Bruce Lee Salisbury has a reputation for being stubborn. He first demonstrated that in 1945 at the age of 15 when he joined the service after his mother refused to allow him to play football in high school. He retired from the Air Force as a master sergeant in 1966.

Since he had not finished high school, Bruce started college studies at the San Juan Branch in Farmington, along with his wife Dorothy. They had three children in school; each had a job and a burning desire to finish their educations. Dottie and Bruce graduated in 1979. His degree was through the College of Arts and Sciences; hers, the College of Agriculture and Home Economics.

In 1998, a diagnosis of lung cancer forced him to stop working. During his extended rehab process, he began working on the project to memorialize friends and family members either killed or gone missing while fighting for America. His goal: designate a mountain peak as Mount KIA/MIA that could become a place where families and friends journey to remember lost loved ones.

When Bruce started his quest, he attempted to have one of 33 mountains (within Colorado) with the name Sheep Mountain, renamed, but met with resistance. So, he looked for a suitable peak that was without a designated name figuring there would be no real reason for refusal. He was right; there was no real reason for refusal, but plenty of resistance just the same. One of the biggest objections to overcome was presented by the Bureau of Land Management in July of 2005. They voiced concern about naming a feature with a U.S. Military commemorative subject matter, in the midst of many features commemoratively named after Native Americans. Andrew Cowell, a linguist who specializes in Native American languages, stated that the name "KIAMIA" could be construed and possibly misrepresented as a garbled Ute name.

Not one willing to accept ‘No’ for an answer, Bruce contacted Thomas Givon, Distinguished Professor (emeritus) of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of Oregon, who had worked for the Southern Ute Tribe for 10 years as the founding director of the Ute Language Program. That language is complex but it was Givon’s opinion that Kiya-miya-vat is a rather appropriate name for a mountain that would honor Ute, and all veterans.

A warrior, once departed, crosses to "the other side," a place often described as one where a person may walk about in peace, without care, happy; in other words, " a place where people walk about laughing." Final approval came first from the Bureau of Land Management in 2005 and the US Forest Service in 2006. Mt. KIA/MIA is an 11,282 ft summit in the Sawatch Range in north-central Saguache County, CO, close to Marshall Pass, from which one can see the mountain close-up.

With humble beginnings in its founder’s garage, the group focuses on sending care packages of food, as well as comfort and entertainment items, to troops serving overseas. Since its inception in November 2004, the organization has grown tremendously, David Whitten, Packages From Home’s marketing director said.

“I never realized that I’d be standing here today in front of a center that’s 3,500 square feet and sends 2,500 care packages a month,” he told the group of about 50 gathered for the ceremony. “This is all from a mother’s labor of love.”

Kathleen Lewis founded Packages From Home while her son, Army Sgt. John Christian Lewis, was serving in Iraq. She began by shipping 25 to 30 packages. As the number of donations and, consequently, packages grew, so did the need to find a home more permanent than volunteers’ garages.

The search led them to Phoenix Memorial Hospital, which has provided the group a facility with a one-year lease. “Lease,” however, is a relative term since the group is incurring no cost for the use of the building, Whitten said. Renewing the lease for a second year, and perhaps longer, also is possible.

“I see us here for a long time,” Whitten said.

That’s a good thing for the group that now has space to sort and pack all its donations in the same building, Lewis said. She added that it’s also good for those who work with Packages From Home. “It is good for your heart,” she said. “It’s good for your soul, and ultimately, it’s very good for the United States of America.”

Retired Army Lt. Col. Dawn Lake vouched for the fact that Packages From Home is a good thing for servicemembers as well.

“I was one of the lucky ones. There were lots of people who served there who did not have family,” she said. “So when you do send a package, it’s very possible that someone’s getting a package who perhaps never got one, and if it were not for you, they would not get one.”

Lake was a beneficiary of Packages’ efforts while she served in Afghanistan, and though she had a sizeable support system back home, she still appreciated getting those packages. That included the packages of “girly things,” which she said she never had time to use. She did, however, find they had a significant value in other ways.

“In this box was a pair of pink flip-flops with purple plastic flowers on them, and they were quite ‘not military’ to put it mildly,” she said, chuckling about the reaction she surely would have gotten from her male counterparts had she worn them to the shower tent.

“What occurred to me when I looked at those and this whole package of really lovely things was that I could give them to the women of Afghanistan,” Lake said. “To see the look on the faces of the women, the children and the parents of those children in the villages that we went out to … you talk about winning the hearts and minds.”

Army Sgt. Arthur Walker agreed that getting a delivery from Packages From Home meant a lot, and the packages that included something for the local children were extra special.

“Just being able to give out candy and stuff to kids, we always felt that kept our area a little bit safer,” Walker said. “On behalf of all the soldiers over there, I want to say thank you.”

Roxie Merritt, a retired Navy captain who now works for Public Affairs in the Pentagon, also offered the group praise on behalf of the America Supports You program.

“Everything you’re doing is so important to our troops,” she said. “You are supporting the finest military men and women in the history of this nation.”

The ceremony started with the presentation of the colors by a Marine Corps color guard and Jordan Leigh’s performance of her musical tribute to the troops, “Soldier I Thank You.” It concluded with guests breaking in the new facility by filling care packages for the troops.

“It’s the most exhausting, but most rewarding, job I’ve ever had,” Peg Gildersleeve, a Packages From Home regular volunteer, said as she instructed new packers on how to fill every bit of space in a care package.

In the new book, "We Are Soldiers Still," Galloway and Moore explore their relationships with 10 American veterans of the 1965 battle at Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam, along with Lt. Gen. Nguyen Hu An, who commanded the North Vietnamese Army troops. Galloway was awarded a Bronze Star for valor for his actions then, a rare honor for any journalist.

Galloway is a frequent columnist at E&P. He covered at least seven wars after Vietnam and recently retired at Knight Ridder/McClatchy. In a note to me this week, he described Chapter 12, titled "On War," a "distillation of our combined 75 plus years of firsthand experience of wars and warriors and offers some lessons applicable to today."

In a pre-publication review, Publishers Weekly observed: "It would be a monumental task for Moore and Galloway to top their classic 1992 memoir… But they come close in this sterling sequel." Kirkus Reviews: "A worthy and wise successor to one of the best books ever about combat in Vietnam."

The publicity release explains: "Traveling back to the red-dirt battlefields, commanders and veterans from both sides make the long and difficult journey from old enemies to new friends. After a trip in a Russian-made helicopter to the Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands, with the Vietnamese pilots using Moore’s vintage U.S. Army maps and Galloway’s Boy Scout compass to guide them, they reach the hallowed ground where so many died….As darkness falls, the unthinkable happens—the authors and many of their old comrades are stranded overnight, alone, left to confront the ghosts of the departed among the termite hills and creek bed.

"Moore and Galloway combine gritty and vivid detail with reverence and respect for their comrades. Their ability to capture man’s sense of heroism and brotherhood, their love for their men and their former enemies, and their fascination with the history of this enigmatic country make for riveting reading. With sixteen pages of photos, tributes to departed friends and loved ones, and General Moore’s reflections on lessons learned throughout his military career, We Are Soldiers Still puts a human face on warfare in a way that will not soon be forgotten."

According to a recent story in CNN.com news, Hoyt had rarely spoken about that day in 1945, but he recently opened up to a journalist.

"There were thousands of bodies piled high. I saw hearts that had been taken from live people in medical experiments," Hoyt told author Stephen Bloom in a soon-to-be-published book called "The Oxford Project."

"Mr. Hoyt, as a young man, saw unspeakable horrors when he was one of the soldiers to discover the Buchenwald concentration camp, and those are experiences as a country and a world we can never forget.

"You think back on a young man 19 years old and to have the experience that he had," Geren said, his voice dissolving before ever finishing his thought.

The discovery of Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945, began the liberation of more than 21,000 prisoners from one of the largest Nazi concentration camps of World War II.

Read the full CNN.com news account of James Hoyt here.

Soldiers like Hoyt are to be remembered forever. They have seen first hand the absolute horror of war. Death at its worst. This is what war is really like.

Never allow our heroes to pass without a remembrance. A memorial. A small token of love and thanks.

James carried this weight on his shoulders for all these years so that new generations would remember how bad war is. So they could understand that you avoid war until there is absolutely no choice left whatsoever. Then, you go in and do what ever it takes with all the resources you have. You make it swift. You make it just. You make it end. You make sure that the people left are allowed to live in freedom. Free to make their own decisions. Free from the terror of dictators and terrorists and bullies. Free to live and grow and help others to be free.

Thank you James Hoyt for all that you saw and did for all of us.