The tradition of honoring Utah’s veterans and one student veteran of the year, continued Friday at the University of Utah’s 27th annual Veterans Day Commemoration Ceremony in the A. Ray Olpin Union Building ballroom, where 11 service members were feted for their bravery and service in conflicts going back to Vietnam.
The ceremony began with a bagpipe procession from the Marriott Library to the Union, followed by a cannon blast at 11 a.m., marking the 106th anniversary of the Armistice signing that brought an end to World War I, a day that has since been memorialized as Veterans Day honoring all who served in U.S. armed forces.
U Vice President for Student Affairs Lori McDonald, standing, and Jennie Taylor greet Tommie Leydsman, the first African-American woman to serve as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.
In her remarks, U Vice President for Student Affairs Lori McDonald noted how veterans contribute to the campus community when they come as students.
“Although their uniforms are not always recognizable—at least to me, I'm constantly learning—these students bring diverse experiences into our classrooms. Their leadership, their scholarship, their community service, and their military service enrich everything we do at the university, from the classrooms to the research labs,” McDonald said. “From where I stand, the future looks very bright as a daughter and a granddaughter of army veterans, I'm so honored to be here.”
The 11 honorees proudly served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and National Guard. Nominations came from across the state, and the 11 veterans honored received a commemorative medallion on stage at the ceremony, organized by the U’s Veterans Support Center.
“This is the epitome of what a university can do with our community of students, faculty, staff, families, community members,” McDonald said. “It is acknowledging history but also looking to the future,”
One of the honorees was Mendon, Utah, native George Sumner who served in the Army in Vietnam and later worked as a firefighter and EMT.
When he returned to the United States from his second tour in Vietnam, according to his bio, Sumner was told to get rid of his uniform at the debarking station to avoid being harassed by the anti-war protesters gathered outside. He changed his clothes, but refused to throw his shirt onto the pile of discarded uniforms. He kept it and later wore it everywhere, knowing he had served his country honorably.
“There is a balance between the brutal reality of war and the honor of being a soldier,” he said in the bio. “It is good for all of us to be reminded of the nobility of being a soldier.”
Honored as Student Veteran of the Year was Brandon Mowes, who served nine years in the Navy and is now a doctoral candidate in nuclear engineering.
The keynote address was provided by Jennie Taylor, the widow of North Ogden Mayor Brent Taylor, a Utah Army National Guard major who died in Afghanistan in 2018 while on this fourth combat deployment. Taylor reflected on key phrases in the nation’s founding documents.
Jennie Taylor of the Major Brent Taylor Foundation, named for her late husband who died in combat, delivers the keynote at the 2024 Veterans Commemoration at the Union.
“The Declaration of Independence is well known for ‘life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,’ and the Constitution that came a decade later is well known for the first three words, ‘We The People.’ I think those words are divine in their selection,” said Taylor said. “They've come to mean even more than they meant then. ‘We the people,’ not any one class or race of people, not anyone's sociodemographic of people, but We The People. We believe in a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And those three little words really set the stage for what Veterans Day is all about.”
But there are other phrases from the Declaration that get glossed over, yet are equally important, she said, such as its final line, “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” The signers of the Declaration knew they were committing an act of treason against the British crown and vowed to stand by one another in the face of a long war that was already underway.
These words, 248 years later, still matter, said Taylor, who established the Major Brent Taylor Foundation to honor her husband’s memory and sacrifice.
“The pledge that we take when we pledge allegiance to the flag is a pledge we take to each other,” she said. “That oath of office you have taken or that oath of enlistment in the military is a pledge you take and a promise you make to each other, to your battle buddy, to your chain of command, to your wife and kids back home and to the people on a foreign land who look nothing like you and who you might not ever see again after the day, that you willingly offer to give your life for their freedom.”
Taylor, who was left to raise seven young kids without their father after she got a knock on the door in six years ago, said she is often asked, ‘Was it worth it?”
“The price of freedom is immeasurably high, particularly for those of us who have lost our beloved one in uniform. But the price of freedom is intended to be paid by We The People and how do we pay it? By keeping our pledge to each other,” Taylor said. “And it is now on us, the 99% of us who do not currently wear a uniform. It is up to the 99% of us to show our gratitude to the less than 1% of them by living lives that make their service and their sacrifice worth it.”