Community Events
The Commonwealth’s Veterans Day Ceremony to be held at Virginia War Memorial on November 11th
The 64th annual Commonwealth’s Veterans Day Ceremony honoring Virginia’s men and women who served in the U.S. Armed Forces will be held at the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, 11 a.m. EST, Wednesday, November 11, 2020.
Due to current COVID-19 guidelines, attendance at the 2020 Commonwealth’s Veterans Day Ceremony is capped at 250 pre-registered guests.
The ceremony will be broadcast live on WTVR-TV CBS6.1 and CBS6.3 in Richmond. It will also be livestreamed on the Facebook page of the Virginia War Memorial, the Facebook pages of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services, WTVR CBS6, (Richmond) WTKR News Channel 3 (Norfolk) and other select social media channels.
Virginia War Memorial Director Dr. Clay Mountcastle will serve as Master of Ceremonies for the ceremony. Scheduled speakers will be senior Virginia leadership, Virginia Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs Carlos L. Hopkins and Virginia Department of Veterans Services (VDVS) Commissioner John Maxwell.
Patriotic music will be provided by the 380th Army Reserve Band and the bagpipes and drums of the Combined Bands of Clan MacLeod and Benedictine College Preparatory of St. Andrew’s Legion. The program will also include recognition of winners of the Virginia War Memorial’s 2020 Veterans Day Student Essay Contest.
“One in every 12 Virginians is a veteran,” noted Dr. Clay Mountcastle, Virginia War Memorial Director. “As our Shrines of Memory, exhibits, and documentary films here at the Memorial showcase, Virginians have proudly answered the call to duty to defend and protect our nation and our commonwealth in peacetime and in war for over 250 years. Veterans Day gives all of us the opportunity to honor and thank these men and women for their service and sacrifice.”
“We regret that we must cap the number of attendees at the ceremony this year because of COVID-19 guidelines, but we encourage everyone to participate by viewing the event as we livestream and broadcast across the Commonwealth on November 11 at 11 a.m.,” said VDVS Commissioner John Maxwell.
For more information about the 2020 Commonwealth’s Veteran Day Ceremony, please visit www.vawarmemorial.org or www.dvs.virginia.gov or call 804.786.2060.
About the Virginia Department of Veterans Services
The Virginia Department of Veterans Services (VDVS) is a state government agency with more than 40 locations across the Commonwealth of Virginia. VDVS traces its history to 1928 and the establishment of the Virginia War Service Bureau to assist Virginia’s World War I veterans. Today, VDVS assists veterans and their families in filing claims for federal veterans benefits and provides veterans and family members with linkages to services including behavioral healthcare, housing, employment, education and other programs. The agency operates two state veterans nursing homes, provides an honored final resting place for veterans and their families at three state veterans cemeteries, and operates the Virginia War Memorial. For more information, please visit www.dvs.virginia.gov.
About the Virginia War Memorial
The mission of the Virginia War Memorial is to Honor Veterans, Preserve History, Educate Youth and Inspire Patriotism in All. Dedicated in 1956, the Memorial includes the names of the nearly 12,000 Virginia heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice during World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and the Global War on Terrorism. The Virginia War Memorial is a division of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services and serves as an integral part of its mission in support of all Virginians who have served in our military.
The Virginia War Memorial is located at 621 South Belvidere Street, Richmond, Virginia 23220. The Memorial is open Monday through Saturdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays, 12 noon to 4 p.m. Due to current COVID-19 guidelines, visitation to the Memorial’s Galanti Education Center and Wright Pavilion are limited to 50 guests at one time. Social distancing and facemasks are required. For more information, please visit www.vawarmemorial.org.
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Into its 5th Month, The Chester Street Tavern Focuses on Memorial Day Weekend Veterans ‘Salute to Service’ Event
Having kept an eye on the restoration of the historic Mullen-Trout House at 12 Chester Street and its opening with the New Year as The Chester Street Tavern, we spoke with Tavern owner and retired US Army veteran Jim Justice about an upcoming event he alerted us to this coming Memorial Day weekend. That event is a Veterans Awareness “Salute to Service” slated for noon to 7 p.m. Saturday, May 25th, across Chester Street in the Gazebo-anchored Village Commons town park.
“On May 25th, we’ve put together a memorial remembrance that is sponsored by the Tavern. It’s going to include a real nice live music lineup (beginning in the gazebo area), and we’ll have a number of exhibitors focused on veteran and agricultural-related support issues. They’ll be there with educational materials which will give them a platform to get exposure,” Justice began, adding a nod to the involved sponsorship team.
“We’re blessed to be doing this in partnership with Able Forces Foundation, led by ‘Skip’ and Kathy Rogers, who have become dear friends, and The Farmer-Veteran Coalition of Virginia (FarmVetCo), a national organization that does support for veterans in the farming and agricultural business. FarmVetCo is bringing their multi-band road trip show ‘Breaking Ground’ to support the entertainment at the Gazebo,” Justice said, adding that additional details are available on the Tavern website — www.ChesterStreetTavern.com — There’s a special event page for “Salute to Service” that has all the details.
“One of the things that Kathy and ‘Skip’ have coordinated is for the participation of a special guest Sam Tate, a Grammy award winning singer-songwriter who has won the Country music Song of the Year. Sam is coming up from Nashville to be our VIP entertainer guest. He is a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient, and we are honored to have him as our guest helping to support our community and this memorial,” Justice said of his musically inclined fellow veteran.
Speaking of musically inclined guests, we noted that local, even neighborhood-generated, live music has become an integral part of the Chester Street Tavern’s business model, with Justice himself sitting in on harmonica on occasion. Would that continue with this event in addition to the imported entertainment, we asked.
“Yes, I think we have five or six bands that are going to play that day. Sam Tate, Nashville CMA Songwriter of the Year, Sunny Lane & The Dirty Hippies, FarmVetCo Breaking Ground will be joined by a number of local musicians that have played and supported the Tavern, helping us launch and build the live music program we have today,” Justice assured us of what will be a mix of familiar and not so familiar faces.
Among those familiar musical faces to Tavern patrons are John Landis, whose barbershop is about four doors down from the Tavern, the Vaughan brothers Dewey and James, whose family owns the adjacent building in which John’s Barbershop and the New Creations Hair Salon are housed. Others include Shae Parker, Hank Gorecki, Ralph Fortune, Lee Cameron, Bev Williams and The Sidemen, Passage Creek Rising, Shortness of Breath, among others including relative newcomers “Captain” Rich Coon and Michelle Beall, also known as The Hobo Mariners due to their time spent at sea in their sailboat sailing into coastal ports in search of local entertainment venues from Florida to Virginia.
“Richie and Michelle are the duo that make up the Hobo Mariners, and they’re the ones who introduced us to the opportunity to do this fundraiser. Michelle and Richie have been a driving force in getting this event organized and introduced to folks we want to support, the Farmer-Veteran Coalition in particular. The Hobo Mariners have done veteran-supporting fundraising through their singing-songwriting for many years,” Justice pointed out of the duo that has become a regular part of the Tavern entertainment rotation on Thursdays in recent weeks.
With the Gazebo Park area entertainment, vendors, and informational booths slated to run from noon to 7 p.m. the Saturday before Memorial Day, we asked Justice how that would impact the Chester Street Tavern’s hours of operation and entertainment. “The Tavern will be home base for the bands, and we are blessed to be right across the street from the Gazebo. We will have an area to support their logistics because there’s a lot involved with folks setting up and rotating to play. The setup for the day of the event is 8 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Saturday the 25th for our exhibitors and the bands – and we will have a couple of food vendors, a veteran-owned pizza company and a veteran-owned barbecue company.”
Justice noted the Chester Street Tavern’s regular open to public schedule is Thursday through Sunday, running from 3 p.m. to closing Thursday and Friday, and noon to closing Saturday and Sunday, with closing determined by when the crowd thins out.
“The Tavern will be open that day supporting everyone,” he said of the “Salute to Service” scenario. The plan is we will have an after-event party once we close down at the Gazebo,” as noted above at 7 p.m. “That week we will have our regular show on Thursday evening with the Hobo Mariners. Then on Friday we’ll open at 3 p.m. I expect with all the bands coming into town we will be doing some special stuff here at the Tavern,” Justice said of an improvised schedule of musical interactions.
Justice stressed the importance of live musical entertainment to his business model: “A lot of what I want to do here is support the live music scene” — which he has evolved to do with live music each day he is open on a weekly basis Thursday through Sunday. He traced the start of that commitment to live music to a private party hosted by the Tavern in its earliest days. “John (Landis) came down when we were having a little Friday night private party and said, ‘Hey, you mind if I set up and play for tips?’ The next thing I know the crowd is doing a sing-along. It reminded me of how important live music is to the spirit of the Tavern. I play a little harmonica, so I told John he can play as long as he includes a song I can blow harmonica to and “he better make me sound good,” Justice joked of the Tavern’s longest tenured musical relationship.
Speaking of long-tenured musical relationships, Justice acknowledged Dewey and James Vaughan and family, as noted above owners of the adjacent building to the south. “The Vaughans have become great friends of the Tavern. Dewey, James, sister Beth, and the rest of the Vaughan family have just really supported me in a lot of different ways. We are neighbors and good friends,” he said of the second of what he estimated as six to eight groupings of local musicians that have become part of the live music rotation at the Chester Street Tavern — “Just this whole, beautiful local community of musicians.”
But refocusing on what is on the horizon in his fifth month in business, that May 25th Veterans Awareness “Salute to Service”, Justice observed, “We’ll see how things flow and let people do what we always do in the Tavern, which is let folks come and spend time together. Our motto is: ‘We welcome friends old and new’ and it’s really played out that way, with new visitors socializing with a great group of locals.”
Justice also singled out Town of Front Royal Director of Community Development and Tourism Lizi Lewis for her role in bringing the Town on board with the May 25th “Salute to Service” event.
So, don’t forget to mark your calendar this month, not only for Monday, May 27, traditional Memorial Day events here, but Saturday, May 25, for the Salute to Service beginning with a noon “soft opening” in the Town of Front Royal Village Commons Park, and continuing across Chester Street at the Chester Street Tavern into the later evening hours. And if you’re mobile you can also swing by the Humane Society of Warren County Julia Wagner Animal Shelter for the also noon-convened, May 25th Salute to the Dogs of War, which ‘Skip’ Rogers will help kick off before returning to Chester Street for the 1 p.m. official Opening Ceremony of Salute to Service.
Community Events
Reaching Out Now Kicks Off Safe At Home: Join Us in Raising Awareness for Mental Health
The week has finally arrived, and Reaching Out Now is thrilled to launch the Safe At Home event! We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Dr. Chris Ballenger, Warren County Schools, and the Warren County Athletics Department (Mr. Cupp, Mr. Hall, and the varsity baseball and softball coaches) for joining us to promote mental health awareness and its impact on our community. We warmly invite you to be part of this important event.
Nationwide, individuals and organizations are raising awareness of the challenges faced by those living with mental health conditions. Learn more about these efforts at the National Council’s Mental Health Awareness Month page: National Council – Mental Health Awareness Month.
We’re advocating for expanded access to mental health and substance use care while highlighting the value of mental well-being. Here’s how you can get involved:
JOIN US:
- Bring your families
- Sign up to play in one of our alumni games
- Volunteer or share information on how to contribute
Helpful Links:
Event Tickets:
Volunteer Opportunities:
Alumni Games:
The weather looks perfect for baseball on the 11th, so bring your friends and family. Let’s raise our voices, support mental health awareness, and make a positive impact together.
See you at Safe At Home!