Veteran's Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening. I'm going to open the July 29th, 2026 meeting of the Grafton Veterans Advisory Committee. And we'll start with a roll call. I'm the chair, Bob DeToma. Sean McCabe. Here. Justin Stone. Here. Lucas Remillard.

Here.

Pauline McCormick.

Here.

Okay, everybody is on Zoom tonight, so any and all votes will be taken by roll call. Does everybody have the minutes that Sean distributed the last time we were scheduled to meet? Yes.

I have them.

Or I've reviewed them. You have them, but have not reviewed them? They've been reviewed. They have been. If anybody has anything to add or changes to make now is the time. Otherwise, I'll take a nomination.

Sean, if you remember when we last attempted to meet, I pointed out that you have me down twice. Did that get fixed?

Negative.

We can still vote on them and submit them.

We can approve as amended. Yep.

Okay, I'm good with that. That was the only thing that I saw.

I think you said I had Lucas's name spelled wrong somehow. Yeah, it's two L's instead of one L. Okay. Or something.

All right. All right, so I need a motion for the minutes, please.

All right, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as amended. I'll make a second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second on the minutes by roll call vote. Sean McCabe. Aye. Justin Stone. Aye. Lucas Remillard. Aye. Holly McCormick.

Aye.

And the chair votes aye. So minutes are accepted. All right, very good. All right, we're at that time of the year for reorganization, and we are going to continue to rotate meetings the leadership on the committee. So at this time, I will ask for nominations for the chairmanship.

I would nominate Lucas Remillard for chair.

I need a second.

I come off mute, I second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second for Lucas as chair. Any discussion or other nominees? Okay, hearing none, I roll call. Sean McCabe. Aye. Justin Stone. Aye. Lucas Remillard. Aye. Holly McCormick.

Aye.

And the chair votes aye. So that's unanimous for Lucas as the chair. Our next position is vice chair and I'll accept the nomination.

Can I nominate myself?

I think you can.

Okay. Nominate Sean for Vice Chair.

I second. Okay, I have a motion and a second for Vice Chair. Any discussion for other nominees? Okay, hearing none by roll call vote. Sean? Aye. Justin? Aye. Lucas? Aye. aye polly aye and the chair votes aye so by unanimous vote sean is now the vice chair and the last position is clerk audio is good did somebody lose something Sean, you have a face. Does that mean you can't hear? I'm sorry. I couldn't hear Lucas.

But I nominate Bob DeToma for clerk.

Is there a second?

I second that.

Okay. I have a motion and a second. Discussion?

Okay.

Hearing none by roll call. Sean? Aye. Justin? Aye. Lucas? Aye. And Holly?

Aye.

Okay. So by unanimous vote, Bob is now the clerk. All right. Normally, Lucas, at this point, you would take over the meeting, but because you're driving, I'm happy to continue if you'd like. Yeah, that's perfectly fine. Okay. All right. On the agenda that I submitted, there was really only two topics, but I I thought I would include a third. And they would be participation in National Night Out, which is Tuesday the 4th. And the second thing is Grafton Day, which is something new, which is on August 21st, and it's a Friday night. So it's a question of participation, setting up the pop-up tent, and having people there to meet and greet the public, and then What do we want to give away? What do we want to hand out? What do we want to accomplish? So at this point, it's basically just a discussion topic. So I'll open the floor.

Can you check my calendar? Because I know I'm not here. I don't get back to Massachusetts till the 7th. And the 21st, I should be able to do Grafton Day. I have drilled the weekend before, so it should be fine.

I should be able to do Grafton Day on the 21st. The 4th is going to be a little difficult just because I've got an all-day meeting in Cambridge, and I don't know when that'll be finished. Yeah. But I could always swing by on my way home and help out after that.

So I'm available both days. Do we have enough of the 4th of July giveaways to kind of man the table?

Yeah, there's... There's a billion crayons you can hand out. Okay. There's still some mini flags. There's a little bit of everything. After the parade, we sorted it all out, so there's plenty to distribute. We have the dog tags that we wanted to use for the deployment line that never got stamped. Right. We could give out blank dog tags to the kids.

I... I'd kind of like to table that thought because I don't want to abandon the idea of stamping or doing something with those tags to identify us better, be it a sticker or a physical stamp. Yeah. I think a blank wouldn't make us look good. Okay. Interesting.

Paul, are you available at all on the 4th?

So, unfortunately, I'll be having surgery on the 4th, so I will not. Oh, good news.

Okay.

Carpal tunnel, so it's not a big deal. I might be able to help on the 21st. I'm not sure yet.

Okay. All right. So, Sean, we're going to have to reach out to... Craig and see if he can pitch in on that night. Otherwise you'd be doing it solo.

Okay.

All right.

I'm not overly concerned.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause I'll have the, I can have the committee pop-up set up prior to your arrival. Yeah. The table would be set up. All you'd have to do is just kind of organize all the giveaways.

Yeah. Okay.

The, um, So national night out is 5 p.m. to 9-ish. And then the grafted day is, I think that goes a little longer. I think that starts at like 4 in the afternoon and goes till 8, 9 o'clock because they're doing fireworks. But I'll get specific times for that so we know what it is. Excuse me.

I thought the night out was 5 to 8. Is it 5 to 8?

I'm usually there past 9 o'clock, so that's why I said 9.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Okay.

Is the Grafton Day, that's in the high school parking lot, correct?

Yeah. And I asked if there was a specific, like a setup map, or was it just kind of a three-for-all? Adam, the recreation director, said as I got closer to the date, he would have more information on that.

So, for the Grafton Day, it was essentially a repeat of night out. In a way, I guess. I meant for us. For us.

Yeah. It is basically a repeat. It's the same goals you'd like to accomplish.

Okay.

Make sure everybody knows we exist. And then... But I have a concern. I didn't know how everybody else felt about it. But I was thinking that we should try to recruit new members of the committee. Because in my opinion, with Lucas's commitments and having to travel, and then sometimes Holly's work schedule, she finds it difficult. So we might have to consider recruiting people. And whether or not we're successful, I don't know.

I agree.

How do we recruit people and not sound like we're trying to sell them something?

We've done this before where we've recruited people at these events and we've had some success, like Mateo and a couple of other people. Unfortunately, the time commitment has always caught up to them and they've never been able to stick around. So I think that that's the big, we've got to figure out how to address that issue, I think.

It's kind of a double-edged sword. I was thinking while I was waiting for the members to populate on the screen here, and I thought that we're allowed to have another civilian member. And if I remember correctly, you can jump in if I get it wrong. I thought at one point we were, which of the two committees was allowed to go up to 15 members? I think it's ours BAC yeah and the problem with 15 members is that your quorum requirement goes up yeah so it's okay we get a bunch of new members and then we still have to maintain you know attendance to make a quorum so it would be nice to add some new people to the committee but um I can't imagine we would end up with five new members.

Would it be... The legions in the post have what they call sons' membership. So if your father was a veteran, the sons of the whatever veteran are members. Instead of us looking at the legion members that are, say... 60 and older, maybe we try to tap into someone that's part of the son's group. If nothing else, maybe it just gets us a body that can fill in when we may not have a quorum.

Right. And it could be sons or daughters, right? Yes. The women's auxiliary? The women's auxiliary. Yes, right. So, yeah, and I'm thinking one, maybe two new people. And maybe that would be something of a conversation we could have with Carmen and ask if he'd be willing to ask around.

I'm actually working on trying to get that F.O.S. guy who just moved back from England because he's interested in being involved in town politics and being on committees now that he's moved to Grafton.

an Air Force veteran who just moved back from the UK? Yeah, he just got out. You're not talking about Stoney, are you? No.

The Air Force just needs to take over.

It sounds like it. So, Lucas, do you have contact information for this gentleman?

My wife has been hanging out with the wife. Okay. And her kids. So I will get with Jess and try to see if she can get me that information and we can try to connect with them.

Yeah, maybe we could send them a friendly letter and say we definitely need help.

Yeah, for sure.

And then you just got to get your neighbor. Yeah, well, I think you and I have to team up on him.

That might be a tough one. I've talked to him a couple of times, even when I bumped in on the market basket, and he's shy.

Yeah, well, he's a busy guy.

Okay, I don't know about that.

He's a busy guy. Okay. Yeah, I think if Lucas and I put a hard press on him, we might be able to... And, you know, he doesn't have to attend. He can... participate via zoom, like everyone else in the world. So that might be part of the sales pitch.

I have a couple of neighbors that I know them. I know the veterans, and I've seen them, you know, at different events, but I'm going to try to lean on them a little bit more. See what happens. Yeah. All right.

Okay.

I think if that Air Force guy that Lucas is talking about, if he sees us at the National Night, I mean the Rafton Night with the beer garden, he's going to think it's a typical Air Force event.

That's how we get our meetings.

We need to start having a five-star.

Yeah, and then get a five-star hotel conference room, and he'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm down.

Yeah, he says that, all that good stuff.

Okay. So we've got Sean Manning, the tent for National Night Out, and we have three volunteers for Grafton Day. We have some hooks in the water for recruiting new members. Good. Okay. Does anybody have anything else they want to add? Okay. Okay. And then I will send an agenda out for trustees of Soldiers and Sailors for August because we have to go through this whole procedure again for that committee. Yeah.

I've got a question, but I mean, I can wait until we go around the room.

Okay.

Sean, you were going to say something?

No, I was actually, I was going to ask you if it was going to be early in August or late in August. That's all.

I haven't, I haven't looked at it. Yeah. Okay.

No. So maybe throw a couple of dates out and see what's.

Yeah.

Okay. That's all I was going to say.

Yeah. All of this Wednesdays work really well for you.

Wednesdays are actually my day off. So absolutely. But I don't want to poop up you guys.

Okay. No, no, that's, that's good to know. Yeah. I'm happy to put out an agenda for Wednesday evening if I know that you guys are free.

Yeah, any day. It's like now that my roots, well, I'll be on leave of absence for the next few weeks. So, yeah, I'm available, but I just don't know how much I can help physically.

Yeah, no, but to be able to participate on Zoom, and that's really what we're looking for. Okay. Lucas, so you're going to talk to Jesse and get the name. And Stoney, go ahead.

So with Veterans Day, kind of around the corner. You know, in the past, we had talked about doing something at the school, maybe getting a veteran to go in and talk to some of the students. That might be a good way to kind of raise awareness. And, you know, you... When the hearts and minds of the kids who then go and tell their parents who are veterans that we're doing this kind of stuff. I don't know if that's something that we would want to try to do for Veterans Day. Like maybe around Veterans Day in November, a couple of us go in and just, you know, go talk about what we did. Share maybe a couple of stories. It could be maybe a veterans panel discussion. with a couple of us on there, different eras of different services and what we do. What age group are you thinking? I don't know. I mean, I don't feel like high school because they get hit with the recruiters. But at the same time, elementary school might be too young. You get like maybe some middle schoolers. They may find some of the stories interesting and things like that is kind of my initial thought.

Fran Stapira and Red I forget his last name they both have been almost annually going to I think it's South Grafton Elementary a couple days before Veterans Day and talking to the children so we might want to just run it by them see how they connect with the schools and such as that

And I know we have talked about it with them before, and I can't remember. We didn't pursue it for one reason or another, but it was just thinking about it.

Yeah. Sean, can you reach out to Stan and see if he knows the name of the person we need to talk to?

Sure. All right.

Yeah, we have actually two things coming up in the near future. We have a Gold Star flag ceremony. And now Veterans Day. Yeah. Lucas, I have the package that Andy created that I can hand over to you for the ceremony for the Gold Star. Okay.

Okay.

I believe he sent me an email not too long ago that there's one name that needs to be added to the list. But other than that, it's pretty much up to date.

Okay.

All right. Anybody have any other things they want to bring up? Once? Twice? Okay. Okay. All I need is one more motion. Get a motion to adjourn.

Second.

Okay, I have a motion to adjourn and a second. And by roll call vote, Sean? Aye. Justin? Aye. Lucas? Aye. Holly? Aye. And Bob votes aye. I declare the meeting adjourned and I'll talk to you all at the next trustees meeting.