There is a day of the year that is very near and dear to my heart — Veterans Day.

That’s not to discount the beautifully Christian days of Christmas and Easter, nor the blessed Thanksgiving Day.

But as the daughter of a veteran, Veterans Day allows us to honor the men and women of all ages, races, genders, ethnic groups and from all parts of our great country who served us and who continue to serve us. They are a chief reason we can sleep soundly at night, knowing they are protecting us at home and in foreign lands.

Copiah-Lincoln Community College also is proud of our veterans, and wishes to help them and our soldiers overseas this season. We are hosting the second annual “Co-Lin Salutes Veterans Program” on Veterans Day. We are proud to provide the community with this program, which will be at 11 a.m. Thursday in our W. L. Nelson Multi-Purpose Room. Last year we had a standing-room-only audience. We hope for the same this year.

This year we will be asking the public for help with our drive for soldiers overseas and veterans at the G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery Veterans Medical Center in Jackson. We had a wonderful drive last year, collecting 19 boxes of items for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 11 boxes of items for the veterans at the Veterans Medical Center.

In addition, we included more than 1,000 Christmas cards in the boxes overseas, and we brought more than 400 cards to the Veterans Medical Center. If you wish to contribute cards, please address them Dear Soldier or Dear Veteran, and we will gladly accept them. If you wish to contribute items, here is what we recommend:

For the Veterans Medical Center: new T-shirts, underwear and socks; gift cards for Walmart and Kmart; writing pads, pens, pencils, envelopes, stamps (forever stamps).

For our soldiers overseas: writing pads (pocket size), pens, pencils, envelopes, baby wipes in small packages, fruit packs, granola bars.

You may bring the cards and items to our Office of Public Information in our Tom Reed Academic Center on or before Friday, Dec. 3. Mark LaFrancis, a veteran and director of public information, is coordinating the drive. His number is 601-446-1205 and e-mail is mark.lafrancis@colin.edu.

One more way we can pay homage to our country is with a Flag Retirement Ceremony, which will be at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, on our campus. Our local veterans and Boy Scouts will help with this. If you have a flag that needs retiring please bring it before 9:45 a.m. that day.

As you can tell, we at Co-Lin are truly proud of our veterans and soldiers; we have many veterans enrolled at Co-Lin. And, Co-Lin is proud to have been designated a “Military Friendly” by G.I. Jobs for two years in a row.

Please help our veterans and soldiers by contributing to the collections and/or attending one of our events in November. They need us now more than ever.

Teresa Busby is vice president of Copiah-Lincoln Community College’s Natchez campus.