United Methodist Men - 2005 Breakfast for Community Veterans

Allen / Plano Area Veterans Celebration

We started the morning with breakfast in
Palmer Hall. Many members of the Plano
and Allen Veterans of Foreign War (VFW)
were present.

Pictured is Charlotte O'Hara Foster,
Regimental Sergeant Major in
the Women's Army Corp in WWII.
She was the oldest veteran to attendance.

The Service was well attended.

Some of the Veterans who attended the service.

Chuck Daniels, UMM President, and Todd Moore,
Veterans Event Coordinator.

On February 19, 2005, we honored our past and present military personnel and their families. The featured speaker was U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson. He served with the U.S. Air Force for 29-years. During the Vietnam War, he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi for nearly seven years. He endured about half of that time in solitary confinement.

Donations were accepted to purchase phone cards for active duty military in Iraq. The cards will be distributed in Iraq by Military Chaplains. The cards cost $4.95 for 120 minutes. Military personnel may use domestic phone cards through special lines set up for the troops. Chaplain John Morris, a major in the Army National Guard, says that the phone cards light up "some awfully dark valleys."

The following is an excerpt from the closing remarks made by Rev. Kathleen Baskin-Ball, Senior Pastor:

It is the Apostle Paul who says that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope -- hope in the Lord. And so as I listen to these stories of suffering, in particular, I know that in the midst of it all is the hope that God gives us that one day we're going to know peace. It was Ms. Charlotte (the oldest veteran present at the event) who said to me this morning, "just pray, Kathleen, that some day we'll stop killing each other." I believe that that is God's will, and that some day the killing will stop -- and so as all of us work for peace in military service, and in our church life, and in our faithful lives, may we hold out on the knowledge that one day peace will reign.

It is the prayer of Suncreek UMC that we will learn to live together in peace and that unity will bless our global life in shared love.

The following is an excerpt from a 2/18/05 article in the Allen-American newspaper by Nicole Bywater:

The idea for an event came about six months ago, after several members of the men's group at Suncreek Methodist Church decided that enough was not being done to honor veterans.

"There wasn't a veteran in the group, but these guys all really thought something should be done," said Chuck Daniels, President of the men's group. "There really aren't military bases in the area, so veterans aren't always at the forefront of people's minds. We wanted to move it up in people's conscientiousness."