The James Logan Courier

By Erika Bolstad
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON — After the speeches ended, after the bagpiper played "Amazing Grace," Bob Hamilton went searching for one of the 58,272 names on the polished black granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Hardly a day goes by that he doesn't think about Ray George, a fellow helicopter pilot who was killed in Vietnam when he subbed for Hamilton one day four decades ago.
But Veterans Day, a friend had reminded him, is about thanking those standing in front of the wall, tracing their fingers over the names of the brothers they lost.

So Hamilton, 62, and his fellow veteran Bob Poe, 67, rode their motorcycles from Louisville, Ky., into the nation's capital with their flags flying for the ceremony. They were celebrating not only their service as veterans, but what journalist and war correspondent Joe Galloway on Friday called an "obligation to live each day to its fullest potential ... for our having lived, and their having died."
"Veterans Day is your day," Galloway told hundreds of veterans gathered at the memorial on a chilly but bright, blue-skied day.

By Michael Bowman, VOA NEWS

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation to combat joblessness among military veterans and eliminate a barrier to government contracting of private firms. The measures are the first elements of President Barack Obama’s jobs plan to receive significant bipartisan support in the politically-divided legislature.

On the eve of the U.S. Veterans Day holiday, lawmakers voted 94 to 1 to promote civilian employment of those who wore a uniform in defense of the nation.

“The unemployment rate among all veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is now 30 percent higher than the national unemployment rate," said Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. "That means nearly a quarter-million veterans are unemployed. We must do more to appreciate, to support the service of our returning heroes and to help them recover from their service abroad by returning to meaningful employment in the civilian sector.”

From Wikipedia:
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer of the 20th century. He wrote such works as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Breakfast of Champions (1973), blending satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana to third-generation German-American parents, Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. and Edith Lieber. Both his father and his grandfather Bernard Vonnegut attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and were architects in the Indianapolis firm of Vonnegut & Bohn. His great-grandfather Clemens Vonnegut, Sr. was the founder of the Vonnegut Hardware Company, an Indianapolis institution. Vonnegut graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in May 1940 and matriculated to Cornell University that fall. Though majoring in chemistry, he was Assistant Managing Editor and Associate Editor of The Cornell Daily Sun. He was a member of the Delta Upsilon Fraternity, as was his father. While at Cornell, Vonnegut enlisted in the U.S. Army. The Army transferred him to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering. On Mothers' Day in 1944, when Vonnegut was 21, his mother committed suicide with sleeping pills.

Visit Vonnegut.com