Local students line the streets to greet the ride as it travels through Arkansas.
If you ask the American Legion Riders who participate in them, one of the highlights of the Legacy Run is when schoolchildren come out along the route en masse to cheer on the motorcycles as they pass.
That again was the case during Day 3 of the ride on Tuesday, when students from both the Fountain Lake School District in Hot Springs and the Malvern School District lined the sides of the street to welcome the ride as it headed to Malvern for a lunch stop. A similar effort took place when city residents and students at Malvern’s two other schools provided a cheering line as the ride left lunch and headed toward Louisiana.
“The reception with the kids was wonderful. The police force just took us right on in, the Boys Club was great. The food was great,” said Gaynell “Gigi” Bullock, a member of American Legion Auxiliary Unit and Chapter 265 in Hummelstown, Pa. “But what warmed my heart was all the children. It gave me goosebumps.
“My son’s a disabled veteran, so when I see those kids, I think of him when he was little. He didn’t know anything about what The American Legion was when he was little. But (the schools’) support, encouragement (and) education about us is the most important. And they’re getting exposed to it early, which is good.”
Malvern Elementary Vice Principal Catherine Watson organized getting around 450 students to stand along West Moline Street as the ride pulled into the Boys and Girls Club of Malvern and Hot Spring County. “The American Legion supports students, and we wanted to make sure we supported The American Legion,” she said. “The kids were amazed at so many (Riders). They were excited.”
Watson said she made sure the students knew for whom they were cheering and supporting.
“This is the first full week of school, and our students have learned about The American Legion through a PowerPoint that we created so they would know more about what (the Legion does) in their volunteer work,” Watson said. “It went over who The American Legion is as an organization, who joins The American Legion, who they help. I learned a lot through research, and I wanted the students to know how much and how important The American Legion is.”
Calling All Riders. Late Tuesday afternoon, the ride made a stop at Duck Commander in West Monroe, La. The headquarters of the Robertson family’s hunting and outdoor recreation company made famous in the A&E series “Duck Dynasty”, staff there handed out free water and opened the facility and provided free museum tours showing the history of both the company and the TV show. Each ride participant also was given their own duck call.
Legion Riders were greeted by a video message from Si Robertson, who retired from the U.S. Army in 1993 and served in the Vietnam War. “Thank you for serving our nation,” Robertson said in the message. “You all are my heroes. You always have been. You always will be. Thank you very much for wearing our uniform and serving this great nation of the United States of America.”
Jeffrey Kent, Duck Commander’s COO of Duck Companies, said the decision to host the Legacy Run stop was an easy one. “For us, we love supporting our veterans and veteran organizations,” he said. “The Robertson family and Duck Commander have always been passionate about supporting veterans in any way we can. So when The American Legion, which we’ve worked with in the past, reached out, we were so excited to be able to work with them.
“We just thought it was a great opportunity to show a little bit of who we are and some things that we’ve done. Part of the tour shows a lot of the veteran causes and things that we’ve done. We would do it any time. We love The American Legion. It’s such a respectable organization.”
One of the Riders who toured the museum was Alabama Legionnaire Leslie Opsal, a member of American Legion Post 199 in Fairhope who is riding side by side with her husband, fellow U.S. Air Force retiree Dennis. “This is very cool for me, because our youngest daughter was really big into ‘Duck Dynasty’ about 12 years ago, so we watched a lot of the episodes. So we had a connection with the Robertson family. So when we found out we were coming here it was pretty exciting.
“I had no idea this facility was this robust. The museum part was very cool. It was just kind of neat to see some of the history of the family. Being able to see some of the things I remember seeing on TV many years ago.”
On her third Legacy Run, Opsal said stops like the one at Duck Commander and Monday’s at the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge make each year unique.
“The neat thing I like … is that every year has been something different,” Opsal said. “The first year we did a lot of veterans’ memorials and things like that. The second year it just seemed like we did a lot more advanced, technical riding. This is just completely different again.
“But what we do is for the veterans, and it was really cool to see the veteran’s display that Uncle Si had to make that connection with us as veterans.”
Total Growing. Thanks to an early morning donation of $60,115 from The American Legion Department of California, the total raised so far for the Veterans & Children Foundation now sits at more than $402,000
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