For the first time, cadets from Vicksburg High School and Warren Central High School joined together to honor local veterans in a unified Veterans Day Program held at the Watermark Vicksburg. The event marked a historic collaboration between the Vicksburg High School Army JROTC and Warren Central High School’s Navy JROTC programs.
Cadet Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Drake, battalion commander for the school year, expressed his excitement about the partnership. “I’m very excited that we finally got to combine ROTC with Warren Central. We’ve never done this before, so yeah, very excited,” Drake said. “My hope after today is that we’ll be closer with Warren Central so we can do more things together. We barely interact since we’re always going out of town for competitions, so I’d love for us to have competitions with Warren Central if possible.”
Cadet Lieutenant Tristan Collins, a senior at Warren Central, shared similar enthusiasm. “I’m very excited for this,” Collins said. “This is the first time we’ve interacted with Vicksburg. We’ve had to rebuild our ROTC from the ground up due to instructors coming and going over the past few years, but they have done an amazing job orchestrating all of this. I couldn’t be more happy.”
Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Matthews, Senior Army Instructor at Vicksburg High School, reflected on the significance of the day for both schools and the community. “This year, we decided to let the JROTC department from Warren Central Coast and Navy JROTC, and our department, Army, do a collaborative event in which we honor the veterans in our local community,” Matthews said. “This shows that two programs with different missions can come together to honor our veterans.”
When asked about how the collaboration reflects the district’s vision of One Community, One District, Growing Together, Matthews added, “That means one voice, moving together as one. Even though we have two separate programs, this shows that we can work together as a team and as a community.”
The joint Veterans Day program not only honored those who served but also represented a milestone of unity and collaboration for the Vicksburg Warren School District.