The Sedona Heritage Museum held its annual Veterans Day ceremony and lunch on Monday, Nov. 11, with about 200 people in attendance.

Speeches were given by Arizona Rep. Quang Nguyen [R-District 1], Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow and outgoing Coconino County Supervisor Adam Hess [D-District 3], with musical performances by Tom Jepperson and Suzie Schomaker. Shondra Jepperson served as master of ceremonies.

Al Coxe, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, and members of Sedona Area Veteran and Community Outreach presented the American flag before the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance, and Bradley Moors, a retired U.S. Army Band bugler master sergeant returned to play “Taps” for the crowd.

“Everybody is very upbeat, and it’s a good way to honor the veterans. Not a lot of places do this anymore,” said Moors, who was a U.S. Army bugler from 1975 to 1998. “I played at the White House, the Pentagon, at the Tomb of the Unknowns.”

“These freedoms are the core elements to democracy and individual liberty,” Jablow said to the audience after quoting from the Bill of Rights. “[These rights are] made secure, through the sacrifice and dedication of veterans like you here today and those who lost their lives. We wouldn’t have those freedoms if it wasn’t for all of your sacrifices, so thank you all for what you have sacrificed.”

“Veterans in this community need to come together and just have support,” said Hess, who spent 27 years as an Army officer. “I was thinking as everyone was talking about my old driver and my mechanic and the names that I would have loved to have been on that stage for another half hour, praising all the greatness that I’ve been around as a soldier, and it’s a big part of my life. So I’m not going to let it go away. It’s part of me, and it’s always going to be part of me.”

“The measurement of freedom is that you can criticize your government, forget everything else, because once you get that done, you can worship, you can keep guns, you can do anything, you can go shopping, travel from state-to-state,” said Nguyen, who was evacuated by the U.S. Air Force from Saigon, Vietnam, in 1975.

“To me, it is not a cliche to say ‘thank you for your service,’” Nguyen said “Because I, as a little kid, I actually watched … soldiers of all branches walking through the rice fields. I actually watched you guys do your stuff, I get to call you heroes.” 

Nguyen told a story about how, in 1968, he would climb to the top of a 25-foot-tall tree that his grandfather had planted to watch American helicopters fly overhead. He also remembered having his mother grab him by his shorts to get him down. “[She] was more dangerous than the communist Vietnamese at that point in time,” he said.

“A week before Saigon fell, my father took my brother and me to a gate at the Tan Son Nhut airport, pointed to an American C-130, and told us to get on,” Nguyen’s campaign website stated. “He handed us a small bag of clothing and some photos while he explained we may never see our family again. I was 12½ years old. We loaded the plane with hundreds of other people, and I found a place to sit on the cold steel floor, not knowing where I was going. We went first to Subic Bay [Philippines], then to Guam, then Travis [Air Force Base], Camp Pendleton, and finally to a refugee camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Four months later, by the grace of God, I was overjoyed to be reunited with my family in San Joaquin Valley, Calif.”

“I got asked to go to lunch in 2019 by Karen Fann and Rusty Bowers,” Nguyen said. Fann and Bowers were Arizona State District 1 legislators. “I sat down, and they said ‘You got to run for office … it’s only 100 days out of your year.’ And my reply was, OK, 100 days. I think I can still run my business and do this for 100 days. Well, the first year was 172 days. The second year was 169 days, third year was 204 days.”

The songs for each branch of the U.S. military were then played, followed by Schomaker’s performance. 

“I’d also like to remind you to visit and view the exhibit setup in the front lawn of the museum honoring Sedona ‘homeboy’ veterans from World War II and Korea,” Shondra Jepperson said. “The Oak Creek Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution have assembled a parade of American flags at the entrance to the SHM. Our ‘thank you’ to them.”