VETS: Thanks for support

To Mrs. Charles Buck of Buck Knives, Mr. Mike Patrick of the Coeur d’Alene Press and Mr. Graham Crutchfield, regarding the March 22 Buck Knife presentation to members of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, held at the Coeur d’Alene Press by Graham Crutchfield:

I wish to thank each of you for your participation and support of veterans and veteran causes. We need all the support we can get from, at times a not-so-grateful nation. The pendulum does swing both ways, though, in that we who have served our country in the military need to recognize and thank the public for the support we do get, as well as the public needing to know and understand our contribution to making the United States of America the country that it is.

I want to thank you, Mrs. Buck, for your company’s participation in making and providing the beautiful knives. I don’t know whether to use it or just save it as a memento in my shadow box.

I want to thank you, Mike, for supporting Graham in all his veteran endeavors and for providing a nice place for him to make his presentations and for allowing the Idaho MOPH to make its Purple Heart City presentations to the mayors of Coeur d’Alene, Hayden, Kellogg and Wallace.

And finally, I want to thank you, Graham, for all your support of veterans like yourself and myself and the thousands of others like us in the Northwest and across this great country of ours. It takes a veteran or a member of a veteran’s family to truly understand veterans and their issues. So thanks for all you do. I will more than likely be approaching you in the near future on behalf of the Montana Department of the Military Order of Purple Heart to do something similar for Montana’s Purple Heart recipients.

Yours in patriotism,

PETE OAKLANDER

Past Commander, Chapter 509, Idaho MOPH

Manhattan, Mont.