Weekend Event: Tribute experience honoring those who served

The State Fairgrounds is the location for a new tribute experience. It's designed to support and honor those who have served while ensuring their stories are never forgotten. Shane Wells is taking us inside United in Service. Good morning. Coming to you from the Tribute Garden where you'll see 5,000 tags here at this United in Service event. Doors open this morning at 9 a.m. and we have Sergeant Diane Kiefus with us of the Air Force. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the interview. And thank you for your service. It was an honor to serve. I know this is part of your story is that you came back home and weren't comfortable talking about your time in the service for a very long time. For a very long time because it was not a time that people were celebrating people that had served. You were either a baby killer or do you carry a weapon and so it wasn't a popular time and so you just learned that people weren't interested in your story so I didn't tell my story. So you'd almost pretend it didn't happen. It was like you forgot that it actually happened and it never ever came up in a conversation. So you just stuffed it and didn't talk about it. When did the tide start to turn? When did you start to speak about your service again? When I started speaking about it was after the Iraq and Afghanistan war when started noticing there was parades for people in the country was so patriotic and just appreciating people that had served. And so it just felt good that it naturally it's like started talking about it and I am I'm so glad that it happened that way, that we were able to share our stories for those of us that served during that time. And now getting to be involved in an event like this, which is all about keeping these stories going. I am beyond honored to be able to tell my story and to share my story. And just, it is so rewarding. And people are interested. People really care to hear your story and the impact that you've made in history. So, and especially for women, because there weren't a lot of women that did serve during the Vietnam era. and nurses that like the last person that may be a person who was dying that was injured gravely was a nurse was holding her hand or his hand. And so to get to share that other women felt the same way. And now we're talking about it is, it just feels good. Turning now to Stephen Whitehead. He is the CEO of Disabled American Veterans of Minnesota, part of putting on this event. Will you just give us the scope of this event, the who's it for and why are we doing this? Absolutely, Shane. So this whole event is for veterans, veterans' families, and the community. Because I think it's important that everybody gets a chance to see this. The veterans, obviously, it's about the resources, to come in and see the resources, get the help they need, hear other veterans' stories, families, to come in and learn and be proud of the family and all they've given back. But also the community to come in and understand that these are the individuals that we're recognizing that has allowed us to be who we are today and have what we have in our community. because if it wasn't for our veterans and the veterans families we would not be who we are today and I think that's really important for everybody to understand it's for everybody veterans veterans families and the community to come in and learn more about the you know just veterans in whole Stephen thank you the event today is primarily for veterans and veteran families but then open to the public also on Saturday and Sunday you can learn more at United In Service MN.org back to you