This week's newspaper includes as a second section a special 12-page pull-out section honoring local veterans.
It's a feature that The Valley Reporter has run for almost a decade and it grows every year. Initially the idea was run feature pictures of local vets and the information about their service.
That led to two pages of vets which over the years has turned into eight pages of pictures of local veterans plus four more pages of features and letters from and about local vets.
Reading through this year's special section, it is really clear how the people from our community who serve impact all of us in many ways. Read and consider the words of Francis Viens who talks about hearing his school cafeteria manager learn that her son had been killed in Vietnam.
Read and feel your heart break a little over the letters sent home from Vietnam by David Livingston. Read Sue Bauchner's poem about people in Waterbury gathering around their war memorial to honor the fallen.
Read about 19-year-old Jeff Siner, a Fayston man who was injured in Beirut in 1983 and then read some of the hundreds of letters that were sent to him by friends and family from The Valley and beyond – and that he saved in boxes.
War touches everyone and in a small community in a small state it really does touch everyone. The letters sent to Siner eloquently demonstrate, especially the one from Al Tompkins who upon hearing that Siner was injured, writes that the complex situation in the Middle East seems very close to Waitsfield.
And then look through all those pages and pages of faces of people who put on the uniform and served. You won't know all of them, but you'll know a lot and you'll recognize the names.
After that – here is the clichéd part – find a vet and thank them for their service.
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