the local people around here, I mean we've got a lot of veterans.

We have veterans here that have bronze stars, silver stars, purple hearts and you know the mothers and fathers and daughters and sons, they want to honor the veterans and this is one way that they can do it by buying a brick here and putting it on there and then why can I be in this veterans ourselves.

We understand what they went through and we wanted to do our part to help, to honor a lot of the locals and there's not only people from around here but veterans from far away.

It doesn't make any difference.

They can come from anywhere in the country.

[singing] Each name inscribed, each symbol carved, tells a story of service and sacrifice.

Some of those stories are known to us while others are only known to God.

My dad and three of his brothers were in World War II and actually my uncle Raymond Dreyling who's buried out at St.

Peter got killed at Iwo Jima and in my own personal case I got drafted.

I didn't want to go to the military.

I got to admit but I wouldn't.

Now it's the most satisfying thing I think I've almost ever done in my life.

I'm so thankful I went to the military.

And guys like me are thankful that Ray went and paved the way for us and I hope that maybe I paved the way for the younger generation.

For me and I think the luxury that the military people that have served in the military have is we've seen other countries.

We've seen countries that aren't free and when you see that and you come home you realize how much freedom means.

And because of that freedom we have it and we enjoy it because of the men and women who fought and served and fought and died before us and that's why it's important to me.

I can't go back and fix the pen.

But what I can do is ask that everyone that's gathered here today, when you see a veteran and especially one that's got the Vietnam badge on the front of their hat, I ask that you don't look away.

You don't shy away.

You simply look them straight in the eye, give the honor they deserve and say thank you.