Monday's Internet Edition, May 12, 2008.
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“It made me feel good,” Lomax said of receiving the Certificate of Appreciation, the President’s Call to Service, and other awards that were presented to her during a Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary meeting that was held at the medical center on May 6. “I knew nothing about this when I went to the meeting, so I was really surprised.”
Lomax joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary in 1951. Her husband at the time, Charles Batten, a veteran of World War II, was a VFW member.
The Thomasville High School alumnus was working at Roses 5 & 10, when she began volunteering at the Salisbury hospital in June of 1955. She and her fellow VFW Auxiliary members began hosting parties at the hospital for the veterans who were patients there.
“For years I took different types of entertainment to the hospital for the people staying there to enjoy,” Lomax said. “We’d collect Valentine cards at the schools and give them to the veterans at the hospital on Valentine’s Day. We also had a Fall Festival and Halloween celebrations. Some of the patients told us that we did more for them than the doctors.”
Lomax and her fellow auxiliary members participated in other projects at the schools besides Valentine collections. She and her fellow members would distribute flags, pencils and other items to the local school children, while she made sure they understood what the war veterans had done for them. For many years she was a familiar figure in downtown Thomasville as she sold poppies in order to raise money for her patriotic auxiliary.
“I used to know everybody in Thomasville,” she said.
Eventually the Thomasville chapter of her auxiliary merged with the Lexington chapter to become the Davidson County Chapter of the VFW Auxiliary. She served as its president in the mid-1980s. In 1984 and again the following year, she was named Chapter President of the Year at the state Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary meeting, held at the old Holiday Inn Four Seasons in Greensboro.
Her professional career changed to textile manufacturing and she worked for Mendenhall Hosiery and High Point Sewing Upholstery, from which she retired from in the late 1980s after her husband died. In 1997, she married Milton Lomax, a disabled veteran of Word War II. She then joined the Disabled American Veterans Auxiliary. Her second husband died in 1999.
Now 79, Lomax would like to see more young volunteers at the hospital, like she was when she began volunteer work there in 1955.
“A lot of volunteers at the VA hospital in Salisbury are getting some age on them,” Lomax said. “We need some new volunteers, and we would appreciate anybody who would come over and help.”
Lomax also appreciates the sacrifices members of our country’s armed forces have given over the years and looks forward to Memorial Day each year.
“Memorial Day means a lot to me,” Lomax said. “It makes me think of all the veterans who served to help us keep a free America. If it weren’t for them, where would we be today?”
Staff Writer Kevin Reid can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 230, or at reid@tvilletimes.com.