Lt. Col. Susan Hardwick was casually talking with her cadets last fall about Syracuse University holidays — there were days off for religious holidays but none in honor of veterans.

With veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq and enrolling in college, this is not a holiday to neglect, she said. So Hardwick, commander of SU’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, looked into establishing a campus event and addressed the issue in the spring with Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina.

SU will hold the inaugural Veteran’s Day ceremony, sponsored by University College and involving SU’s Army and Air Force ROTC, on Thursday at 11 a.m. in Hendricks Chapel. Country Music Award and Grammy nominee Michael Peterson will sing at the event. It will be followed by a reception at noon in the Panasci Lounge in Schine Student Center.

‘It’s great for the campus to be able to come out and recognize the sacrifices of current students that are veterans and past graduates that have served in the military,’ Hardwick said.

The ceremony will honor veterans for their dedication and sacrifice. Military hymns will begin the event, followed by an introduction and welcome by Capt. Ronnie Mildren, the executive officer of the SU Army ROTC department. Hendricks Dean Tiffany Steinwert will give the invocation, and then Peterson will sing his live rendition of the national anthem.

Lt. Col. Ray Bowen, chair for SU’s Air Force ROTC, and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Hardwick, chair for Army ROTC, will read proclamations. Bowen and Michael Rivezzo, president of the Student Veterans Club, will each talk about the history of Veteran’s Day and SU’s legacy of honoring veterans.

Steinwert will also give a benediction, followed by a processional and the laying of a wreath on the Quad to end the ceremony.

‘Hendricks Chapel has always been the place where people come to remember, honor, mourn and celebrate significant events in the life of the university and the wider world,’ Steinwert said.

The first Veteran’s Day event will also mark the end of a flag relay that started June 14. The relay sent an American flag to 13 bases worldwide, where SU alumni in the United States and Afghanistan hosted the flag and then sent it to its next location. The relay will end Thursday when the flag returns to SU and is flown at Hendricks.

Although SU, named a 2011 ‘Military Friendly School’ by GI Jobs magazine, has a long history of supporting veterans, this will be the first ceremony of its kind. Because of an increase in enrollment and a number of growing programs for veterans, including the Martin J. Whitman School of Management’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, Hardwick said now seemed like the appropriate time to launch the event.

‘We are seeing an increase in veterans enrolling in college, and they are becoming an important part of our campus and culture,’ said Eileen Jevis, the manager of public relations for University College.

‘It was time to recognize them for their service to our country and to show them that they are an integral part of our community,’ Jevis said.

Hardwick said students might be surprised at the number of student veterans on campus. She said student members of the Coast Guard, Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy are all represented on campus.

This semester alone there are 165 individuals at SU, including dependents of veterans, such as children and spouses, using benefits from the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, Jevis said.

‘I would venture that the student body doesn’t realize how many different military programs are associated with the university,’ Hardwick said.

Just as when the G.I. Bill of 1944 promised college education or vocational training to veterans returning from World War II, SU is again seeing an increase in veteran enrollment with an updated version of the G.I. Bill meant to help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. In 1947, enrollment in U.S. colleges was at 2.3 million, with half being veterans returning to school on the G.I. Bill, Jevis said.

‘In four years immediately following World War II, enrollment at SU quintupled. More than sixty years later, we are again expecting a resurgence of veteran students,’ said Jevis.

It is difficult to know how many students on campus are veterans because there is no way to distinguish them from another student, said Col. Bowen of SU’s Air Force ROTC.

‘You can’t tell. You can’t look at someone and say, ‘Hey, they were in the military,” Bowen said.

Bowen said there are students, faculty and administration involved in the military. But it is difficult to know how many there are or who they are, which might be why many students aren’t aware of the connections.

‘I think people would be amazed at the amount of people on campus who have a military background,’ Bowen said.

Nicholas Hanna, a student veteran in the Air Force ROTC program at SU, has been deployed twice. In 2007 Hanna served five months in Guam, and in 2008 he was deployed to Iraq for five months.

Hanna is a senior computer information sciences major at the State University of New York Institute of Technology. He is one of a few SU ROTC students who came to Syracuse from surrounding area colleges for SU’s military program. During his trips to SU, Hanna has met other student veterans, including another ROTC cadet who was in duty with the Air Force for a year.

Hanna said he encourages students to attend the Veteran’s Day ceremony, where many student veterans and alumni veterans will be honored.

‘It’s good for students to be aware of the contributions and sacrifices veterans make for their country,’ Hanna said. ‘Students should be aware of how many veterans there are in their community that they might not even know of.’

bquaglia@syr.edu

Published on November 9, 2010 at 12:00 pm