{"id":37378,"date":"2013-04-17T05:51:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T10:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=37378"},"modified":"2013-04-17T05:51:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T10:51:03","slug":"r-k-thompson-dinner-speaker-named","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2013\/04\/17\/r-k-thompson-dinner-speaker-named\/","title":{"rendered":"R.K. Thompson dinner speaker named"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance news<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The R.K. Thompson family and Van Wert Service Club announce that Lieutenant Colonel Jon Gerold will be the speaker for this year\u2019s awards banquet.<\/p>\n<p>Colonel Gerold is a Van Wert native and graduated from Van Wert High School in 1986. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1991, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army and has served for 22 years, including multiple stateside and overseas assignments.<\/p>\n<p>Colonel Gerold has served in various command and staff positions and has deployed in support of Operation Joint Guard in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He is currently assigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s awards banquet will be held Tuesday, April 30, at Vantage Career Center in Van Wert.\u00a0 The R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance Award Program was initiated 44 years ago by R.K. Thompson Jr. in honor of his father, the late R.K. Thompson Sr. Both men worked closely with young people and encouraged them to set high, but attainable, goals and then apply themselves to obtain those goals.<\/p>\n<p>The program provides cash awards for high school seniors in Van Wert County who best exhibit that character trait. The Self-Reliance Award is designed to seek out and honor seniors who \u201cdo the best with what they have,\u201d whether they are scholars, athletes,student leaders or those who must seek employment to help their family meet expenses.<\/p>\n<p>The R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance Award is sponsored by the Thompson Family Trust, through The Van Wert County Foundation, and administered by the Van Wert Service Club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>R.K. Thompson Self-Reliance news The R.K. Thompson family and Van Wert Service Club announce that Lieutenant Colonel Jon Gerold will be the speaker for this year\u2019s awards banquet. Colonel Gerold is a Van Wert native and graduated from Van Wert High School in 1986. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-01 22:10:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}