UNA to Observe Remembrance Day National Roll Call Nov. 11

Oct. 24, 2011

FLORENCE, Ala. – Following the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 tragedy, the University of North Alabama has joined a nationwide grass-roots effort to honor American service men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past decade.

On Veterans Day, Nov. 11 (11-11-11), campus and community volunteers at more than 100 college and universities across the nation will read the names of more than 6,200 casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF), now called Operation New Dawn.

Each campus participating in the Remembrance Day National Roll Call will organize its own reading of names and will observe, at 11 a.m. PST (1 p.m. CST), a simultaneous nationwide minute of silence. Currently, more than 144 schools in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia have agreed to participate in the event.

The Remembrance Day National Roll Call is sponsored nationally by the Veterans Knowledge Community of NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. NASPA is a 12,000-member association for the advancement, health and sustainability of the student affairs professionals. The Veterans Knowledge Community (VKC) mission is to advocate for best practices to help student Veterans transition to college and succeed. As the National Roll Call sponsor, the goal of VKC is to have at least one institution in each of the 50 states participate in the event. Locally, the event is co-sponsored by the UNA Military and Veteran Alliance and the UNA Student Government Association.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Brett Morris, the National Roll Call coordinator, said, “We wanted to rally campus communities across the nation to send a powerful message to the troops currently serving that their peers have not forgotten their sacrifices, or those of the fallen.”

“When you hear each of those names read aloud it is very poignant because each signifies a person who gave the ultimate measure of sacrifice for our country” said Lt. Col. (Ret.) Wayne P. Bergeron, the faculty advisor for the UNA Military and Veteran Alliance and a member of the Criminal Justice Department at UNA. “This event is simply about remembering that sacrifice. Probably not a single Veteran on the UNA campus does not have a friend or comrade on that list. There is no effort to raise money or promote a particular organization – simply to remember and reflect.”

The reading of the names will take nearly eight hours to complete as readers announce the names in chronological order. The reading will begin at 6 a.m. in the Memorial Garden adjacent to the UNA Memorial Amphitheater on the UNA campus. The reading will pause for a Veteran’s Day Ceremony, to be held at 11 a.m. and then will continue until all of the names are complete.

The National Roll Call is grateful to iCasualties.org for the steadfast recording of the fallen over the past ten years, from which the names of the fallen have been derived.

For information about the UNA Roll Call events, contact Bergeron at wpbergeron@una.edu. For more information about the National Roll Call effort, contact Morris at remembrancerollcall@gmail.com, or visit va.eku.edu/rollcall to see a list of participating schools.