By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
Before James Wood joined the Navy 50 years ago, he helped build the Hefner VA Medical Center in Salisbury.
And after four years of traveling the world as a Navy shipman, the local man returned home to work as a food-service employee at the hospital.
Wood, 74, stood at the Salisbury Square Tuesday afternoon for the Veterans Day parade. While he surely felt a sense of pride and honor and camaraderie, Wood also felt frustrated.
The veterans hospital he helped build might reduce its services ó an issue that has drawn outcries from veterans and elected officials.
“Don’t close nothing down,” Wood said of the hospital’s recent announcement that it plans to eliminate its inpatient and surgical services. “The (veterans) deserve it. … Open up some more, if anything.”
Wood wasn’t the only one thinking about proposed changes at the hospital. A man riding on a parade float representing the Blinded Veterans Association carried a sign that read “return inpatient care.”
But for many, frustrations about the hospital seemed tucked away for this year’s Veterans Day, a holiday that was first celebrated in 1919 ó one year after the treaty that ended World War I.
Basilio Bute of Spencer proudly stood in the Salisbury Square Tuesday afternoon dressed in his Marine uniform.
Before the parade started, Bute, 54, let his mind wander back a few decades.
“When we came back from Vietnam, there were no parades and no welcome back,” he said.
Bute was born in Panama and moved to the United States to join the Marine Corps. He spent 18 months of his 22-year military career in Vietnam, he said.
A less-than-warm homecoming from Vietnam didn’t deter Bute from continuing to serve his new country. He said he served in Desert Storm and Desert Shield in the early 1990s, and he also served in Haiti and Panama.
He retired from the military in 1995, and he moved to Spencer five years ago.
Veterans Day is a reminder to Americans to honor those who have served, Bute said.
On Tuesday, the country honored veterans old and young, from the retired veterans like Wood and Bute to the men and women fighting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
Cale Shoup, 22, went to the Salisbury parade dressed in his Army uniform. Shoup, whose family lives in Granite Quarry, is on an 18-day leave from Iraq.
He said he enlisted last year to get help paying for college. He began serving in Iraq in June.
“I think it’s getting better over there,” Shoup said of the war.
But his mother, Victoria Nickloy, said she dreads Nov. 17, when Shoup will return to the Middle East.
“I don’t want him to go back,” Nickloy said. “We’ll be crying.”
The hardest time for her to deal with, Nickloy said, was when she didn’t hear from her son for a month and a half. He didn’t have access to a computer or a phone.
But Nickloy said she understands. Her father was in the Army.
“So I kind of come from that background,” she said.
Orgea Howell, a Salisbury resident, might find out soon what it’s like to have a child in the military. She came to the parade to watch her son march with North Rowan High School’s Junior ROTC.
He wants to join the Army or Air Force, Howell said. She supports him.
“I told him if he (does) go in, he can go to college while he’s in there,” she said.
Howell said she thinks the military can help young people become more responsible adults.
Before the parade Tuesday, the Rowan County Veterans Council gave awards at the Hefner VA.
Narvie Bonds, of American Legion Post 327 in Faith, was named Veteran of the Year.
Bud Abernathy, of American Legion Post 185 in China Grove, was named Chaplain of the Year.
And J.C. Miller, of American Legion Post 342 in Salisbury, was named Service Officer of the Year.