On Veterans’ Day, Senator Warner began the second leg of our week of traveling at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. The Senator attended a MissionServe.org service project that involved 100 military families, veterans, civilians, and students creating 400 care packages and writing letters together to support military families of deployed servicemembers. 

 

The Senator also received the Second Annual Mission Serve Award for Excellence in Military and Civilian Service for his dedication to service and our communities. Ross Cohen, an Afghanistan veteran and director of the Mission Serve initiative, presented the award.

“Veterans and their families are not charity cases - they want to give back and continue to serve when they come home,” Cohen said. “And no one understands that better than Senator Mark Warner.”

The Senator then travelled to Williamsburg, to celebrate the naming of the Lewis Puller Veteran's Benefits Clinic Naming Ceremony. The Clinic is one of only a handful in the country that focuses on joining in the fight to secure veterans their benefits. 

The Clinic was named after late Marine officer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lewis B. Puller Jr, whose wife, State Senator Toddy Puller, attended the naming ceremony as well. 

In a short speech during the ceremony, Senator Warner said:

“One of the things that's so great about Virginia is that we don’t just honor our veterans on Veterans’ Day, we honor them every single day. Working to help veterans get their benefits is just one example.” 

After the ceremony, the Senator made a quick stop at the NASA Langley Research Center to visit the Virginia-based engineering team that assisted with the extraction of the trapped Chilean miners on October 13.  The Senator presented the team with a flag flown over the Capitol Building and asked the engineers’ children if they thought what their parents had done was “cool.”

“You can turn on TV and not see much good news,” Senator Warner said, “But the whole world stopped to watch this. This is a real reminder of the American can-do spirit.” 

Finally, the Senator met with members of the NASA Aeronautics Support Team, elected officials and community leaders at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton.  The participants discussed opportunities to create public and private investment in moving the ball forward on aeronautics and green aviation.

More on Day Four of the trip to come soon.