Port Huron, MI 343

Port Huron, MI Lodge News

Veterans Corner article #22 - Veterans Day & Hot Dog Roast

As a reminder, Veterans Day is Friday, November 11th.  It is the Armistice for World War I and was signed at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the 18th year of 1900 on November 11, 1918 at that moment the guns of World War I went silent.  In honor of Veterans Day and our nations Veterans, the Port Huron Elks Lodge 343 in conjunction Elks National Veterans Service Commission (ENVSC) will be holding a Free Hot Dog Roast on Thursday, November 10th starting at 10:00 am in the parking lot of the VA - Veterans Clinic - Yale Community Health Center, McLaren Hospital located at 7470 Brockway Road,  Yale, MI.  All Veterans, active Military and First Responders are invited to stop by, we’d love to hear your story.  Hot Dogs, Condiments, Chips and Beverages will be provided.

 Why is November 11, 1918 so Important?  We are the Land of the Free, because of you, the BRAVE and we thank each and every one of our nations Veterans for their service and the sacrifice. From Valley Forge to Vietnam, from Kuwait to Kandahar, from Berlin to Korea to Baghdad, our Veterans have borne the costs of America’s wars, and they have stood watch over America’s peace.  We are all humbled and grateful to the Veterans and all who have fought for our freedom. Those who live today remember those who do not.  Those of us who know freedom, remember this date for those who gave up life for freedom.  On Friday, November 11, 2022 we will honor our dead, we will conduct ceremonies, we will lay wreaths and Dignitaries will speak words of tribute to our fallen Hero’s and our Veterans alive today.  In our memories, in our hearts, we hold them close to us still.  We all have family members that fought bravely to protect us and our nation.  Yet we also know, even as their families knew when they last looked upon them, that we can keep them in our thoughts, though they can never be fully ours again, for they now belong to our God and to that for which they so selflessly made a final and eternal act of devotion.  Even if they were not our own, we should not forget them.  For all time, they are what we can only aspire to be, giving, unselfish, the epitome of human love, to lay down one’s life so that others might live. In our mind’s eye, we see young Americans going off to war to some foreign land to fight for us.  We think of them now, with love, with devotion, and with faith.  The certainty that what they fought and may have died for was worthy of their sacrifice, faith in God and in the Nation that has pledged itself to His work and to the dream of human freedom, and for a nation, that today and always pledges itself to their eternal memory. I urge all of you, to go up to those BRAVE men and women and shake a hand, give a hug, and give a word of thanks.  I ask you to consider volunteering at a Veteran’s hospital or a nursing home.  I encourage you to work with your local Veterans’ group to help support our troops in the field and their families here at home.  We honor those that followed in a great tradition, a tradition handed down to them by America’s Veterans. In public ceremonies and in private prayer, we give thanks to these BRAVE men and women for the freedom we enjoy because of their willingness to serve.  We should always honor those who have set such a brave example, our nation’s Veterans the TRUE American hero’s.  May God bless our Veterans, may God bless all who wear the uniform and may God continue to bless all of us.

 Fraternally Yours,

Scott R. Harris, DVC, PER

ENVSC State Rep

Port Huron Elks Lodge 343