Talks by students who served abroad to highlight Veterans Day ceremony

The University will observe Veterans Day on Friday, Nov. 11, with a ceremony on Beinecke Plaza at 12:15 p.m. In the event of rain, the Veterans Day ceremony will take place in Woolsey Hall.

The ceremony will include remarks from Yale faculty and students — including Matthew T. Schmitt of the Yale School of Management and Jason A. Mangone of the Graduate School — and the traditional laying of a wreath in front of the alumni war memorial.  

Schmitt, a West Point graduate who served in Afghanistan, and Mangone, a former Marine with deployments in Iraq and the Middle East, are among more than 40 student veterans or active-duty military personnel at Yale, according to Vice President and University Secretary Linda Lorimer, who oversees the ceremony. Veterans or active-duty students are in at least nine of the University’s professional schools, as well as the Graduate School and Yale College. 

Also participating in the Veterans Day ceremony are Lieutenant Molly E. Crabbe, a  Navy helicopter pilot who will help implement Yale’s new Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), and Lieutenant Colonel Theodore G. Weibel, who will oversee Yale Air Force ROTC.

Others participants will include Lieutenant Colonel Thomas D. Boccardi of the U.S. Army, currently a fellow at the Jackson Institute; Navy veteran Joshua R. Ray ’13 of Berkeley College; Army ROTC Cadet James T. Campbell ’13 of Pierson College; and emeritus professor and former Trumbull master Harry B. Adams ’45W B.A., ’51 B.D., who served in the U.S. Army Air Force 1943-1945. Members of the Yale University Police Department form the ceremony’s honor guard.

The Veterans Day Brass Ensemble, composed of students from the School of Music, will offer a musical salute to each of the nation’s five service branches. Other School of Music graduates will provide a choral backdrop for the laying of the wreath.

Following the Veterans Day ceremony, the Yale Veterans Association, a new shared-interest group of Yale alumni, will sponsor a screening of a film based on the book “The Millionaire’s Unit.” The film tells the story of a group of Yale students who in 1916 formed their own air militia, which became the basis of naval aviation. The film and a panel discussion with the book’s author and filmmakers will take place in the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St., starting at 1:30 p.m.