City of Lockhart to host Veterans Day parade

The city of Lockhart is gearing up for what will hopefully be an annual Veterans Day parade, set to kick off at 9:30 a.m. Nov. 9 at the intersection of Guadalupe and Plum streets.
The line-up for the precession will begin to form at 8 a.m.
According to American Legion Post 41 Commander Hector Rangel, who is spearheading the event, this will be the first Veterans Day parade held in Caldwell County.
“People have tried to put on a Veterans Day parade in Lockhart and they ran into a lot of red tape with getting permits from the state,” said Rangel, noting he was able to get the parade approved by the city by arranging for it to only travel along city owned roadways.
For Rangel, who is also a member of the local VFW Post, the parade is all about celebrating past and existing veterans throughout the county.
Rangel joined the military in 1980, going through infantry training at Fort Benning in Georgia, before being assigned to the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. He was then sent to special forces detachment in Panama, where he became a bilingual instructor at School of the Americas.
Rangel was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and redeployed in 2006, where he taught Iraqi police how to manage their logistical systems in police departments in the area.
He would eventually join the National Guard, where he would assist with recovery and rescue efforts resulting from hurricane and flooding events, among others.
From 2009 to 2014, Rangel would finish his service with the National Guard while working with U.S. Border Patrol in Laredo and near the Rio Grande Valley.

For more, see this week’s edition of the Post-Register