Make it a special Veterans Day this year

Friday is Veterans Day, and if history is any indication, there will be decent-but-not-overly-large crowd gathered at the Chickasaw County Veterans Memorial at 11 a.m. Friday for the annual observance of the holiday.Let’s buck history this year and turn out in full force for Friday’s ceremony, which will last no more than 30 minutes and is a great way for all of us to thank those who have served and continue to serve.All veterans make sacrifices for their fellow countrymen. Some, of course, make the ultimate sacrifice and give up their lives so that we may enjoy the freedoms we have. But even those who don’t endure long separations from their family and friends to serve this great nation.So thank a veteran today, and go to a Veterans Day program.•••••We’d also really like to emphasize that there is a unique opportunity to learn about one special veteran and his family available to all of us on Friday evening.At 6 p.m., the New Hampton Rotary Club and the American Legion Post No. 38 will present a program titled “Finding Loren,” which details the journey Loren Hintz’s family embarked on to find their father and grandfather, who died in Italy during the final days of World War II.It is a remarkable story, one that we detail in our annual Veterans Day Commemorative Edition that is inserted into today’s Tribune.Many of us knew Gert Hintz, the longtime secretary at New Hampton High School, and her two children — Gretchen and Martin — and even if you didn’t, this is a story that is worth spending a Friday evening learning about.The program will be held at the New Hampton Community Center and we hope to see you there.•••••From time to time on this page, we share notable quotes on various holidays, and for us, the following, we believe, perfectly sum up Veterans Day.“This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.”— Elmer Davis“Freedom is never free.”— Author Unknown“Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.”— Michel de Montaigne“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”— Cynthia Ozick“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”— Maya Angelou“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.  It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.”— G.K. Chesterton