Veterans share their experiences
Buzz Buswell, director of Veterans Services for Knox County and Army veteran, facilitated the program, which featured accounts from Chris Sheffield, who served in the U.S. Air Force; Beverly Hammond, who served as a dietitian in the U.S. Army; Jason Simon, U.S. Navy; and Julio Arana, U.S. Army.
“We wanted to honor our veterans and just say ‘thank you,’ and learn some wonderful things,” Town Parks and Recreation director Ron Oestreich said.
“Thank you very much, all of you for your service,” Museum Committee chair Sue-Ann Hansler added. “Your contribution is appreciated and never will be forgotten by us.”
Following a rendition of Star Spangled Banner by Bob Prather with Military Voices of East Tennessee and an invocation by Dalton Claghorn, pastor of Greenhouse Church in Lenoir City, the panel fielded questions about their service.
“I wanted to speak today because I wanted to represent the women in the military, and I also wanted to represent the medical area,” said Hammond, who was in the Army Medical Specialist Corps. “We are the specialists; we are the dieticians, physical therapists, occupational therapists and now physician’s assistant, so that’s where I come in.
“(The medical corps members) are the ones who take care of people after they have been injured or we take care of retirees; we take care of families.”
She remembered when she was in junior high school, “one of the things I wanted to do was go to West Point Academy.
“Well, of course, at that time, (women) weren’t allowed at West Point,” she said. She was interested in dietetics and nutrition so she studied to become a dietician.
“I was on a bus in Chicago, and I saw a sign in the bus that said, ‘Join the Army, go into dietetics’ and they would pay me.
“So, I investigated that and I was on a student program for the last two years of college, and they paid me as a (private first class),” Hammond said. “There were a lot of us there, I know, they had the same (interest in medical field).”
“It’s important we have these kind of dialogues and remember the safeguards for our civil liberties,” said Arana, a Farragut High School Advanced Placement government teacher. “One of those safeguards is us (the military). Thank you for volunteering and putting your lives at risk and also your families who supported you during that time of your service.”
After serving 23 years, he retired a lieutenant colonel. Arana’s service was spent in infantry and financial management, where he spent much of his time. He had served in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Belgium and Panama.
“I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be in the Army. I was totally anti-establishment anti-government.”
He graduated from college with a degree in economics and tried his hand at investment banking, but it was a trip with a girlfriend, the daughter of an Army officer to see the 82nd Airborne parade that led him to join the Army.
Sheffield had no immediate family history of military history, but when he visited the Air Force Academy when he was a child, he decided he wanted to go to the Air Force and worked toward that goal. After graduation, he was accepted into the academy and had made a career out of that service.
Simon remembered the 1980s, being at a friend’s house, sitting on brown shag carpet in the basement watching “Top Gun” on VHS.
“We watched that tape until the magnetic strip wore out,” he recalled. “It was just fuzz and lines, and I told myself, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to fly airplanes. I want to ride motorcycles. I want to see pretty girls. It seemed like the thing to do.”
And when his parents took him to an air show, he got to see the Blue Angels fly, and “I was hooked,” Simon said.
