About 80 ROTC cadets and midshipmen will assemble in dress uniforms at 11 a.m. Friday (Nov. 11) for the annual Veterans Day ceremony at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Veterans and town spokespeople believe that UNC’s is the only Veterans Day ceremony in Chapel Hill. The public is invited. Veterans will be asked to stand and be recognized as the conflict in which they served is named.
The free public ceremony will be outdoors at the Carolina Alumni Memorial in Memory of Those Lost in Military Service, located between Phillips (120 E. Cameron Ave.) and Memorial halls. In the event of rain, the program will be in Gerrard Hall, at 118 E. Cameron Ave.
A color guard representing all three UNC ROTC programs – Army, Air Force and Naval/Marine – will assemble at 10:40 a.m. before presenting the colors.
This year’s speaker will be Navy Capt. Douglas Wright, professor of naval science for the North Carolina Piedmont Consortium Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), which governs ROTC at UNC, Duke University and North Carolina State University.
Wright was executive officer of the USS Asheville and commanding officer of the USS Helena. He was the commodore of Submarine Squadron 15, the Navy’s only forward-deployed, fast-attack submarine squadron, in Guam from 2008 to 2010. He received a Legion of Merit award for that duty.
The Naval ROTC sponsors this year’s ceremony. Additional sponsors are the College of Arts and Sciences and its curriculum in peace, war and defense.
Limited parking is available in town pay lots off Rosemary Street.
Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, falls on the anniversary of the armistice signing by the Allies and the Germans in 1918 that ended World War I. For more information about the UNC ceremony, call the naval science department in the College of Arts and Sciences at (919) 962-3668.
