JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Americans from former presidents to friends and family of military service members are marking today's Veterans Day holiday by spotlighting the contributions of Medal of Honor recipients.

Currently, there are 66 living recipients of the honor, the military's highest award for valor in combat.

Chris Cassidy, CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL and NASA astronaut, and others are raising awareness about a museum, set to break ground next year.

"The truth of the matter is that we have 66 living, and that number is getting smaller with each year, just by nature of their age, and so now's the time to build it," Cassidy contended.

Missouri is the birthplace of two living recipients.

Donald Everett Ballard, retired U.S. Navy hospital corpsman who goes by "Doc," and retired Air Force Captain James Philip Fleming, both earned their medals during the Vietnam War.

Ballard earned his medal for delivering medical aid under fire by the North Vietnamese Army to his fellow Marines. He said the museum is going to represent all veterans.

"It fosters and perpetuates the legacy of the Medal of Honor itself, and demonstrates the sacrifices that all the veterans have paid in order for us to have the freedom that we enjoy today," Ballard explained.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama joined forces to make a public-service announcement about the museum during the recent "Salute to Service" National Football League game between the Dallas Cowboys and Denver Broncos. Obama stressed just how special the Medal of Honor is.

"Of the estimated 40 million people who have served in the U.S. military since the Civil War, fewer than 4,000 have received the honor," Obama stated.

The Foundation also is advocating for a national monument dedicated to the recipients of the medal in Washington, D.C. It has been unanimously approved by the U.S. House and is now up to the Senate.

It's that time of year where we make our New Year's resolutions, and some in the Latino community are reaching out for help sticking to their plans. The pandemic brought extreme hardships, but the economic recovery and labor shortage also present new opportunities to move up the ladder or find a better-paying job.

Margarita Flores, a pastoral associate and chaplain for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles who founded Instituto Latino Life Coaching in Compton, said many in the Latino community suffer from a crisis of confidence.

"In the Hispanic community, you don't have too many people encouraging you to ask yourself, 'What is the next step in my life,' because the next step requires change," she said, "and change is the biggest fear that people carry."

Instituto Latino offers life-coaching sessions in Spanish at very low rates on a sliding scale, so even people who are struggling financially can work on personal development, organizational skills and self-esteem.

A recent study called "A Portrait of California 2021-2022" found that Latinos have made the most progress of any ethnic group in health, education and standard of living over the past 10 years. However, Latinos still remain the lowest-paid ethnic group. In particular, Latinas in the Golden State earn on average just over $25,000 per year, compared with about $62,000 for white men.

Flores said Latinos make up almost 40% of the state, so the future of California depends on the success of this community.

"I believe that helping self-esteem and empowerment for mothers, fathers, entrepreneurs, leaders in our churches and communities is very essential," she said.

With determination and a helping hand to guide and encourage them, she said, people can develop the courage to go for that next job opportunity, improve relationships with family and friends, get a handle on debt and live their best lives.

LARAMIE, Wyo. -- Wyoming shoppers choosing to buy gifts at local mom-and-pop stores this holiday season can sample cookies with Mrs. Claus and refuel at Santa's Saloon, and kids can send letters to the jolly old elf via Pony Express riders.

Trey Sherwood, executive director of the Laramie Main Street Alliance, acknowledged most of the money shoppers spend at corporate chains ends up out of state, but when people buy local, they support their neighbors, and 68 cents of every dollar stays in the community.

"And it turns into payroll for local jobs, and it turns into support for our little-league teams," Sherwood outlined. "Because small businesses are often the sponsors for our youth sports."

Historic downtown Laramie, founded as a railroad town, is celebrating small businesses all week, capping off with a holiday parade. Instead of a traditional tree, officials will light up the city's historic train.

In addition to Santa, the "Old West Holiday" in downtown Cheyenne also features lights and decorations on architecture dating back to Wyoming's territorial days. Many buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Haylee Chenchar, vice president of the Cheyenne Downtown Development Authority, said small businesses have turned downtown into a festive winter wonderland.

"Everyone who comes to downtown, they will not only get to do their holiday shopping and support local businesses, but they really get a one-of-a-kind holiday experience that can't be replicated anywhere else," Chenchar explained.

Sherwood pointed out folks also can support most local businesses, and avoid big-box store supply-chain logjams, from the comfort of your sofa.

"Supporting local through online, you can sit in your pajamas at home and know that you are still making an investment in your downtown by shopping local, not having to worry about it being shipped late," Chenchar concluded.

By Katrina Finkelstein and Derek H. Alderman for The Conversation.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Tennessee News Service.

On Veterans Day, people across America will thank veterans and active-duty military personnel for their service.

But many members of the public don't have a clear understanding of what service means to people in the military. How do they honor their own? What kind of spaces and activities help them reflect and remember - beyond one day a year?

We are cultural geographers who study how people's emotions and connections with the past are represented physically in landscapes. Recently, our research has focused on commemorative place names in the military - particularly names associated with the Confederacy, which the U.S. armed forces are now reviewing and renaming.

Early this year, one of us (Katrina Finkelstein) visited Camp Pendleton in California to research commemoration on Marine Corps bases and understand how active-duty Marines and veterans interact with those spaces. In addition to official memorials and monuments sanctioned by the military, there are more informal and intimate examples of commemoration.

These ongoing, "living" memorials can be especially meaningful for service members processing their experiences and remembering those they lost, and physically represent the emotional weight they carry every day.

A living memorial

Camp Pendleton, one of the U.S. Marines' busiest bases, sits between San Diego and Los Angeles on miles of undeveloped coastline.

Thirteen hundred feet above the base, more than 30 crosses stand on a hillside - a memorial site established in 2003. Before deployment to Iraq, a group of seven service members - two Marine officers, two enlisted Marines, two Navy corpsmen and one Navy chaplain - carried a cross made of an old telephone pole up to the site. It was an effort to remember a peer they lost and to prepare for the mission ahead of them. Three of the seven were later killed in action.

Today, the hilltop is still used for physical training and events before and after deployments. Meanwhile, its informal commemorations have expanded and changed, as many active-duty military and veterans develop a relationship with the space.

Destroyed in a fire in 2007, the original cross was replaced, and dozens of others added. Some are more intentionally constructed, engraved and carried up the steep hillside, while others might have been made from sticks on the way.

Contributing to the memorials has become an ongoing tradition. In August 2021, for example, after 13 service members were killed in a blast at Kabul airport - including nine Marines and one sailor based at Pendleton - new crosses appeared on the hillside. Others were erected at different Marine Corps bases, echoing the spontaneous way the first Camp Pendleton cross was installed.

This living memorial receives frequent attention, despite its isolated location and despite several official memorials throughout the base.

In an oral history interview, one of the original cross bearers from 2003, chaplain Scott Radetski, attributes the site's popularity to the "life" that exists on the hilltop. Because of its more intimate nature - secluded from the public and requiring an hourlong hike to visit - it has become especially meaningful for service members. The crosses are not a public memorial, he said, but "a warrior memorial."

More than crosses

On the journey to the Pendleton crosses, people carry mementos to leave at the top. At first, they were small rocks, but have evolved to include sandbags, combat knives, insignia, unopened beer and liquor bottles, and helmets, all piled at the base of the crosses.

At times, officials have moved to tidy it up, such as removing cans of alcohol. But some service members have objected, stressing that these items are deeply meaningful and carefully chosen. For them, these items they've carried to the top of the hill represent not only their comrades, but the emotional weight that veterans carry each day because of their experiences.

"Those mementos represented that suffering, that pain, that loss, that anguish, that angst, whatever it was" that service members needed to leave behind, Radetski said. The site is not always clean and neat, but he suggests it reflects the messiness of war and the traumatic experiences of the veterans who visit the site regularly.

In October 2021, before the battalion that sustained most of the losses at the Kabul airport returned to Camp Pendleton, the group Recycle for Veterans, which brings veterans together for cleanups on the West Coast, held an event to provide maintenance of the site. The group removed debris and empty bottles, but left mementos behind, leaving it ready for more commemorations in the future.

On 'common ground'

While many memorial landscapes can seem "fixed", representing a single moment or individual, the crosses at Camp Pendleton show that such spaces can actually change. The crosses reaffirm the idea that public memories are not static, and neither are spaces dedicated to them; new features are added as others are removed.

The crosses are not without controversy. A decade ago, after the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the memorial on Veterans Day, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers filed a complaint, arguing that their presence relegated "all non-Christians who have fought and died for our country [...] to second-class citizenship." Base officials reportedly conducted a review, and the memorial still stands.

For Marines who support the memorial, however, the site can serve multiple purposes: a destination during physical training, a way to prepare for a deployment, or a journey to come to terms with their experiences upon returning home.

Often, these activities are collective. Veterans organize semiannual hikes, meaning that the site does not become obsolete or forgotten. As the site of an ever-expanding memorial, the hillside is an example of how veterans continue to return to their own community, to a place that Chaplain Radetski called a "common ground," for remembrance and healing.

Katrina Finkelstein and Derek H. Alderman wrote this article for The Conversation.


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