JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 Local, state, and federal leaders gathered at the Moran Theater of the Jacksonville Center for Performing Arts to honor those who served at the Veterans Day Breakfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take care of veterans like no one else, because we have a high veteran population. Our number one employer obviously is the U.S. Navy,\u201d says Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Carrico. \u201cIt\u2019s a personal touch for me because I grew up an army brat. My dad served in the United States Army, retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. His father served in the Army, my mom\u2019s father served in the Army, so it\u2019s really just a legacy for me. I didn\u2019t serve active duty, but for here, to carry it on in a government role and make sure we take care of our veterans in this city, it\u2019s quite an honor, and so happy to be here to celebrate our veterans today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u25b6 Listen to Jacksonville\u2019s Morning News Interviews<\/a><\/p>\n The holiday means a lot to State Representative and Air Force veteran Dean Black. We were and are a military family going back many, many generations, particularly in the male line. All of the men in our family served: my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on. I served, go Air Force, and I have two sons who serve today. So it means a lot in our family, it\u2019s who we are, and it\u2019s part of our community,” says Black.<\/p>\n Congressman Aaron Bean says he wants to make sure veterans are taken care of. \u201cThey made us a promise. You know, it\u2019s an understood promise; they took care of us, they volunteered, and as a result, we will take care of them. So to make sure the V.A. is properly funded and, as I mentioned, we have so many veterans, I\u2019ve got two staff members that all they do is military affairs, veterans affairs. So any veteran that is having trouble with the V.A. or any type of military benefit, please call the Bean office and let us work for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan says, \u201cI think it speaks volumes to what we should be doing for our veterans. These are challenging times for a lot of people and I think in a city like Jacksonville, where so many of us are connected to the military community, it\u2019s just incumbent upon us to make sure our veterans are taken care of and honored. We\u2019re so fortunate to have so many of them here.\u201d<\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download our free news, weather and traffic app. And click here<\/a> to subscribe to our daily 3 Big Things newsletter.<\/p>\n \u00a92025 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla \u2014 Local, state, and federal leaders gathered at the Moran Theater of the Jacksonville Center for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[796,14845,794,28,116,118,117,795,349,14607,8599],"class_list":["post-42951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-796","tag-breakfast","tag-duval","tag-florida","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-ne-florida","tag-northeast-florida","tag-veterans-day","tag-vets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}