History and Meaning Of Veterans Day

By Kiersten Gunsberg

Edging in on the eastern border of Kansas, Emporia is a hub for all things midwest - there’s a zoo that houses raccoons and prairie dogs, cinnamon wafts over the weekend farmers market and a hornet named Corky stands as the mascot of the college town’s own Emporia State University.

Emporia is also home to Alvin J. King, the mid-century shoe salesman who sparked Veterans Day's founding. But first, to understand the meaningfulness of this national day of remembrance, go back to a cold-to-the-bone November 11th, 1918. On this morning, the combat of World War I ceased with a peace treaty signed by the Allies and Germany in a damp, riverside city in the north of France.

A year later, President Woodrow Wilson’s administration named November 11th Armistice Day, and countries remembered together across the globe. With parades and an overall buzzing of victory rising through the loss, citizens of the world hoped it would be a day to commemorate the finale of what was to be “the war to end all wars” and the beginning of an international effort towards peace.

It was not. Just over a year after Armistice Day became a legal holiday in 1938, World War II broke through the last days of summer, 1939. Painful memories from the few short decades before played back, this time over radios where families gathered, clinging to the words of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. Everyone carried the weight of fear that someone they loved would never return home. For Alvin J. King, this became true in 1944 when word came that John Cooper, a soldier in Rifle Company B of the 137th Infantry Regiment, had been killed in action serving the United States in Belgium.

Some say John, a young twenty-something with a round, warm face and pointed cheekbones, was Alvin’s beloved nephew while other sources call him his stepson, but one thing is known for sure, the loss of John pushed the weight of fear into a pulsing ache. It combed through Alvin when he got up in the morning, when he stood at the sink to fill a glass of water, when he put the glass back down, empty. He’d raised John, looked him in the eye, and told him how it was and how it should be and then one day, as for so many other people getting up and filling glasses of water during World War II, someone he’d read bedtime stories to was now gone.

The pulsing didn’t stop when World War II ended, six years and a day from the hour it started. Instead, it stretched thin across oceans, straight into the fifties and another war and collective mourning continued not just for Alvin but all those lives touched by the same bad news.

As tensions from the Korean War simmered down following an armistice in the summer of 1953, Alvin proposed a day of remembrance and honor not just for those Americans who were lost during World War I, but for all Veterans, like his own John, who served the United States in all wars. So, with the support of his community, the shoe salesman from Kansas packed up his heartache and a headful of good memories of John and traveled to Washington D.C. to lobby his request. It was met kindly by President Eisenhower who established November 11th, 1954 as Americans first observed Veterans Day, as we now know it, to honor all who have served and those heroes like John who’ve sacrificed their lives defending the United States.