Roll call honors veterans

IU will be one of 182 schools in the country to participate in the Remembrance Day National Roll Call on Friday, reading the names of 6,200 soldiers that died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The goal of the national event was to have at least one school from every state reading the list, said Margaret Baechtold, director of IU Veterans Support Services
Indiana generated more participation than any other state with 18 schools electing to take part in the roll call, Baechtold said.

“It is significant because it is the 10-year mark of post-9/11, and it’s kind of remembering the sacrifices of 10 years at war,” said senior Kayla Bowers, an intern at Veterans Support Services and an Air Force ROTC cadet.

Volunteers will read from the list of names in 15-minute shifts in the Indiana Memorial Union Memorial Room near Starbucks.

Senior and Army ROTC cadet Steve Szrom said realizing there are people on the list younger than himself helped him see the reality of the war.

“It’s something a lot of us are facing,” he said. “That could be us in a year. The event is honoring those who came before us.”

While many of the volunteers will be ROTC cadets in uniform, Tim Bagwell, an IU employee who served in the Vietnam War as a Marine, will attend the reading wearing a shirt saying “Vietnam Veterans Against the War.”

“I had originally wanted to do a silent protest of it because I am passionately and radically anti-war,” Bagwell said. “I feel without a balance, simply the reading of the names becomes unbalanced as we’re honoring people who died and didn’t have to die.”

The event is in coordination with the digitization of the Golden Book, a list of IU veterans that served through World War II, which is on display in the IMU Memorial Room.

The roll call will begin at 9 a.m. with a ribbon cutting for the new digital book.
“The event is really significant, obviously, to show remembrance for vets who have given their life but also to show current vets support from students at IU,” Bowers said.