A Message from our Board President
Greetings fellow JAYHAWK Soldiers, Family Members, and TEAMMATES!
It’s certainly hard to believe that Thanksgiving is around the corner; I hope that you and yours are starting to get ready for a wonderful and bountiful family feast! Your VII Corps DSVA Board of Directors has been planning our 34th Anniversary Reunion Weekend and we are proud to announce that we are returning to the Washington D.C. area to gather again this year! We will assemble in Arlington, VA from 13-16 February 2025 and are working with the Military District of Washington (MDW), Joint Base Myer – Henderson Hall, and the staff of the Crystal Gateway Marriott to put together a magnificent weekend for all. We are excited to be able to see you all in order to make new memories while we celebrate the 34th anniversary of our coalition’s liberation of Kuwait and honor the memory of the 111 VII Corps Soldiers who gave, as President Lincoln described, “the last full measure of devotion” during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Our base of operations will be the Crystal Gateway Marriott (in Arlington, VA). The room rate is a very reasonable $159 per night and includes: breakfast for one or $173 which includes breakfast for two, complimentary WIFI, a complimentary shuttle from Reagan National Airport, and a Fitness Center. The hotel address is 1700 Richmond Highway, Arlington, VA 22202 (the entrance is actually on S. Eads Street). As in the past, our Ops Center will be operational in the hotel at 1600 on Thursday and remain operational until Sunday at/about 1200. The cost for the entire weekend’s events (including bus transportation for the events away from the hotel) is only $150 per person.
We have kept the additional day on the front end of the weekend. We’ll use this day for a visit to the National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir in the morning and visit Arlington National Cemetery in the afternoon, where our DSVA leadership will conduct a Wreath Laying Ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and we will lay wreaths at the graves of two or our VII Corps Soldiers who did not return home with us. We will also hold our popular VII Corps DSVA Gulf War Veterans Forum again this year where we join forces with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in order to provide information and real-time responses to Veterans’ questions and concerns. During the forum, VA officials from Veterans Health Administration (VHA) & Veterans Benefit Administration (VBA) will address our membership on current issues important to Gulf War Veterans and conduct a Q&A session with those in attendance. A draft schedule for the entire weekend is on this page.
Our speakers for this year include two truly great Americans who have served our Army and our Nation quite proudly for many years. COL (Ret) Eugenia “Gene” Thornton (wartime Deputy Commander, 7th Personnel Group) will provide the Memorial Ceremony Comments and LTG (Ret) Robert Wilson (wartime Commander, 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division), will be the guest speaker at the dinner; their bios will be on the website soon.
You can register immediately for the events by clicking the link below. Hotel reservations can also be made by clicking the link below the hotel photo. Additionally, our sponsorship link is available for you too; if you’re interested in helping sponsor any of the events for the 34th Anniversary Reunion Weekend, please click the link to sign up. An easy and moderately priced way to help with sponsorship is to become a “JAYHAWK Sponsor” for $500. You can register to be a “JAYHAWK Sponsor” at the registration site as you’re purchasing your dinner tickets. We hope you’ll consider this affordable way to help make the 34th Anniversary Reunion Weekend the best one ever!
Let us know if you have any questions or comments; we can be reached at viicorpsdsva@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you in February!
JAYHAWK!
v/r rado
MARK A. RADO
COL, USA Retired
President,
VII Corps DSVA
REGISTRATION
Click the link below to register for the whole reunion weekend or just the Annual Dinner. You can also find sponsorship sign up through this link. A more detailed sequence of events for the weekend will be posted in February.
Our History
When Iraq invaded Kuwait and refused to obey United Nation’s resolutions, VII Corps became the first of the forward deployed Corps to be redeployed to another theater. There the VII Corps faced, and mastered, numerous challenges after arriving ready for combat in Saudi Arabia. This is our story and we will not forget.
