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LAKEPORT, Calif. – Despite the rain, hundreds of people turned out on Friday morning to mark Veterans Day and show their gratitude to the men and women who have donned the uniform in service to the nation.
The annual Lake County Veterans Day ceremony returned to Konocti Vista Casino in Lakeport, where community members packed the showroom.
Receiving special honors this year was Lake County Vet Connect, formed earlier this year to help veterans get a “hand up, not a hand out” with everything from medical care to housing assistance. The group received this year’s “Friend of the Veteran” award.
Griff Ratterree, past commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2015 in Lakeport and a member of the United Veterans Council’s Military Funeral Honors Team, was honored with the “Veteran of the Year Award.”
“First time in my life I’ve been speechless,” Ratterree said after being handed the award by United Veterans Council President Frank Parker.
The turnout appeared to be even larger than last year. Parker noted that he could remember the first ceremony held in front of the Veterans Service Office in downtown Lakeport many years ago, when only a handful of people showed up.
Young McKenna Rose Enger sang the national anthem to start off the event, and Supervisor Jim Comstock, a Vietnam Navy veteran, noted that it was for people like her that veterans serve.
“It’s about America – what we love and defend fiercely,” he said.
Comstock read a letter from Congressman Mike Thompson, another Vietnam veteran, who thanked the county’s veterans for their service both in wars and in peacetime.
The day’s featured speaker was Ginny Craven, founder of Operation Tango Mike, which sends care packages to soldiers overseas. Craven is a previous Friend of the Veteran Award winner.
The daughter of a World War II veteran who died when she was still in high school, Craven described growing up in Lake County and meeting veterans whose service she knew nothing about until years later.
She said those men she met didn’t speak about their service; neither did her father. “Many vets don’t.”
While he may not have spoken about it, her father’s service was evidenced in other ways, including how shrapnel oozed from his body until the day he died.
In describing veterans, she quoted G.K. Chesterton, who wrote, “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”
Craven received a standing ovation from the crowd.
In presenting the Friend of the Veteran Award to Vet Connect, Comstock said the group’s goal is to make sure veterans in need aren’t forgotten.
Parker, who helped form the group and accepted the award on its behalf, said Vet Connect will mark its one-year anniversary this coming Jan. 6. Ten weeks after it formed, it began serving veterans, he said.
“We are vets helping vets,” he explained. “We are a hand up, not a hand out.”
Parker, in turn, presented the award to Ratterree, saying, “This is one award that is long overdue.”
Ratterree said of his award, “I feel it’s an honor to be a vet in this great nation.”
The Military Funeral Honors Team, which has given honors at the funerals of more than 800 veterans, helped close the ceremony with a rifle volley, followed by the playing of “Taps.”
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