Veterans Day parade in Phoenix honors local heroes
People gather for the 2025 Veterans Day parade in downtown Phoenix to honor those who served on Nov. 11.
- Dozens of veterans were recognized at a Nov. 11 ceremony.
- The ceremony was held at North Phoenix Church and marks 50 years after the end of the war in Vietnam.
- Gov. Katie Hobbs and Veterans Services Director John Scott were among the leaders who spoke at the event.
When Mel Cook returned from his U.S. Navy service in Vietnam in the late 1960s, it was to protests. Anti-war activists attacked an armory. Even walking to reserve meetings on campus at his Iowa college was an “unpleasant experience,” he said.
“It was as if I had caused the war, that’s how it felt,” said Cook, 79, of Buckeye. “They were angry with those of us that served, as well as the government. And that was a bit difficult to take.
“I grew up in an era where we were watching John Wayne movies. It was all patriotism, and, ‘Good job, you fought.’ That sort of thing. The negativity made me hide my service for a lot of years. I just didn’t talk about it.”
Now, decades later, Cook feels more comfortable talking about the 13 months and one day he was in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967.
That is in part because of ceremonies like one held Nov. 11, when Cook and dozens more veterans were recognized. They were offered a welcome home that many did not receive decades ago, because of prevalent opposition to the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. In receiving that delayed recognition, veterans saw a measure of progress that appeared to contrast with a broader environment of political division and government gridlock.
“We didn’t start the war, we just volunteered to serve,” said Cheryl Schmidt, who retired from the U.S. Army Reserve in 1996 at the rank of lieutenant colonel. Schmidt, who is 76 and lives in Peoria, was inducted into the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame earlier this year and teaches nursing at ASU. She joined the reserve in 1974 following the path of her mother, who was a nurse who taught cadet nurses in World War II, she said.
“When I joined, there was a lot of disrespect for us. People would boo us. They wouldn’t say thanks for your service,” she said, noting a shift lately. “This is the first year that anybody really paid attention to us.”
The ceremony, held 50 years after the end of the war and on Veterans Day, was a partnership of the Arizona Department of Veterans’ Services and Arizona State University’s Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement. Gov. Katie Hobbs and Veterans Services Director John Scott were among the leaders who spoke at the event at North Phoenix Church, where the Honoring America’s Veterans parade began its amble through central Phoenix.
Roughly 165,000 Vietnam veterans live in Arizona, according to Wanda Wright, the director of the ASU office. Wright is an Air Force veteran and retired from the Arizona National Guard in 2011 as a colonel. She led the state’s veteran service agency from 2015 to early 2023, during the administration of Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
“Even though I left the job, I never left the obligation,” Wright said of her service.
Mary Shaffer, 71, of Tucson, spent 22 years in the Navy beginning in 1973. Her family was living in Tucson at the time.
“Truthfully, I wanted to see water,” she said. “In the early 70s, there still weren’t a lot of things a girl could do that was not traditional. I was raised building houses and welding and doing things with my family. So for me, it was an easy segue into something that I knew how to do, with a travel component.”
Shaffer worked as a hull maintenance technician, performing ship repairs and testing welds, among other jobs. She did not get into Vietnam, but her service supported those who did, facts for which she is now grateful. Half of her class died in the war, she said.
To be honored for her service instilled a sense of pride, she said. Her father served in World War II, her grandfather in World War I, and of eight siblings, she was the only one who chose the military, she said.
“For me, it’s kind of a continuum of the family tradition of service,” Shaffer said. “It’s our America, and if we don’t defend her, then it won’t be our America.”
Cook arrived in Vietnam in November 1966, embedded with a Marine Corps battalion. One of two hospital corpsmen in the company, they alternated nights keeping the enemy back from an airfield. Cook’s other job was “people to people,” he said.
“We would go out to the local villages and provide medical care to the populace, which was actually the most frightening thing I did there,” he said. He was dubbed “doc” after just 16 weeks of hospital corps training, he said.
“And then they bring you babies with sores all over their bodies, and pregnant women, and people with broken appendages and burns and wounds,” he said. It was “hard to deal with, let alone dealing with people being wounded, killed in ambushes.”
Cook and his wife, Jody, moved to Buckeye in 2020. To be recognized on Veterans Day was a “terrific” step forward in honoring the service of Vietnam War veterans, he said.
“The turnaround has been a relief, and an honor to be recognized for what we did do,” Cook said. “I was wounded. And decorated. But I could never really be proud of that.”
Jonathan Robles, 37, of Mesa, sat next to Cook as Cook told his story. Robles was raised in a small town in Mexico, and received permanent residency after he and his family moved to the United States when he was 13, he said.
“I was very, very grateful that I was able to legalize my status in the U.S.,” he said. “It opened up so many doors for me, so I was super patriotic. Super happy that I had this new adopted country that embraced me.”
That patriotism drove him to the U.S. Marine Corps. and he served from 2006 to 2014. Robles volunteered at the Veterans Day event, where he met Cook for the first time, even though his story echoed what Robles had heard from other Vietnam-era servicemembers.
“For my generation’s veterans, there was a lot more support when they got back,” Robles said. “That was not the case for Vietnam, and it’s a sad thing they had to live through. I’m glad things are changing now and we’re having events like this.”
“Don’t feel like I have to hide it anymore,” Cook chimed in.
Reach reporter Stacey Barchenger at stacey.barchenger@arizonarepublic.com or 480-416-5669.