Veteran gives life advice to assembly

The Hill City community came together Tuesday to celebrate and honor America’s veterans.

The program was hosted in Gins’ Gym and featured choral and band performances, a guest speaker, poetry readings and a presentation of quilts to honored veterans in the Hill City community.

This year’s guest speaker was chief Dan Richer, who is retired from the United States Air Force.

Richer shared what he learned in the service to those in attendance as pieces of life advice.

He wore combat fatigues as he spoke.

“Most guests come in their dress blues and greens all decorated up,” he said. “I wanted to let everyone know what this looked like 20 years ago.”

Richer then asked the wives of servicemen to stand up and be recognized.

The wives, he said, are the true heroes. They keep the family together while their husbands are out serving.

He then launched into his advice for those in attendance.

“If you don’t invent yourself, someone else will,” he said. “You have to develop who you are and then stick with it.”

In life, people face a lot of pressure to define themselves, he said. People need to make the decision of who they are or who they are going to be.

If they don’t do it, someone else will do it for them, he said.

He then launched into his next point.

“I learned more from my mistakes than I did through education,” he said. “Don’t be afraid to make a mistake.”

When people make mistakes, they learn from them and grow from them, he said. They carry the mistake with them as a reminder to grow from the mistake.

People need to study their mistakes, particularly the thinking and actions that went into making the mistake.

People become wiser from admitting they made mistakes, he added.

“You can’t go through life blaming your mistakes on others,” Richer said. “You can’t blame anyone else.”

His next point, too, dealt with learning.

A day where one doesn’t learn anything is a wasted day, he said.

“I’m 68 years old now, I haven’t spoken to a crowd this size in 20 years, and I’m nervous,” he said.

He addressed the young people, saying they need to spend their time learning rather than playing video games.

His next point had to do with serving others.

“Life without servitude is a life wasted,” he said. “We need to find something or someone to serve…be it the military, police force, church or school. If you don’t serve, you’ve wasted your life.”

He pointed to an example in his own life.

Both Richer and his wife have large families. When Richer’s son died, the families needed a place to stay in Hill City. It was in winter and many of the hotels were closed.

The Peters family — who at the time were running the Best Western — opened up their hotel to the families and didn’t charge anyone.

That is a debt, Richer said, that he is constantly tying to pay back, but is an action that he said he can never repay.

“Some day in your life something is going to happen that you can’t repay,” he said. “So you need to pass it on.”

His next piece of advice is that every American needs to spend time in a third world nation. He said doing this would make Americans realize how lucky they are.

“I don’t care what your political persuasion is,” he said. “This is the greatest country in the world.”

Richer then told the crowd his next piece of advice: don’t be too proud.

It is OK to take pride in what one has done, he said, but don’t be boastful about it or brag about the accomplishment. He said it is because of this he doesn’t share war stories.

“If you do something you’re proud of…you don’t need to run around bragging about it,” Richer said.

His next point focused on freedoms.

The freedoms that each American enjoys come from God, he said, not the government.

Sometimes it’s good that the government takes rights away, he said, such as murdering people.

Everyone is scared in combat, Richer said, which led him to his next point;  it’s OK to be afraid, but it is what someone does when they are afraid that defines them.

“Those people (who operate under fear) are called leaders,” he said. “Leadership has nothing to do with your rank.”

People need to have confidence in themselves, he said.

His final point was in a fight there are no rules.

“There is no such thing as a war atrocity,” he said. “War is an atrocity.”