By Matt Liberman, Syracuse, N.Y. (NCC News)- Several veterans sang along from the audience as the Onondaga Community College choir and wind ensemble played an hour-long concert to honor Veterans Day.
In what has become an annual event, OCC draws fans from across the state to come listen to the American-themed music session. Lee Wilhem, a United States naval officer, made the drive up from Norwich to see his grandson sing in the choir. His daughter is a professor at OCC, and he now travels to Syracuse every Veterans Day to attend the concert.
“I thoroughly enjoy the music,” Wilhelm said. “I do think it’s a great tribute.”
As Wilhelm ages and he looks at the young core of Americans, less and less of them, he said, are Veterans as now Americans enlist in the service, unlike in 1962 when he was drafted to the Navy and shipped out to the west Pacific. Within his first months abroad though, his ship was sent to the Caribbean to deter Russian ships from building warheads in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Seeing events such as the concert, he said, remind him that people do still care about veterans in the U.S. and the work that they have done and continue to do.
“There is an event honoring the Air Force in Binghamton tomorrow,” Wilhelm said. “And I certainly intend to be there.”
For OCC professors like David Rudari, who conducted the choir, this is an opportunity to give back, even if it’s just a small amount.
“They wrote a blank check for America,” Rudari said. “As someone that didn’t serve in the military, this is my way of at least trying to give back to them everything they gave for us.”
Additionally, following the concert, OCC had a voluntary lecture session on the life of American veterans post-World War I.
