San Rafael Honors Veterans

San Rafael commemorated Veterans Day in grand fashion this morning as a crowd well into the hundreds packed  the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium.

The annual event featured a presentation by Emmy award-winning documentary producer Thomas Bird, a Mill Valley resident who served with distinction in the U.S. army in 1965-66.

Bird co-produced the HBO documentary “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam,” for which he also garnered Ace and Peabody awards.

Bird founded the New York City-based nonprofit Vietnam Veterans Ensemble Theatre Company and the nonprofit Walking Point Foundation to help veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts immerse themselves in the arts.

Bird's family has a long history of participation in the military that traces its roots to Virginia, where ancestors fought in the American Revolution.

Bird's father volunteered to serve in World War II after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. He fought in the horrific Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate Mauthausen, a Nazi death camp in Austria where approximately 95,000 were killed.

The gathering included a remembrance of John Rauschkolb, a San Rafael man who was serving aboard the USS West Virginia during the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Rauschkolb died of a heart attack earlier this year. He was 92.

Bird honored the role of family members of those who've served in the military during this morning's gathering.

"Behind every veteran who serves there is a family, mothers, fathers, wives, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, grandparents, in-laws," he said.

Bird noted the importance of commemorating veterans amid a steady decline in participation in the military in the United States since World War II, when about 12 percent of the population served.

"What's really ironic to me is the truth in the statement 'never have so many owed so much to so few,' " he said.

The gathering was followed by an outdoor ceremony in an adjacent parking lot where wreaths were laid at the foot of memorial statues on Avenue of the Flags to honor fallen comrades. Cadets from the House of Steel gym in San Rafael, led by Lt. Gregory Allen (USMC, Ret.), participated as a color guard and drill team.

Vintage vehicles from the World War II US Military Vehicle Museum in San Rafael were displayed adjacent to the outdoor ceremony.