Thankful for gesture

To the editor:
On Monday, November 12, the Ponderosa restaurant in Portland offered a free meal to any veteran. The offer was good for either lunch or dinner, so in case, as you drove past the Portland Ponderosa on Monday, you wondered why the parking lot was so full, now you know. To get an idea as to what this entailed, I spoke with the manager of the Portland Ponderosa on Tuesday.
The manager is Mr. Dave Hull, and he was gracious enough to give me a few details. The Ponderosa restaurant chain has been having Veterans Day meals for several years now, he said. The Portland location began participating three years ago.
Last year they had 450 veterans sign up for a meal. This year, he said the numbers were up just a tad to 462.
Dave said that the Veterans Day event is one of his favorite days of the entire year at the restaurant. He said that the day is, “a lot of hard work, but worth every bit of it.” He remarked to me that they were very busy all throughout the entire lunch and dinner hours, and had a steady flow of veterans all day long.
Being a U.S. Navy veteran myself, another Navy vet and I went toward the end of the day. Dave had posted the sign-up sheets on the bulletin board for all to see.
The sheets listed the name, branch of service, unit and years served. At the time we were leaving, we took a moment to peruse the lists. At that time, there had been 455 who had been through, and of that 455 — a mere 25 were World War II-era veterans.
As one can see from the sheer numbers, we are rapidly losing our WWII, “The Greatest Generation” of vets, to the passage of time.
Dave, on behalf of his staff, said it was an honor to serve the veterans the free meal, and judging from the participation by the community, it is apparent that it will continue on into the forseeable future.
I was honored to be one of the 462, and I sincerely thank Dave and his staff at Ponderosa for an enjoyable evening meal on Veteran’s Day 2012.
Sincerely,
James D. Fulks III
Dunkirk, Indiana

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