Celebrate Veterans! event set for Sept. 19 at Redmond Saturday Market

Published 9:27 am Friday, September 11, 2015

On Sept. 19, the Redmond Saturday Market (RSM) will hold an event to honor veterans.

Celebrate Veterans! is a new event at the market that will do just as the name implies — celebrate veterans.

Martha Tyler, RSM vice president, said the idea for the event came from their general meeting in February. She said one of their vendors — Mike Braun — suggested they do something to celebrate veterans. After he made that suggestion, Tyler said they started working on figuring out what that celebration would look like.

“It’s a new event and that always takes a lot of planning,” Tyler said.

After further discussion and planning, Dick Watson — another RSM vendor who is also a Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) member — suggested they hold a month-long supplies drive to send to troops overseas.

And that is just what they have done.

Tyler said the month-long drive began Aug. 22, with volunteers from the VFW Post 2995 in Redmond manning a booth to collect supplies. Both customers and vendors have been donating these supplies and VFW members will package and ship the supplies to troops overseas.

The list of supplies that are being collected include snacks such as individual packages of nuts, small bags of Skittles, chewing gum, Tic-Tacs, Starburst, Altoids, Mentos, individual boxes of raisins, any small individually wrapped hard candy and wrapped cookies and crackers. Personal care items also being collected include eye drops, Aleve or Advil (no aspirin) toothpaste, dental floss, nail clippers, hand sanitizer (travel size), foot powder, Gold Bond Powder (4 oz. size), wet wipes (individually wrapped, no baby wipes or makeup remover), Neosporin, anti-fungal cream, boot-length socks (white or black but no low cut) and playing cards. Priority, high-demand items from this list are the nail clippers and wrapped cookies and crackers.

Tyler said Sept. 19’s Celebrate Veterans! event will be the culmination of their month-long supplies drive and there will be a number of special activities that day.

The day will begin at 8:45 a.m. with Redmond singer Stacey Porter singing the national anthem and then an honor guard ceremony performed by the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corp of Everett.

Tyler said they have also hired the Market Street Dixieland Band to perform from noon to 2 p.m. at the gazebo.

Throughout the market next week, there will also be posters thanking military personnel for their service. Tyler said these posters were created by the Boys and Girls Club of Monroe.

In addition, the VFW and Sea Cadets will have a community service booth on the property all day with information about their organizations.

And finally, vendors will be offering veterans discounts on their wares.

Tyler said the Celebrate Veterans! event was funded by a grant from the OneRedmond Foundation.

“They funded us for $2,000,” she said.

This money went toward promoting the event, getting a banner made to hang on location to advertise the upcoming event, printed materials and hiring the Market Street Dixieland Band.

Tyler said they would also like to invite all service people and veterans to the event so they can also be part of the celebration.