The honor of presenting colors at events normally falls on either an active duty military group, like the Color Guard at Minot Air Force Base, or retired military organizations such as the American Legion Post #26 color guard.
At an event on Sunday at Anne Nicole Nelson hall on the campus of Minot State University, 4 veterans accepted the call to present colors at The Brass Band of Minot Patriotic concert.
Leading the color guard was Dean Verstraete, a 14 year volunteer who to date has done a number of Color Guard events, along with taking part in 735 veteran’s funerals as an Honor Guard member. Dean spent 21 of his 26 years in the Air Force at Minot Air Force Base, joining the Air Force in April of 1967 and retiring in May of 1993. Other volunteers for this Sunday afternoon Color Guard were Millo Wallace, carrying the American Flag, Rob Schutt carrying the North Dakota flag, and John Kinkade, who with Dean carried rifles. Dean, Rob & John are Air Force vets, with Millo having served in the U.S. Army.
“To be honest, we have 10-11 volunteers, and of those volunteers there are 5 that are pretty much full time” says Verstraete, “the color guard can do 10-15 events per year, and the Honor Guard will serve at 70-75 veteran’s funerals per year. We never know from day to day or week to week how many we will do, but it keeps us busy.”
There are other active American Legion Color & Honor Guard units but Post #26 tries to serve about a 30 mile radius of Minot.
Volunteers to serve on the Honor & Color Guard units are sometimes hard to find, but the need is always there according to Verstraete.
“We give the flag the respect and honor that it deserves” says Verstraete “sometimes when we are short of people we are forced to do the color guard with only 2 people, without rifles. But we don’t like to do that because the rifles symbolize protecting our flag and our country.”
There are challenges for the Honor Guard and Color Guard units. “Some churches have taken the American flag out of their sanctuary, and the pastor will request that we don’t do any of our ceremony in the church, instead they want us to do everything in a narthex or even outside. We have to visit with some of them and remind them that without the veterans that we came here to honor, they probably wouldn’t be able to stand in their pulpit and practice the freedom of religion. Some don’t like it, but that’s the way it is” says Verstraete.
There is one other member of the team, the bugler who will sound TAPS. “We are so fortunate to have folks like Wayne Schempp, Pat Schwann and Craig Eraas to play TAPS.”
So how does a volunteer get started? “Well for me it was my First Sergeant that talked me into doing Honor Guard, and within 4 months, I was leading the team.”
Proud to be patriotic and wanting to continue to serve. For Dean, Millo, Rob & John the job is not done. They continue to serve whenever they are called.
