By Rita Howell

A Veterans Day Tribute is planned for Thursday, November 11, at 11 a.m. at the Downtown Memorial Park in Batesville.

Robert Rawson will give the invocation. The South Panola High School Air Force JROTC will present the colors and Aleisha Hankins will sing the national anthem.

The South Panola High School Band will present patriotic songs.

Bobby Hudson, commander of the local VFW post, will lay a wreath at the memorial monument.

Robert Rawson will give remarks. After the sounding of Taps, Rawson will give the benediction.

Veterans Day is celebrated on Nov. 11, Armistice Day, which commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, ending World War I. The armistice took effect at the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918.

Volunteers from the Batesville Woman’s Club are conducting a special project to help compile a listing of female veterans from all wars, including current conflicts. Club members will have information and registration forms available at the program. The Women in Military Service for America project is sponsored nationally by the Women’s Memorial Foundation.

In Water Valley, a similar celebration is planned at the same hour at the monument on Main Street. A special presentation will be made by the Water Valley VFW to the family of David Holmes of Batesville who was killed June 26 in Afghanistan.

After the Water Valley ceremony, the VFW post will host a fish fry for the public. Admission is free.

See The Panolian’s tributes to local veterans in Tuesday’s paper.