Special to Your TIMES

Cherokee Nation will honor all veterans with patriotic music and a special ceremony Thursday. The event, which is open to the public, will begin at 10 a.m. at the Cherokee Warriors Memorial located just east of the Cherokee Nation tribal complex, four miles south of Tahlequah on U.S. Highway 62.

The Cherokee Nation's Warriors Memorial was dedicated on Nov. 10, 2005. The unique memorial is in both Cherokee and English and displays all the military service seals. It reads "A grateful Cherokee Nation dedicates this memorial to all men and women both living and dead who have defended their families, their people, and their homeland." Of the engraved bricks surrounding the memorial it states "These names are carved in stone forever ... so that we and our children can learn and remember."

A granite bench at the site also recognizes Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Jack C. Montgomery, a Cherokee and Sequoyah County native, for action on Feb. 22, 1944, World War II.

Activities planned for the morning include a flag-raising ceremony to be conducted by the Cherokee Nation Color Guard and an appearance by 2006-7 Miss Cherokee Michelle Locust.

Several noted Cherokee veterans will speak, including a special reading by Cherokee Nation employee Debra American Horse-Wilson, who was recently appointed to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee on Minority Veterans. Guests will also be treated to patriotic performances by the Stilwell High School band and the multi-award winning Cherokee National Youth Choir.

"Veterans Day is like Thanksgiving for us," Deputy Principal Chief Joe Grayson Jr., who will be one of the day's speakers, said. "It's where we're thanking them for their sacrifices on the field and for their continued presence now. Probably every one of us has a veteran in our family...our fathers, grandfathers, our sons, brothers and more often nowadays-our sisters. Women have taken a stronger role and women are just as patriotic as men."

Grayson served three years in the U.S. Army, including a year in Vietnam.

He recalled a lonely homecoming with no one there to meet him because he was unable to let them know his tour of duty had ended.

He added that many veterans of the Vietnam era received less than wonderful homecomings and that it's important to remember them in Veterans Day activities, as well as the veterans of the Korean War.

"Korea was in many ways a forgotten war and many of its veterans have become forgotten veterans," Grayson said. "I don't want people to ever forget."

Veterans Day has its roots in Armistice Day, which commemorated the armistice, or truce, between the Allied Forces and Germany, effectively ending World War I in 1918. After World War II and the Korean War, there were many new veterans with no ties to the First World War, so in 1954 the name of the holiday was officially changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans.

Rogan Noble, tribal veterans representative for the Cherokee Nation said it's a day to remember and pay respects to all veterans, not just the troops who are overseas now but also the ones who have paved the way for the freedoms Americans now enjoy.

The Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War notes, "We have a saying that, for those who fought for it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know."

For more information about the activities or to order a brick honoring an active duty serviceman or veteran, contact the Cherokee Nation Office of Veterans Affairs at (918) 453-5004.