At Veterans Day ceremonies at Calverton National Cemetery, calls for action to help veterans in need

The busiest national cemetery in the U.S. marked Veterans Day with ceremonies featuring military music, speeches, a poem honoring Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient Garfield Langhorn, the presentation of colors by veterans, scout and community groups and a flyover by vintage military aircraft.

The ceremonies, sponsored by the Support Committee at Calverton National Cemetery, were hosted by master of ceremonies Dennis Krulder, president of the support committee and a Vietnam veteran.

Throughout the ceremonies, special notice was taken of the 50th anniversary of the start of the Vietnam War, which will be officially commemorated in 2015.

Krulder spoke of the reception he got when he returned from Vietnam.

“I remember being spat upon as I walked through LAX [airport]. I remember being called a baby killer as I walked through JFK,” Krulder recalled. “I’ve gotten past that,” he said.

“But one thing that still makes my blood boil is when people refer to us as ‘Vietnam-era veterans.’ We are the only veterans to have that stigma attached to us. We are Vietnam veterans,” Krulder said. He turned to outgoing Congressman Tim Bishop, who spoke at the ceremonies for the last time as a congressman. “Please, Congressman Bishop, before you leave office, get that stigma removed.”

His comments drew loud applause from the crowd gathered in the assembly area, which included a large contingent of Vietnam veterans.

Keynote speaker — and fellow Vietnam veteran — law professor Ken Rosenblum drew upon the great orators in western history for his reflection on the inadequacy of speeches to properly commemorate acts of heroism on a battlefield. Quoting Cicero and then Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Rosenblum said the best way to honor those brave warriors is not with words but with deeds.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,” Rosenblum read from Lincoln’s legendary speech on the Gettysburg battlefield. “That was 151 years ago almost to the day,” he said.

“Fifty-one years ago, again almost to the day was John F. Kennedy’s last Veterans Day. He was, of course, a World War Two Navy vet. On that day he participated in a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery…It was less than two weeks before his tragic appointment with destiny and a sniper’s bullets in Dallas. He laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns,” Rosenblum said.

“The setting of the tomb must have impressed him. According to historian Thurston Clark, wrote JFK’s last Hundred Days. While he was there observing the ceremony, he turned to Rep Hale Boggs and said to him, ‘This is one of the really beautiful places on earth. I could stay here forever.’ That was 12 days before his appointment with destiny in Dallas,” Rosenblum said. “I get chills every time I read this,” he said.

“Just a few days after that ceremony at Arlington, JFK wrote his Thanksgiving Day proclamation, one which he never go to deliver… [He] wrote: ‘As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.’

“So my message, taken from the great orators over the centuries, is that it is wonderful and touching and important that you are all here and that we speak these words and observe these ceremonies in honor of the sacrifices of our friends, our brothers, fathers, sisters, buddies and comrades at arms. But the very real way to honor them is to live our commitment — not just today, but in our daily lives: to care for the homeless vets, the justice-involved vets, the ill, the injured, the growing ranks of senior vets, who are more prone to homelessness, more prone to suicide than other vets, and their survivors and their families.

“Lincoln, as usual, said it best: ‘Let us strive on to finish the work, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan. That is the mission. Keep it in your hearts and live it every day.’”