News

Veteran's outreach organization to hold proclamation honoring women veterans in the county

By Scott Wagar

02/14/2012

Bottineau’s city and county leadership, and all the area veterans, are asking individuals to mark down March 6 on their calendars for a special day to honor female veterans from Bottineau and its county.

“On that day the mayor and county commissioners will be signing a proclamation for National Women Veterans Awareness Month, which will take place in March” said Pastor Deb Burger, a member of Bottineau County Veterans Outreach Program. “We just want everybody to be supportive. A lot of times, we know the women veterans are the forgotten veterans. They’re the ones that get missed. An example of this is when an individual greets a couple and you know there is a veteran between the two of them. One just naturally assumes it is the male. So, we just want to bring attention to what women are doing in today’s military and what the veterans did who served.”

The proclamation taking place for women veterans is for the leadership of the city and county to show their support of women soldiers.

Leaders of the outreach program learned about the state decree of National Women Veterans Awareness Month through Brenda Bergsrude, the North Dakota State Veterans Benefit specialists.  

“Brenda brought our attention to the proclamation because she knows we are an outreach group for veterans and that we didn’t make distinctions if you are a veteran,” Burger said. “We are a group that wants to be supportive of every veteran and to be helpful to them in any way we can.”

Once the group learned about the decree, Mette Omvig held discussions with the city’s mayor and councilmen and county commissioners in supporting National Women Veterans Awareness Month.

“When we heard about it, we decided we wanted to get involved in it, and that we wanted to get the city and county’s leadership to get involved in it, which turned out to be very successful for us,” said Omvig, who is a local veteran and member of the outreach program. “The city and the county want to support this and our women veterans.”

The proclamation signing will take place at the Bottineau County Courthouse at 10 a.m. The signing will take place in the county commissioners’ room upstairs in the courthouse. After the proclamation is signed, there will be an open house with coffee and cake.

“We are inviting females who are active in the military, women who are veterans and their family members,” Burger said.

Presently, there are 5,000 women in the state of North Dakota who are veterans. The number of female veterans in Bottineau County is currently unknown.

“That is a real mystery,” Burger said. “We just don’t know how many women are veterans in our county. But, we are using every source available to us to discover how many female veterans there are. We are finding that women veterans are often quiet and humble, and they do not like to speak out about their duty to their country.”

The Bottineau County Veterans Outreach Program was established this past year with the mission of assisting veterans in any manner they can. To date, they have been trained in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder awareness, suicide prevention and creating a crisis phone number to help veterans who struggling with a variety of issues.

“Some individuals have used our crisis phone number,” Burger said. “And, we have been able to assist them.”  
As for the proclamation signing on March 6, the outreach group is anxious for it to take place.
“We are very enthusiastic about this event,” Burger said. “And, we hope to see a lot of people there supporting our women veterans.”