VFW Post 7319 will host its annual Veterans Day Banquet at the American Legion Building on Monday, November 11, 2019. A social hour will begin at 6:00 p.m. followed by a meal at 7:00 p.m. The banquet is open to the public.

The program for the evening will include Voice of Democracy and Patriot Pen essays from students at the Wagner Community School, a drawing for the Post gun raffle and presentation of membership awards.

The program for the evening will be presented by Dr. Rich Lofthus, a native of McVille, North Dakota, and a graduate of the University of North Dakota and Regent College. He taught in the public schools of Medina and Bottineau, North Dakota. In 1981 he returned to the University of North Dakota, where he earned his graduate degree in history. In 1988 he moved to South Dakota and after teaching for one year at the University of Sioux Falls, he moved to Yankton and became Professor of History at Mount Marty College, a position he has held for thirty-one years.

His presentation, "From Wentworth to the Western Front: The World War One Odyssey of Private John Warns" is a slide presentation, based on a book with the same title, that features letters to and from Private Warns, photos from the World War One era, newspaper coverage, and secondary sources to explore the manner in which World War One linked rural South Dakota to the maelstrom of events surrounding World War One. World War One was the event that set the stage for the modern world and transformed the United States from an isolationist promised land to a crusading state, willing to go to war for ideological reasons. This presentation illustrates the dramatic impact that this transformation had on South Dakota, placing the Warns family correspondence into this wider context, which included a well-organized propaganda effort by President Wilson's administration, persecution of "slackers" who dared question U.S. involvement in the war, and the controversy surrounding the activities of the Non-partisan League in South Dakota.

He is the author of Remembering Private Harris: A South Dakotan in World War One and From Wentworth to the Western Front: The World War One Odyssey of Private John Warns. Copies of the books will be on sale following the program.