COTTAGE HILLS - Led by Cottage VFW Post Junior Vice Commander Tim Brown, the organization will host a Veterans Festival and the Global War on Terrorism Wall will be present for the event.
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Brown, who served in Iraq in the Army, has strong convictions about the wall and its meaning to veterans. He was a key person behind the event last year at St. Louis Regional Airport. The Cottage Hills VFW is the sponsor in 2023.
Brown said the wall experience be “emotional, humbling and healing" for those who attend.
He said the names of those lost in the Global War on Terrorism are on the wall, along with firefighters and police who died at the World Trade Center in New York City on the fateful Sept. 11, 2001, day. The U.S. recently marked the 22nd anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. A total of 2,996 died in the attacks, including 19 hijackers who committed murder-suicide. Thousands were injured and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center took the brunt of the attacks. The remaining 125 were killed in the Pentagon and 265 died in an airplane crash in Shanksville, Penn.
Brown provided the schedule for Friday, Sept. 22, as follows:
“The wall will come in by escort to Gordon Moore and we will have a short ceremony and invocation,” he said. “The transport of the wall will then take off and go the nearly two miles to the Cottage Hills VFW on Illinois Route 140. The VFW is located at 121 Williams Street in Cottage Hills."
Brown expects a large contingency of vehicles to escort the wall to the VFW. He also anticipates there could be many who line the route with flags to show their support that morning.
Brown said individuals who are able to line the route to the VFW can do it with proper safety principles in mind.
There will be several vendors and individuals from various veterans organizations available at the VFW for the festival. Guilty Pleasures plays Friday night and Still Smoking on Saturday night until 10 p.m.
The War on Terror veteran encouraged residents to attend the initial greeting of the wall and the trip to the VFW.
“It should be a very special time once again,” he said for veterans and the community alike.
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