Vice President’s Report

BY FRED ELLIOTT

I started March with a meeting of my home county’s Veterans Advisory Committee to the County Executive. The following week I went to the Pennsylvania State Council meeting where I was an active participant.

On March 14 I attended the monthly membership meeting of my home chapter, Rochester, New York, Chapter 20. Two days later we were on our way to West Virginia for an Agent Orange Town Hall meeting and a state council meeting. The Town Hall meeting had about two hundred people in attendance and was very well done. A lot of information was provided and many stories of families affected by a veteran’s exposure to Agent Orange were shared.

Along with several other Chapter 20 members, I had the privilege of speaking about the Vietnam War to an 11th grade class at a local high school on March 20. A week later Marie and I attended a funeral service for Walt Henriksen, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and member of Chapter 85 in central New York.

March 29 was Vietnam Veterans Day in Monroe County, and I attended the local ceremony where a proclamation was read by the county executive and respects were paid to Vietnam veterans. Jeremy Bagley, a veteran of the Iraq War, gave an impassioned talk about his generation’s indebtedness to Vietnam veterans.

The first weekend of April I attended the Texas State Council meeting. As always, I was warmly welcomed and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. The meeting was well attended by both VVA and AVVA members.

Three days after my return home, I was on my way to Annapolis, Maryland, for the Region 3 Conference. This was another well-attended event with several excellent seminars.

I’m looking forward to the National Convention in August. Until then I can be reached at felliott@vva.org or 585-317-7619.