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.
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.
“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.”
The 2024 honorees
As a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in exercise science, Raphael Corley found himself working as an assistant with the NFL's San Diego Chargers. Both his parents had passed away when he was younger, but he drew strength and inspiration from his godfather, who had served as a Navy Corpsman. He was his mentor, surrogate parent and role model. Corley was looking for direction that would provide him structure and discipline. His godfather believed that he could benefit from joining the military.
Richard “Gunner” Davidson was born in 1941, 9 months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was raised in Salt Lake City. His father was a Gunners Mate in the Navy and inspired Davidson to join the Navy in 1959. When he arrived at his first duty station after bootcamp, it was ironically at Pearl Harbor. Through extensive training, he acquired his diving expertise in Para-SCUBA, Mixed Gas, and Hard Hat Diving, as well as becoming a Master Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) Technician. During his service, he served five six-month Temporary Active Duty Tours (TAD) in Vietnam.
Michael Donnelly was born in Florida and joined the Army after speaking with a local high school recruiter. He served 13 years on active duty and 10 years in the National Guard in both Florida and Utah.
During Donnelly’s first deployment to Iraq, he served as a Team Leader in 1/9th Infantry Battalion. During a routine clearance mission, he took grenade shrapnel to the right shoulder which took him out of action for about two weeks. During his second deployment to Iraq as a Weapons Squad Leader with the heavy weapons company, he and his fellow Company were pinned down by a Machine Gun bunker in an insurgent occupied house. As the Weapons Squad Leader, he maneuvered his squad to assault and destroy the machine gun nest, freeing the rest of the Company from enemy fire.
William Essex Jr. was raised in San Diego, and in January 1966, he enlisted in the Army. Upon his completion of Boot Camp, he was assigned to military intelligence, where he made the discovery that it did not include any of the ‘Secret Agent’ stuff he had been promised. So he decided to make a change and volunteered for infantry Officer Candidate School in the fall of the same year.
Essex continued to engage in what the Army had to offer and in February 1967, he applied and was accepted to Jump School. After Jump School, he decided to go through Special Forces Training where he also completed a Vietnamese Language course. He had the mindset to be a strong soldier so he qualified in every rifle, submachine gun, and machine gun used by every nation in the World as well as studied land navigation, map reading, patrol tactics, guerrilla warfare and counterpart relations.
Daniel Maynard was born in 1945 and raised in Santa Monica, California. In 1963, he made the decision to join the Marine Corps because his father told him he would never make it as a Marine. This was the motivation he needed to help him through boot camp. After completing Basic Training and a small arms repair course, he was transferred to the Marine Barracks in New Port, Rhode Island, where he was assigned to the Security Detachment at the U.S. Naval War College.
When Dan Schilling found out the Army would pay him to jump out of airplanes, he was in. Along the way he discovered the military was a meritocracy—it was what you put into it and how well you performed. “I am an adrenaline-fueled person and I like things that are physically challenging with an element of risk and calculation required,” Schilling said.
George Summit, better known as ‘Don’ to friends and family, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1978, was commissioned in 1983, and retired at the age of 60 in 2019. Don is a leader who spent more than 40 years in an Army uniform, and a soldier who truly understands that no one soldier can accomplish a mission alone. He spent a long career leading and developing teams and watching with pride as those he trained and led succeeded time and time again.
As far back as Ron Webb Jr. can remember, he wanted to be in the Army just like his dad, and his dad’s dad, and like his family dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War. He joined the Utah National Guard’s 144th EVAC Hospital as the Vietnam War was winding down.
After five years in, Webb transferred to the 19th Special Forces because he liked how they trained, what they did, their camaraderie and their adventures. His commander said he would be perfect for the team. He told him, “I don't want to be perfect, but it sure looks like a lot of fun."
Paul Huber was born and raised in Arizona. He was member of ROTC at Arizona State University and received pilot training at Williams Air Force Base in Mesa. He was assigned as a weapons systems officer in the back of an F-4 Fighter Jet. In June 1967, he found himself in Cam Rahn Bay, South Vietnam with the 391st Tactical Fighter Squadron, leaving behind a wife and two small children. He immediately began flying missions to North Vietnam at night, very frightened, but grateful he saw the tracers from the anti-aircraft fire were way off target because it was at night and they were flying near 500 knots.
George Sumner was born and raised in Mendon Utah. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1966. He embraced this challenge and rapidly advanced through radio operator courses, jump school, and airborne training. Because of his high scores, he was recruited to rotary wing training, something that appealed to him. He graduated as a Warrant Officer Rotary Wing Aviation School in September of 1967. By November, he was on his way to Vietnam as a helicopter pilot with the 4th Infantry Division at Pleiku.
Near the end of the Vietnam War, as the U.S. military made policy changes allowing women to enlist and fill roles previously unavailable to them. These women were groundbreakers, pioneers, the vanguard for many women who were to follow. Thomasania “Tommie” Montgomery Leydsman is one of those trailblazers.
Leydsman’s father was in the U.S. Army who had a lifelong military career as a radar technician. Leydsman inherited her fighting spirit and a legacy of service from her father, which gave her the tenacity to create change.
In 1974, when the U.S. Coast Guard changed its policies and began accepting women to its formerly all-male force, Leydsman made history when she was commissioned as the first African-American woman to enroll in Officer Candidate School. However, health problems forced her to graduate with the second class of female officers. In 1975, she became one of two African-American women to graduate as commissioned officers