In the middle of all the Tuesday night election hoopla our staff was toiling away fine tuning our special section for Veterans Day. We paused long enough to listen to some of John McCain’s concession speech and even took a few minutes to hear a bit of Obama’s words of acceptance. What an amazing night.
I know that some are pleased with the results — while others are saddened or even angry that their candidates or measures or propositions didn’t pass Nevertheless, it is time to move forward and work toward unity and cooperation.
With all that said, I’d like to change the subject and brag a bit about our Veterans Day special section that is inserted in today’s issue. Although I was prouder than proud of our Hancock Oil Fire 50th Anniversary Issue that we produced back in May, this Vets publication has especially touched my heart. We worked very hard deciding on stories that would be newsy and informative. Our goal was to educate and entertain with articles that would stroke our readers’ minds and souls. I think we succeeded.
For months I have gathered ideas that I believed would bring about a “Wow” response from our readers and advertisers. What an great group of stories — War Dogs, History of Veterans Day and the Long Beach Parade, Bixby Knolls Towers veterans, Veterans Hospital information, Gold Star Manor, American’s Creed history, Signal Hill War Memorial, Elks Club involvement with veterans, and my favorite — the story of the beautiful mural created by Art Mortimer.
I was there the day the mural was officially unveiled, but don’t remember learning much about it. Through the years I have driven by the masterpiece wondering about the images portrayed in the painting. I recognized a few of the people depicted and have been especially taken by the portrait of Aaron Herrington in his Tuskeegee Airman uniform. Dear Aaron is the late husband of Maycie Herrington a long time friend and my mother’s former coworker. Aaron was also the first African American member of my husband’s Elks lodge #888. Seeing his likeness there on the side of the building makes me smile, but I wanted more, I wanted our readers to know the details of how and why he was there!and the full story of the mural itself. We are so happy to bring you those tidbits of information.
A very special thank you goes out to those who wrote and copy edited the stories, took the pictures, designed the ads and artistically created the publication. Also, none of this would have been possible without the support of our advertisers — a labor of love is one thing — but without the dollars needed to pay the piper we could not have built such an elegant and meaningful issue.
We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
