Broomfield Veterans Museum to Host Veterans Day Ceremony

By Kristen Beckman

The Broomfield Veterans Museum will host its annual Veterans Day Ceremony and Open House this month to honor and remember all veterans. The program begins at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, November 11, in front of the museum at 12 Garden Center off of Midway. The ceremony will include music, an invocation, a keynote speaker, presentation of Color Guard, a gun salute, and Taps. Following the ceremony, there will be an open house at the museum.

Organizations scheduled to participate in the ceremony include:

• Mile High Fife and Drum Corps

• Broomfield American Legion Post 58, an organization dedicated to providing service to veterans and their families

• The American Military Living History Association, which represents American military history from the Revolutionary War to present day with a goal of educating the public about how life would have been for soldiers and volunteers throughout U.S. history

• Rocky Mountain Brassworks, a Colorado-based brass band with traditional instrumentation of an authentic brass band, which notably does not include trumpets or French horns

• The Broomfield Civic Chorus, a nonprofit singing group that has been performing for nearly 35 years in the Broomfield community

The nation has observed Veterans Day since November 1919 when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day and called for Americans to reflect “with solemn pride on the heroism of those who died in the country’s service.”

Founded in 2002 by six late Broomfield-area World War II veterans, the museum honors local veterans of all U.S. conflicts and peacekeeping efforts, from the Civil War to the present, from all branches of service. The museum houses nine rooms of exhibits, a library with more than 2,500 history/military books and hundreds of archived videos of veteran interviews, and a multimedia room that seats over 40. The museum is free and open to the public and offers docent-guided or self-guided tours, and, twice a month, a presentation called Coffee and Conversation with stories from local veterans and historians.

This month’s scheduled speakers include Marv Truhe on November 12. Truhe served as a U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer and military judge during the Vietnam War. In October 1972, simmering racial tensions sparked several hours of violent confrontations aboard the attack carrier USS Kitty Hawk while it was engaged in air strike operations off the coast of North Vietnam. He defended six of the Kitty Hawk defendants at their special court-martial trials. Although numerous Black soldiers were assaulted by white sailors and marines, not a single white crew member was charged. The details of the story are included in Truhe’s forthcoming book, “Against All Tides – The Untold Story of the USS Kitty Hawk Race Riot.”

On November 26, Mike Fellows, who served with combat engineer units in Vietnam and Germany, is scheduled to lead a Coffee and Conversation talk titled “The Damned Engineers,” which is the story of the critical role that combat engineers played in frustrating the advance of German forces during the early days of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.