BANGOR, Maine — When Staff Sgt. Qasey Perry, a crew chief for the 101st Air Refueling Wing, walked into the Cole Land Transportation Museum on Friday, he planned to grab a veteran walking stick and go back to work at the base.
“I thought I was just coming in to get a walking stick, not that it was the 10,000th one,” Perry said standing inside the Perry Road museum wearing his uniform. “I am the 10,000th Mainer to get one of these. It’s just amazing to think about.
“It means all the more for me because the military has always been in my family,” he said. “My grandfather served in World War II and received a Purple Heart, my dad serves, my uncles serve, cousins. Getting something so many other veterans share — it’s an honor.”
World War II veteran Galen Cole, 91, who started giving out walking sticks to World War II veterans on Memorial Day 1997 and later expanded the program to include all Maine veterans, awarded Perry the wooden keepsake in front of a group of students from Mt. Blue Middle School in Farmington.
“This is a highly exciting day for the museum,” Cole said when he met Perry, 23, a Brewer High School graduate. “I dare say it equals the opening of the museum on May 1, 1990.”
The walking sticks, which are made by Peavey Manufacturing Co. in Eddington, which donated the first 600, honor Maine war veterans who served during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War and those who have served or are serving in the global war on terrorism, and are just another way for all military veterans to recognize one another.
Each stick is marked with the colors of the veteran’s service, and those who walk in the Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day parades are given a red, white and blue sticker to mark the occasion.
Perry’s stick had two stickers, one for national defense and one for the global war on terrorism.
“He’s been on one deployment, which gave me a few gray hairs,” his mother, Trish Perry of Orrington, said while her son and her husband, Master Sgt. Scott Perry, who also serves with the 101st, milled around the museum.
Their son deployed to Qatar for four months earlier this year, returning in June. Qasey Perry is an aircraft mechanic and helps prepare aircrafts for takeoff and takes care of them when they land. He also handles marshalling the aircraft onto the runway.
“Everywhere you go, they know who the MAINEiacs are — Qatar, Europe, Spain, Portugal — and they expect you to do a very, very good job because that is what their experience has been,” the younger Perry said. “It makes it more honorable.”
Perry works full-time at the Maine Air Guard base and is a business student at Husson University.
He said he heard about Cole’s walking sticks when he first joined the military and always planned to get one.
“It’s amazing. It’s totally crazy,” Perry said of getting the 10,000th souvenir walking stick.
Veterans can pick up their sticks by bringing an ID and proof of service to the Cole Land Transportation Museum on Perry Road, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily.