Most of the parades, ceremonies and other celebrations marking Veterans Day are over for another year, but Latisha Koetting has made it her mission to ensure that U.S. military veterans receive the honor they deserve 365 days a year.
That’s been a tall order these past 20 months for the staff of the Missouri Veterans Home in Warrensburg, where she is supervisor of volunteer services.
“Our veterans stood on the front lines for us,” said Koetting, a member of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Sedalia, Missouri. “During the pandemic, we got to be on the front lines for them. We got to say, ‘We’re locking arms and standing strong and doing everything we can to protect you like you protected us.'”
In honor of her efforts to honor veterans and help make their lives better, Koetting was chosen to be the grand marshal of this year’s Sedalia Veterans Day Parade Nov. 13.
“I don’t know what they’re honoring me for!” she said. “I’m the one who’s lucky enough to work in in a place where it’s Veterans Day every day.”
Koetting considers the residents and her co-workers at the Veterans Home to be her second family.
“This is a second home … and it’s their home,” she said. “You want them to see you and engage with you and feel comfortable.”
She works with the Veterans Assistance League on fundraisers to help pay for activities for the home’s residents.
“Those are things that enhance the lives of our veterans — everything from bingo to Friday happy hour,” she told The Catholic Missourian, the newspaper of the Diocese of Jefferson City.
She also carves out plenty of time for visiting each resident, especially since volunteers haven’t been allowed into the home since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared by the World Health Organization.
“My brain doesn’t shut off,” she said. “The veterans are my inspiration. Anything I can do to enhance their lives, I’ll jump right up and try to figure it out.”
She is convinced that this is where God wants her to be.
“I love that I can make a difference every day,” she said. “I never have to question that. I know I am making a difference.”
Koetting has four children, ages 19 to 32, with her husband, Chris.
She comes from a family of veterans, including her grandfather, who served during World War II.
“I was not smart enough in my younger years to sit down with my grandfather and ask him about his time in the service,” she said. “I always thought, ‘I’ll ask about it next time.'”
Only after he died did she realize what she had missed out on.
She was working as the newsroom clerk for the Sedalia Democrat newspaper in 2000 when the staff started planning its Veterans Day coverage. She suggested placing a notice in the paper, asking local World War II veterans to submit their recollections, along with then-and-now photos of themselves.
“We had so much response, we wound up running six stories in that paper, and then one every week for three months,” she noted.
She eventually asked for there to be a weekly “Veterans Page” in the paper.
She augmented the veterans’ stories from the paper’s nine-county readership area with news from the American Legion and combat veterans and with reports on people entering basic training, embarking on overseas deployments and receiving promotions.
“My favorite thing was doing those veterans stories,” she said. “Looking at the pictures and hearing their voices and listening to their stories and hearing back from them after we printed them. It was so cool!”
After 13 years of coordinating the Sedalia Democrat’s “Veterans Page,” she learned the supervisor of volunteers at the Veterans Home retired, so she sent in her resume. She was offered the position, accepted it and told her friends: “I’m finally doing what I feel I’m being called to do.”
She pours herself into her work. “Everything I do goes back to enhancing their lives,” said Koetting, who believes veterans inspire her in every way to “be my better self.”
Veterans Day is now her favorite holiday “because I get to celebrate them and show them how special they are,” she said.
Koetting’s father was a U.S. Army vet. He died in 2019 and “he’s still one of my biggest inspirations,” she stated. “I feel him every day in what we do.”
She never forgets that veterans are in God’s hands.
“I always pray for strength for them. …”I pray for courage for them … for peace, because some of them are struggling,” she said. “Some of them saw things that we have no idea about. It’s haunting.”
“They did what they had to do,” she noted. “But some feel that because they did what they had to do, they won’t be forgiven. They all have goodness in their hearts. They all fought and were scared and did their best.
“And I pray for them to know that they’re loved and cared about and will not be forgotten,” she said.
Koetting had some advice for people who have a veteran in their life — to learn their story: “Pay attention. … Make the time to sit down and ask the questions you want the answers to. If you don’t ask now, you may wind up never knowing.”
Nies is editor of The Catholic Missourian, newspaper of the Diocese of Jefferson City.
