Two Mississippi Museums honors state veterans

• The ceremony paid tribute to current and former members of the six military branches. Currently, 185,000 service members live in Mississippi.

A small crowd gathered at the Mississippi Two Museums in Jackson Friday morning for the 2025 Veterans Day Ceremony, which honored the Magnolia State’s veterans and fallen heroes.

The ceremony paid tribute to current and former members of the six military branches across the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, Navy, and Space Force.

Ret. Sergeant Major Silvester Tatum said that since Mississippi’s founding, its citizens have been members of America’s armed forces. Currently, 185,000 service members live in Mississippi, Tatum, a member of the Mississippi Veteran Affairs Board, told attendees.

During the recognition of fallen heroes part of the program, Brandon native Jason Aaron Rogers was honored for his ultimate sacrifice on April 7, 2011, while the Marine was conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The Staff Sgt. was assigned to 2nd Combat Engineer Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Rogers, like many in his era, joined the Marines after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

Mississippi National Guard Brig. General James Hankins said Rogers will be remembered as a husband and son, but also as someone who was generous with his knowledge.

His death hit his hometown of Brandon hard. Childhood friend, Brandon Winfield, told the Military Times, “The loss of Jason Rogers is going to make this world an emptier and lonelier and colder place. I could write a War and Peace-sized story of the kind of person he was. Some people have it — the room just seemed to be dizzier and brighter with him in it.”

In April 2025, Camp Lejeune named its new United States Marine Corps Engineer School (MCES) at Courthouse Bay on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune “Rogers Hall” in honor of Staff Sgt. Rogers. 

“I was with Staff Sergeant Rogers at the time of his death,” said retired U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Major Bobby Frazier, who gave remarks and was Rogers’ company first sergeant during their deployment. “As I grew up in the Marine Corps, I thought to myself, if I ever had a way to honor Jason and what he did that day, I would.” 

In 2022, while serving as the Sergeant Major of MCES, Frazier nominated Military Construction Project P1312 to be named “Rogers Hall” in honor of Rogers.

“We wanted to name the new facility after a Marine who embodied the values of teaching, training, mentoring, and most of all caring about their Marines,” said Frazier. “Someone whose reputation as an engineer was impeccable, and a Marine who put himself between imminent danger and his Marines, providing an example for all other engineers to emulate.” 

The ceremony was attended by state and local leaders, including Attorney General Lynn Fitch, Jackson Mayor John Horhn, also a veteran, and Jackson City Councilman and West Point graduate Ashby Foote.

The nation pauses Tuesday, November 11, 2025, for Veterans Day.