ATHENS, Alabama — It takes a special kind of person to have put your country first, uniform on, ready to serve. It's why people across the Tennessee Valley are saluting veterans this weekend.
A Veterans Day Program hosted by Athens State University was held Friday at the Alabama Veterans Museum and Archives honoring military Veterans of the United States Armed Forces. This year's program featured Colonel Eldridge Singleton who serves as Director for EUCOM/AFRICO Regional Operations at Redstone Arsenal. "Being here at a museum, talking about veterans day, about the service of soldiers and having the artifacts that you can actually touch and feel. I mean that's just amazing! Veterans day is for me, it's really about, you know, the end of world war one and the legacy of, you know, the legacy of service that our members put out there, regardless of which service they're in. And so, I mean, world war one was really a defining moment in our in our history as a as a not just as a nation, but as a global, you know, structure."
FOX54 took a tour inside the Alabama Veterans Museum and Archives. James Lee Watson was in the Reserves for three years and served active duty for three years. Watson now works at the Veterans Museum and shares one of his favorite archives, a quilt called Threads of Honor. "I'm still learning. I couldn't begin to have paid what I have learned in this establishment. Wish we could frame it, you know, and save it, you know. we're going to save it in here. but, you know, it's just it will just be we just want everybody to see what work they done. and it was time consuming. and of course, they come out with their fingers kind of crinkled up every evening."
Yvonne Dempsey is also a volunteer at the veterans museum. "It is to honor our veterans and our military."