Adorned in red, white and blue, the Veterans Memorial Community Center in Inver Grove Heights, Minn. was host to the official state ceremony recognizing Minnesota's veterans. The honorees all donning uniforms and spanning generations

Richard Jenkins was drafted into the Army during the height of the Vietnam War and as a wounded warrior, he knows what today's soldiers are going through.

“Every time a young veteran in the store or what have you, I always shake his or her hand to let them know that I appreciate them, and they realize some of the stuff that we have gone through,” he said.

It took Jenkins years to overcome his mixed feelings about his service.

“I had a lot of anger coming back, and dealing with situations that was beyond my capability,” he recalled.

As a new generation of veterans return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sen. Amy Klobuchar says it's important that we remember those who continue to fight.

“And so many times in the past -- and Vietnam is the best example -- we greeted our veterans with tomatoes. That's what citizens did. They didn't understand that you have to separate out the war from the warrior, and now I think we learned a lesson from Vietnam and our veterans are treated with much more respect, as they should be,” Sen. Klobuchar said