The organization that brought the Veterans Day parade back to Lynchburg after an 80-year absence says it will not conduct a similar parade this year. The Lynchburg Area Veterans Council says it has changed its mission to focus more on providing direct help to individual veterans – especially when it comes to housing – and it must concentrate its efforts and resources now on meeting that need.
NEWS RELEASE: [The Lynchburg Area Veterans Council] has recently changed its mission focus in an effort to provide more help directly to individual veterans, especially in the area of housing. There are a number of homeless veterans in the Lynchburg area, and this number is likely to increase over the next two or three years as incarcerated veterans are released with no home to go to, i.e., no home plan. Because of this serious need in our area, and due to limited time and resources, LAVC will not be conducting a Veterans Day Parade this year. We are proud that we were able to have the parade for the last two years, especially because this was the first Veterans Day Parade in the Lynchburg area since 1938. We thank our great sponsors who helped make the parade possible, and ask that they continue to partner with us as we now emphasize veteran housing.
Established in 2014, the Lynchburg Area Veterans Council, a 501c3 nonprofit publicly supported charity, provides services and resources for veterans and veterans’ organizations, with the help of local businesses, civic groups, and individuals. Together, we support the needs of local veterans, in Lynchburg and the surrounding counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell. LAVC is an all-volunteer group with no paid staff. The veteran groups that partner with LAVC are: American Legion Post 16, Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 196, Military Order of the Purple Heart Chapter 1607, Desmond T. Doss Post 12179 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Military Order of the World Wars Piedmont Chapter, and Detachment # 759 Marine Corps League.
The sole purpose of our program is to support our area veterans, so classically stated by President Lincoln, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”
Our Council believes that every service member, veteran, and their family members should know and understand the benefits to which they are entitled, and we seek to foster relationships within the community and our veterans groups for the common good of our community.