Last spring, I received an unexpected phone call from a counselor at Ponca Public Schools. She asked if I would be the keynote speaker for their Veterans Day program in the fall. I was taken aback because I’m not a veteran, and I told her as much. She said that didn’t matter because they wanted me to come talk because I’m an American Legion Rider and do things for veterans.
All right, I could accept that, but then I asked her why me? I initially thought it might have been because someone there knew me from a few years back when my son coached there for 4 years while he was in college. I attended a LOT of basketball games at Ponca, so I thought maybe someone remembered me. I really didn’t know why I was being asked to do this honor. She said it was because a library board member there in Ponca had heard me talk twice about my books and my life, including how I’m a Legion Rider, and this person had told the counselor about me and said I was “very interesting.”
Hmmm, okay. Thank you for the compliment, but interesting enough to be asked half a year in advance to speak at an important event? Not sure about that, but I did agree to do it.
So, that’s what I’m doing today. I’m going to share my speech here with you, so you can read it or listen to it. Next week, I will start sharing pieces of my newly published novel, so please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you aren’t already, so you can get those.
Here is my speech with some of the photos that will appear on a large screen (due to Substack email length restrictions, I can’t include them all here):
Hello.
To begin, I want to tell you that I am NOT a veteran. I am, however, an American Legion Rider, and as a rider, I do things to support and honor veterans. This cap is part of my Legion Rider uniform when I’m not on my bike - then, I wear a helmet. In life we all wear many different caps or hats – visible or not. Today, you are wearing your student caps, your teacher caps, your support staff caps, etc. Later, you might wear your athlete caps, your band or one-act caps, your friend caps, etc. Looking around, you can see some veteran caps here today. Prior to being able to don a veteran cap, those people used to wear other types of military hats. No matter what hat they wore, though, they all played an integral part in the military, just as you all play an integral part in your role here at school and in your lives, no matter what type of “cap” you wear. Caps help others know what our role is, so let me tell you a little about this cap and my role while I’m wearing it (my legion rider cap).
To become an American Legion Rider, you have to first fulfill these two requirements:
All members of The American Legion Riders shall be current members of The American Legion, American Legion Auxiliary or Sons of The American Legion
Each ALR member shall establish and maintain membership by owning, individually or through marriage, a motorcycle licensed and insured as required by state law
The bolded and underlined parts apply to me.
Because of my father’s service, I am eligible to be an auxiliary member, and because I own and ride a motorcycle, I can then also be a rider.
I will tell you more about my father in a bit.
The American Legion Riders have only been part of the Legion family since 1993. Since its inception in one chapter in a Legion in Michigan, the riders have grown to have over 2,000 chapters and over 110,000 members across the country. Originally, I belonged to the chapter out of Neligh, but I now belong to chapter 249 in Bloomfield, and we have over 40 members.
So, what do we do as Legion Riders?
One of the primary things is that we stand flag lines at military funerals and help preserve the sanctity of those funerals. I wrote a poem about standing flag lines at military funerals and it’s included in the back of my third book, a novel about a Vietnam Veteran called “Ticker Tape.” Since today isn’t Memorial Day, though, I won’t read the poem, but one line in it encapsulates why we stand those flag lines. It is this: “he stood for us, so we stand for him.”
Sadly, too often our veterans don’t get the respect they deserve until they are dead and people like us Legion Riders show up to show them that respect. While today is a federally celebrated day in honor of our veterans, in reality every single day is and should be Veterans Day. Without the men and women who have served in the different branches of the military, the United States would not be the country it is. We all have freedoms and rights that have been earned and preserved on the backs of our veterans, present and past. Those people stood for us, so we, in turn, need to stand for them.
As a Legion Rider, I also ride in escorts that take veterans to different events, I take part in charity rides to help veterans, I ride in parades and at other celebrations to help provide a memorable image for the Legion and the veterans it represents, and I ride in many other types of events where the purpose is to honor or support a veteran or veterans in general. Last month on a recent ride, I rode to Randolph and stood in a flag line with many other riders during the special dedication of the new veterans memorial by the baseball field.
During my time as an American Legion Rider, I’ve gotten to know many wonderful veterans, but there’s one veteran who is extra special to me. My father, Ronald Marshall, served in the United States Air Force for twenty years. He is now active in the American Legion and even served as the post commander years ago in Neligh.
That’s him on the far right in his Legion uniform. (And that’s him sitting right there today.)
Dad enlisted on February 24, 1966 during the Vietnam war. He went through basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
Then he went to technical school for ten weeks at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, to train to be a finance specialist. Many people, young and old, assume that if you go into the military, you will end up in combat situations. This isn’t true. The majority of people who go into the military serve in other capacities because there is far more to the military than combat. You need people to work in the offices, people to service the vehicles, people to treat the sick, people to cook, people to program computers, people to crack military codes, and even people to play in the band. There are many caps you can wear in the military and you can make the military your career for many years.
After finishing technical school, my dad came home to Clearwater, Nebraska, and got married to my mom. They then went to Michigan where my dad was first stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base near Detroit. He was there until March of 1968.
Then Dad was sent to Thailand where he served and helped with payroll from May 3, 1968, until April 29, 1969, during the Vietnam war. He was stationed at Korat Air Base just outside of Bangkok, Thailand. Even though Dad never saw combat, every day he would hear F4 Phantom planes take off for their missions into Vietnam.
While he was at Korat, he bought this hat, which it was customary to do, and then used it to make a countdown tally inside it – counting down the days until he’d be shipped back home and reunited with my mom and with me since I was born four months after he was sent overseas.
After his year in Thailand, Dad was sent to Denver for a year, and then he spent a little over four years at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha where my brother was born. We lived in Papillion during that time. In December of 1974, my first-grade year of school was interrupted when Dad got transferred to Norfolk to be the Air Force recruiter of Northeast Nebraska. Besides a nineteen month stint in Des Moines, Iowa, where he oversaw the processing center for enlisting people, Dad spent the bulk of the years between 1975 until his retirement in 1986 as an Air Force recruiter. In that capacity, he regularly visited 54 high schools and 3 colleges in 20 counties, and he recruited 450 people for the Air Force. One of those recruits was his little brother, Dwaine.
Dad spent 20 years in the Air Force, but then he spent another 30 years as the Antelope County Veteran Service Officer where he helped hundreds of veterans receive benefits owed to them. In fact, he was responsible for getting over 3 million dollars worth of benefits for veterans and their widows every single year. He loved that job, but he did finally retire from it a few years back.
These are some of the caps he enjoys wearing now – his cap that shows he was in the Air Force, one that shows he is retired, his official Legion cap, and another that shows he is a Legion member.
Years back, one of his favorite caps was a Ponca one.
You see, this isn’t my first time in this school. I spent four basketball seasons here because my son, Trevor Wright, was the assistant boys’ coach here while he was in college at Wayne State. In fact, he was coaching here when you guys went to state in 2017 and when you made it all the way to the finals against MY students from Neligh-Oakdale. While I cheered for both teams during that game, I knew that Ponca would win. We all returned to Pinnacle the following year, too, to watch you do it again.
Thus, I was quite honored to be asked to return to this school to speak on this special day because Ponca is special to me. Whatever cap you wear, wear it with pride and serve that role well. And someday, I know that a few of you young people sitting here now will join the military and become veterans yourself down the road. Until then, though, get to know the veterans in your families and in your community and let them know every day that you appreciate their service. And if the time comes that you are a member of the Legion, its Auxiliary, or the Sons of the Legion and you also have a motorcycle, I hope you’ll consider becoming an American Legion Rider, like us – look how much we love it –
and ride for the cause of supporting veterans. Feel free to come talk to us after we’re done here if you have any questions about the Legion Riders.
Thank you.
Tammy Marshall
Veterans Day