Hanford Insider: Community News and Veterans Day Ceremony Preview with Margaret Cardiel

Transcript

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On this week's episode of the Hanford Insider.

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Rob will give us a quick community news update, then Margaret Cartiel will let us know what's happening at this year's Veterans Day event in Courthouse Square, and I'll be back with your sports report.

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This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, november 4th.

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Welcome to the Hanford Insider, the podcast, where we dive into what makes our community tick, From local stories and hidden gems to conversations with people shaping our neighborhood.

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We're here to celebrate, explore and connect.

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Whether you're new to Hanford or a longtime local, this is your source for everything happening in our town, from events and news to unique conversations with people who make Hanford what it is.

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Thanks for tuning in.

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Let's jump right into it.

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In community news this week.

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Don't forget to fill out your ballots and turn them in by Tuesday.

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If you have any questions, please call the Elections Department at 559-852-4401.

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The next regularly scheduled City Council meeting is on Tuesday, November 5th.

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Items on the agenda include a badge-pending ceremony for Hanford Police Officers Manuel Caceres and Brian Milligan.

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The city is also seeking approval to replace eight broken slides on the Freedom Park play structure.

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The one big news item on the agenda is that the city is looking at entering into an agreement with a developer to sell the old Kings County Courthouse to esteemed land company LLC to finally bring the old courthouse back to life as Barrel House Brewing by the summer of 2026.

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This $1 sale would grant ownership to the developer while ensuring the city's ability to preserve the building's historic integrity.

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This partnership requires the developer to have both the capital and expertise to undertake the restoration, along with a commitment to meet the city's preservation standards and performance expectations.

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We'll have an update on next week's show for sure.

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The Hanford Chamber of Commerce is planning the annual Christmas parade on the day after Thanksgiving.

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They're now accepting applications for entries.

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Find out more at hanfordchambercom.

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Here's some things coming up on our community calendar.

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Hanford Winter Wonderland opens on November 23rd.

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Tickets are on sale now at HanfordWinterWonderlandcom.

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The Kings Players presentation of the Education of Angels continues at the Temple Theater.

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For tickets and information, visit KingsPlayersorg at the Temple Theater.

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For tickets and information, visit kingsplayersorg.

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The Hanford Elks Hoop Shoot Free Throw Contest will be held this Saturday, November 9th at the Longfield Center.

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The Hanford Fox Theater is showing the movie Twilight on Saturday.

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Visit foxhanfordcom for tickets and more information about their upcoming shows.

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Make your plans now to attend the Veterans Day Festival in the Civic Park on Monday, November 11th, from 10 am to 4.30 pm.

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This event is put on by the VFW Post 5869.

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The Hanford Marching Band Showcase will be held on Thursday, November 14th at Neighbor Bowl.

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There will be performances by all three high school bands as well as the Pioneer Middle School Marching Band, the bands from Woodrow Wilson, JFK, Pioneer and Jefferson and Parkview will be performing the National Anthem together.

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The event is free, but donations are always gladly accepted.

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If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together.

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Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom.

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Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events.

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Well, as we know, Veterans Day is coming up on Monday, November 11th, and we have some very special activities coming up in Hanford, and we're here with Margaret Cardiel, and she is organizing the event at the Hanford Civic Auditorium Park on Monday November 11th.

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Welcome to the show, Margaret.

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Thank you, Rob.

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How are you doing?

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I'm doing great.

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Hey, margaret, we'll have time to get into the event, but let's talk a little bit about your service.

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We're honoring veterans this week and next week in the show, and tell us about your service to our country.

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Well, right out of high school I joined the Army, did my two years actually.

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After that I decided to go into the Navy, went with the Navy and I stayed 20 years, loved it, served on both sides, served in Iraq.

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I worked in finance and supply.

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I was on five ships.

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My brothers were in the Army during Vietnam, my other brother was in the Air Force.

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We all thankfully God.

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We all came back home and after that went to college, worked, retired and now I'm the commander of the VFW.

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That's great.

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So what brought you to Hanford?

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This is interesting.

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My family, my mom's family, came from Salt Lake City during the Depression and once they were here back after my uncles came back from war, they were in the war too.

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They were educated, they became engineers.

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They moved to Los Angeles for better jobs and most of the family did move there.

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They got married.

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I was born in Los Angeles and raised there, but my oldest sister I'm the baby, my oldest sister came back with her husband and her family.

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I'm single, and one day, about four years ago, my niece said you know, auntie, I think you need to come back home.

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And I go home, hanford, I'm not from Hanford, she goes no, that way, if anything happens to you, we could take care of you.

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What a blessing, for sure.

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What a blessing.

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So I'm here and now I get to see everything that my mother saw when she came as about 12 years old.

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But it's different.

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Now I get to enjoy things that she never could have ever enjoyed, and I come back with an education she could never go to college.

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They couldn't afford it.

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I don't even think she finished high school because we were busy working.

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But now that I'm back here in this small town, I see the charm, the history, the people, and I remember it from back in the 50s because my one uncle did stay here, so we used to come from Los Angeles to drive over here to visit him.

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And it was back in the days when you had outhouses and they didn't have a bathtub, so they would fill up a tub with hot water to give you a bath.

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I remember that.

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But what I remember the most is what I felt when I went back to the city.

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I remember the most is what I felt when I went back to the city how grateful I was and we were not very rich, and I thought you know what?

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All I do is turn the tap and I got hot water.

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You know, I don't have to go outside in the cold rain to go to the bathroom.

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It made me look at life with different eyes as a young lady and I'm very thankful for that.

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But, being back here, my mother is buried here.

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She came back to die here and she's buried here with her brothers and cousins and my brother and my nephew, and I think she would have been happy to be back here home.

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This is home for her.

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Yeah, definitely that's special.

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So how did you get involved with the local VFW?

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Well, you're retired and you go bonkers.

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You got to do something.

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So I looked it up and I said let me see what they do in this community.

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And so I joined, got involved.

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My first job was a quartermaster the most important job.

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We pay the bills, we're in charge of a lot of paperwork requirements and you answer to the commander.

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And I did that for about three years and now I am the commander.

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That's great.

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So you have this event, this huge event that's been going on for a few years.

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I've been a participant in it in previous years and it's just wonderful that the VFW puts on this event for the local veterans in our area.

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Can you tell us a little bit about what's going to happen in the park on November 11th?

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band we always do.

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We're going to have food vendors.

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Budweiser will be there.

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We'll also have regular vendors who have different crafts and very interesting.

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I've met them and seen the stuff that they create and it's pretty nice.

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And then, of course, we'll have the popcorn vendors.

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Everybody wants that.

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Well, also in the main auditorium we also have our junior ROTC competitions and that's all day.

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It's really great and we get to see the younger kids who are going to wind up being future officers.

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A lot of people don't know that.

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They say what happens to them.

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They become officers.

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They go through some training, which is great.

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The other thing we have is we're also going to have a presentation.

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We have a gentleman that is a member that's 100 years old and a very nice guy.

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You would not know he was 100.

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You would swear he's maybe 80, not even.

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He still walks, cooks his own food, keeps his own house.

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So we're going to present him with an award.

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We also have we're doing raffles, and the reason why we do raffles is to accumulate funds for other organizations who help the community.

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Here in Hanford we have the Escapalian Church.

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They give meals Monday through Friday.

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We have a lot of homeless veterans that eat there and I'm so thankful for their contribution.

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And then we have St Bridget's they do the same and they also have clothing and they have another store where you can get food and they have another store where you can get food and you can get clothing as well, and so we contribute to those two.

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And we have others that we do contribute to.

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If we don't contribute monetarily-wise, we do voluntarily.

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We'll go there and help them, and we do have some members who do that on their off time and some of them do.

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We have one gentleman that does the Salvation Army.

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He drives the trucks to go get the items that they need, and sometimes he could be doing an eight-hour shift for four days straight and some people would say, well, he doesn't get paid, so it's strictly voluntary.

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So you have the presentation that you're making to the Centurion, and you have some other activities going on as well too, some presentations and ceremonies.

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Yes, we are.

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We have a couple of awards that we're putting out.

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We also have a police officer of the year, teacher of the year.

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We also have every year essay contest, and we have the high school level and then we have the middle school.

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So they also will be presented with awards.

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And so the hours for this event?

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I understand it ends at 430.

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What time does it start?

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10 o'clock in the morning 10 o'clock in the morning, and then is there a time for the.

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I know you said the NJROTC groups are going to be competing in the Civic Auditorium and they receive awards too, don't they?

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Yes, they do Within the auditorium.

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We do not do anything with that.

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That's between their sergeants who are in charge, our commanders, because it's an all-day event where they're judging them and they present it to them.

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We don't do anything with that.

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So, as you mentioned, the VFW not only puts on this type of event, but they raise funds so that they can support other organizations, and I know that remembering our veterans and honoring our veterans is a very noble mission for your organization.

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As we're here at Veterans Day 2024, why do you feel it's important to continue to honor those who served our country?

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We just had our 75th anniversary and these are the first Nisei comrades who got together after the World War II to create our post.

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And they did so much work here in the community and yet in 75 years nobody in Hanford mentions them, nobody says their name or their accomplishments.

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So when we got together to create this luncheon we had a luncheon for their children and grandchildren and I wanted to make a point that we would say their name aloud, because most of them are buried here in Hanford Cemetery or Calvary Cemetery, and I wanted their children to know that we are grateful for their service, what they did for the community in a time when they were not welcome, they endured and they continued and they did a lot of good things for Hanford.

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So when I think of my veterans whether you were World War II, like my father and my uncles, like my father and my uncles, korean, like my uncle, vietnam, like my brothers and cousins, arak Aran, myself, my nephews I think of all of those who never came home and whose names will never be said, and they need to be.

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And if we don't know all the veterans, that we just say God bless our veterans for what they did for our country in time of need.

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Amen, amen, and I know a big part of that is your contribution to the Asian Experiences exhibit at the Carnegie Museum.

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There's actually a display that you contributed to.

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Can you tell us a little bit about that?

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Yes, when I was speaking to one of our members, he had came from Fresno, from a posted close.

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His name is Robert, he was born in a concentration camp during World War II in Arizona and he had pictures and explained what had happened.

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And I said you know, they never talk about that.

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I don't read it in history books, why.

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And I said it doesn't matter why.

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We are in the now and I said we need to do something about that, not rewrite history, but present history factual.

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So we got together and made facts and got with other family members who had pictures and stories and newspaper clippings and actually DD-214s that told the stories of these brave heroes who went there under odd things.

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They just didn't want them in the military, but they went anyway because they were Americans.

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We did the research, we went to Los Angeles Actually I went to Los Angeles and we went online which is a great thing and other families that still live here, if not here Fresno and we got all this information.

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So he put it together, he got with Gail and then they were talking about doing a thing here at the museum and I said this is great.

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I mean, everything falls into place for a reason.

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And I told him we were just doing that so that we could present it to our post, and since it was our 75th anniversary, I go.

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We cannot continue without recognizing our Nisei's.

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And he said great idea, maggie.

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So that's what we did.

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Well, it's a tremendous display and those of you listening can come down to the Carnegie Museum of Kings County at 109 East 8th Street and see the display on Fridays, saturdays and Sundays from 1 pm to 5 pm, and that goes through December 15th.

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And, margaret, I'd like to thank you for coming on the show because this event on November 11th is so important to our community and, on behalf of the community members, I'd like to thank you for all the work that you and the VFW do every day, but especially on November 11th, on Veterans Day.

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Thank you, rob, from us, the VFW here in Hanford, post 5869,.

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We want to give back to our community and we volunteer and we do these things.

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And people ask all the time why do you do that?

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You have to.

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You have to.

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If you don't, history disappears.

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And as long as you're doing that, you're allowing family members to remember those veterans who are special and who did the ultimate sacrifice.

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We have to do that.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley.

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We'll start with the clash of the claws, where Sierra Pacific took down Hanford West easily, winning 48 to nothing.

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The Golden Bear offense had things working all night long, rushing for four touchdowns and passing for two as the defense did its part, keeping a struggling Huskies offense off the scoreboard.

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Now it'll be all eyes on to next season, as neither team made this year's playoffs.

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There was more rivalry action as Hanford High headed over to Lemoore, looking to not only keep the milk can but also cap off an undefeated regular season.

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Looking to not only keep the milk can but also cap off an undefeated regular season, the Bullpups led 8-0 after the first quarter thanks to a Corday glass rushing touchdown and quickly extended that lead to 14 with a Daniel Gomez to JC Turner touchdown pass.

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In the second quarter, lamore answered with a touchdown on their next drive.

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But it was Gomez to Turner, again this time for a 51-yard touchdown, to give the Bullpups a 22-7 halftime lead.

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Daniel Gomez and Tavion Patterson connected for a touchdown coming out of the half and Lamore would answer again to make it 29-14, but neither team scored the rest of the way and the Bullpups came away with a 29-14 victory, hanford High finishes the regular season a perfect 10-0 and are now back-to-back WIL champions.

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The Bullpups are the number four seed in the Central Section 1 AA playoffs and will play host to the fifth seed, clovis Cougars at Neighbor Bowl on Friday night.

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And not only is Hanford High finding success at the varsity level, but both the JV and freshman teams capped off successful 2024 seasons with wins over Lemoore as well.

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The JV finishes their season as WIL champions with an 8-2 record and the freshman team finishes 6-3-1 and WIL co-champions.

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We'd like to cover as many sports as we can, so if you have a score report or a story idea, make sure to email HanfordInsider at gmailcom.

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I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your Hanford Insider Sports Report.

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Well, that's all the time we have for this week's show.

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Well, that's all the time we have for this week's show.

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Thanks for listening.

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Have a great week.

Hanford Insider: Community News and Veterans Day Ceremony Preview with Margaret Cardiel

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