News West 9: Group of veterans visits Focused Care Midland to honor veterans

By: Jonathan Polasek
November 12, 2021

A day in which veterans are honored for their service, one group of veterans wanted to do something a little different.

Veterans Day is a day to honor those who have served, but one group of veterans went out to honor other veterans to show them that they love and care for them.

For a lot of the veterans at Focused Care Midland, this Veterans Day was an exciting time. They got to meet with other veterans and share their own experiences.

“Some are very excited, of course I don’t know, they may just wanna talk to anybody but because we are part of their veteran family, they’re much more comfortable. It’s not like we don’t have to say ‘hello my name is, this my name is that.’ We can just sit down and say ‘hey where did you serve? Hey I was there,'” Darrell Thornton, an Air Force veteran who went to visit, said.

It’s something like that gives these veterans a sense of community with the veterans that came today.

“They could’ve served the same place, been stationed at the same areas so I think that’s common through a lot of veterans and active duty and retired that they come in contact with people that were either stationed at the same place they were or have something in common with them,” Executive Director of Operations at Focused Care Midland, Alex Neth said.

Not only that, but something like this can put veterans at ease.

“If you’re not a veteran, it’s kind of hard to understand the camaraderie that goes on and the brotherhood event of veterans, and it’s just extremely satisfying. It’s very cool that we can be a part of it and like walk in here tonight and talk to a gentleman who was in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970,” Thornton said.

Even though Veterans Day only comes once a year, it doesn’t mean that veterans like Thornton do things like this once a year.

“We just go out and try to show people that we are here and we are part of the community, and we’re here to help anyway that we can either emotionally or financially,” Thornton said.

 

Read the Full Article on News West 9 here.