Just over five years ago, while conducting Honor Guard detail at a local veteran’s funeral, I had an idea and I knew I had to act on it. So many members of our community have served their country early in life, but as they grew older, this service had either been forgotten or was not highlighted. I felt that each and every veteran deserved to be recognized, even in death. I went to Kathy Burzlaff at the Nobles County Review, and pitched my idea to her, to write a military style obituary when a veteran passed away so that the people of our communities could learn and understand how the veteran had served their country.
Kathy took the idea to the boss and explained it to him. Jerry batted it around a bit, and wondered if these military profiles could be done on any veteran, if it could fill a page and if it could be done every month. When Kathy talked to me about it I was certainly enthused, but also concerned. Could we pull this off? This was April of 2014.
We needed a format. We decided to run six profiles and a military related article (that I would write) each month. We would include a military photograph with the profile if they were available. We developed a form that people could easily fill out to get this information to me. The last member to join the team was Kristine Kern at the Review office, who was tasked with putting up with me on this project and designing each months page. The team was complete.
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