The city of Sedona and the Sedona Heritage Museum will host an annual Veterans Day Tribute and free lunch in the historic Apple Shed, 735 Jordan Road in Uptown on Tuesday, Nov. 11, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“Every year it’s a great celebration of our veterans, commemoration of their service and their sacrifice,” SHM Executive Director Nate Meyers said. “It’s just a really great community event where everybody can come together and express our gratitude for the sacrifices that the veterans in our community have made for our freedom.”
This year’s lineup of speakers includes interim Sedona Mayor Holli Ploog, Yavapai County Supervisor Nikki Check [D-District 3] and Sedona Area Veteran and Community
Outreach President Jack Ross. The 2025 keynote speaker is Richard “Skip” Daum, a retired U.S. Air Force navigator on C-5 Galaxy cargo planes and air refueling tankers, retried lobbyist and the organizer of The Artists Consortium, a local arts group.
“Right after college in ’67, I was drafted,” said Daum, who graduated from Emerson College in Boston in with a degree in English. “A friend and I had built a little shack out in the woods to write poetry like [Henry David] Thoreau when a postal worker knocked on the door and handed me my draft notice. In those days you could still choose your service, and with Vietnam going on, I figured it was either slog through swamps, go to jail, go to Canada, or pick another branch — so I chose the Air Force, and they sent me to flight school.”
Daum said he will draw on his experiences as a draftee and the challenges he went through to become a navigator and that the most important lesson he learned from service was camaraderie.
“You depend on each other — it’s life or death — but you learn trust, and you learn a system, a process, a procedure, a regimen,” he said. “After seven years of flying with other guys in normal and sometimes dangerous situations, you really learn to trust one another. It’s a team effort.”
“When they sent me to flight school, I became an instructor navigator — this was before GPS,” Daum said. “We used a compass and a sextant through the top of the cockpit, looking for stars, the sun or the moon. It was old-school navigating. When you got the declination and azimuth right, you could pinpoint your position anywhere — on the way to Hawaii, Goose Bay, Labrador, London, anywhere in the world. Everything was calculated ahead of time by brilliant people, and about every 45 minutes you’d stick your head out and find a reference star like Aldebaran to verify your position. … It was a satisfying challenge..”
“Because I’m a veteran and because I have experience, I’m going to appeal to my brethren in the audience [but] I’m going to stay clear of politics,” Daum said. “I’m a newbie to Sedona, but I’ve already been elected to the Sedona Historical Society board of trustees. I volunteer every week. I coined the phrase when I started this symposium for the sculptors: ‘Sedona means art, and art means business.’ That phrase is leading me toward another prospect for me, and that is to make Sedona stronger through art.”
A free shuttle from city of Sedona parking lots No. 1 and 5 will be in service to help attendees get to the program.
“A special feature this year will be a video dedicated to the USO, created by Terrie Frankel,” a SHM press release reads. “Frankel and her twin sister, Jennie, were Doublemint Twins, and entertained troops in Vietnam through the USO. If we’re lucky, Terrie may even bring her accordion and share a tune or two with attendees.”
Additionally be on the lookout for the Oak Creek Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution who will assemble a parade of American flags at the entrance to the museum
Another Veteran’s Day event is at the Sedona Winds assisted living community on Tuesday, Nov. 11, from 10 to 11 a.m. with the Rotary Club of Sedona Village’s annual program with a special musical performance by Sedona’s Motown singer Sammy Davis.
Visit sedonamuseum.org or call (928) 282-7038.2025
