The UNC Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) will host the annual Veterans Day ceremony at 11:11 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 11. Faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends are invited to attend the free event at the Carolina Alumni Memorial on Cameron Avenue.
A color guard representing all three UNC ROTC programs – Army, Air Force and Naval/Marine – will present the colors. Veterans in the audience will be recognized. See a list of Carolina alumni lost in war, with biographical sketches, provided by UNC’s General Alumni Association.
This year’s speaker is Brigadier General John Hort, a UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus who has held numerous command and leadership positions during his 30-year military career. He has served as the deputy commanding general–rear, while the 3rd Infantry Division was deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Before that he was an infantry brigade commander with the 3rd Brigade, 4th ID, Fort Carson, Colo., and deployed from 2007-2009 to Iraq. Hort also served in Iraq in 2005-2006 as the Army’s senior military advisor to the Iraqi 9th Mechanized Division. His other operational experiences include Operation Able Sentry in 1994 in support of the Macedonian United Nations peacekeeping mission and company commander during Operation Just Cause, Panama from 1989-1990.
Hort’s significant awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star with Valor, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and Combat Infantry Badge with star.
He attained officer commissioning from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1983 and holds advanced degrees from the University of Central Michigan and the United States Army War College.
Veterans Day, formerly Armistice Day, falls each year on Nov. 11, the anniversary of the armistice signing by the Allies and the Germans in 1918 that ended World War I. Read more about Veterans Day.
Published November 6, 2013.