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Base hospitality

Monday deadline for seniors to sign up for Thanksgiving Day at Minot AFB

Submitted Photo Susan Wagers, right, 5th Force Support Squadron special programs coordinator at Minot Air Force Base, crowns Leonard Lund of Minot with the honor of being the eldest man attending the annual Thanksgiving Day of Love at Minot AFB in November 2017, shown in this photo by Airman 1st Class Alyssa M. Akers. Lund, born in 1923, is a World War II veteran who was on the staff of the Stars and Stripes, the American military forces newspaper, and is a former longtime newsman with the Minot Daily News.

Monday is the deadline for local senior citizens to reserve a spot for the annual Minot Air Force Base Thanksgiving Day of Love celebration.

Those who would like to attend the event have until 5 p.m. Monday to sign up at the Minot Commission on Aging office in the Parker Senior Center in Minot by calling 852-0561.

As of Thursday noon, about 125 senior citizens had made reservations for the event. The maximum number for attendance is 200 senior citizens. The event is open to all senior citizens. Dress is casual.

Buses will pick up senior citizens on Thanksgiving, from the Parker Senior Center in downtown Minot at 10:15 a.m. and leave for the base at 10:30 a.m. While at the base senior citizens can enjoy a meal and entertainment before returning to the senior center between 1:30 and 2 p.m.

Now in its 48th year, the base’s annual Thanksgiving Day program, designated “Day of Love,” started in 1970 when then commander of the 91st Strategic Missile Wing, Col. Grover C. Graves Jr., contacted Claude “Bud” Ebert, then chief of Recreation Services at the base, according to the Minot Daily News files. Graves became commander Aug. 4, 1970.

“He wanted to put together a program for Minot’s senior citizens,” Ebert told the Minot Daily News for a story published in November 1985. Graves also wanted the program to involve base personnel who were away from their families during the holiday.

“From the first year it was held it became a tradition here,” Ebert said in an earlier Minot Daily News interview.

The Thanksgiving Day event now is a longtime tradition at Minot AFB.

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