Fairfax County kindergartners honor local veterans

Back to celebrating Veterans Day now and in Fairfax County, more than 100 kindergartners are getting ready to honor veterans in their community. Stephanie Ramirez is on the grounds this morning with how they're going to do so when the young ones get involved, Steph. Yeah, guys, truly special when you see this in person, but this is the tail end of the honor walk through the school highway, not highway, hallway here. You can see everybody cheering. We are at Kings Park Elementary this morning, and they're doing special events to honor the families, military families of the students who are here. We have one of those families here. We've got Madeline Isla, right? And we've got Eric and Lauren DeTurk. Thank you guys so much for talking with us this morning. So tell us about, first off, the military service. You're I spent 11 years in the greatest Air Force in the world. I spent time overseas in Germany and Korea. Spent three deployments supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. And then culminated my tour after 11 years in Las Vegas as a commander. And we, again, we thank you for your service. And now this is the third year that you've all been participating in this. Tell me what it's like for the families involved. It's so beautiful to see how much our community supports our veterans. The kids absolutely are thrilled to get to walk with their parents through the hallways, or grandparents. There's any form of military connection, but they love walking through the hallways and kind of showing off. And the kids themselves that are part of Cub Council and create this event do a beautiful job. So there was an 8:30 singing of the National Anthem. Maddie, tell me where your father is on this wall. Point him out for us. Did you do this? Yes. Tell me why you wanted to do this. Okay, we'll come back to you while you think about that answer. Let me come over, let me go under the camera here. Sir, you told me that, you know, you have connections that are made when you hold an event like this before. What's it like to experience this in person? This is really amazing. You know, just three years ago when we started this event here at Kings Park, I ran into a fellow airman. Believe it or not, after 10 years, I hadn't seen this guy. And we were able to reconnect. We served on the battlefield together and protected our Air Force assets, protected national security. It was pretty awesome. Every day when we come in, our veterans, our parents of the fellow students here, we see each other. We know we're veterans. It is such a strong veteran community. And today is specifically such an opportunity to, Share and recognize that service and bravery of all of our service members, whether they're parents, connected through aunts, uncles, grandparents. So it is such a truly amazing and honoring tradition here at Kings Park Elementary School. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. See, I stuttered, Maddie. I got a little camera shy. Do you want to say happy Veterans Day for everyone while we send it back to the team? Happy Veteran's Day. All right, thank you guys. We'll send it back to you. Aw. All right, thank you, Steph. And a big thanks again to everyone who helped to make that segment so special.