On May 21st, Trace Adkins, Brantley Gilbert and many of other guests saluted the troops with a special evening dedicated to honoring our U.S. military at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN. Adkins and Gilbert were accompanied by Lee Greenwood, The Wild Feathers, Travis Denning and Opry Members’ Craig Morgan, Mark Wills and also the aforementioned Trace Adkins.
The show honored the troops in a special way with a grand red carpet entry to the show for any U.S. military personnel in which they were greeted at the doorway of the Opry by all of the evenings performers including Gilbert and Adkins which was a truly beautiful thing to witness such names in country music honoring their U.S. military fans that were in attendance to the Opry’s annual ‘Salute The Troops’ concert and red carpet parade. The parade was led in by 95-year-old World War II sailor Ernie Andrus into the Opry House before the evenings honorable concert. Andrus became the oldest person ever to run across America in 2016 and he is not done running yet. As Andrus has already begun yet another cross-country trek from Georgia to California in which he plans on finishing by or after his 100th birthday. Andrus is running to raise money and awareness for the LST 325 Ship Memorial in Evansville, Indiana, which is the only fully restored and operational WWII landing ship tank tour in the entire world. The Opry and the United Service Organizations (USO) also invited men and women of the U.S. military as well as their spouses, children, and parents of service members, who followed Andrus on the red carpet into the Opry House for the evening’s show, dedicated to saluting the troops and their families for their service to our nation. We even got to witness a beautiful proposal out on the red carpet during the celebrations, as Sgt. Jon Pederson, who met the love of his life Hope during his recruitment in Nashville, he took this moment to ask her to be his forever love as his wife.
Both Adkins and Gilbert are both known as big supporters of our USA military and that is vibrantly present in all of their live shows, which is why we weren’t surprised to see the two headlining the honorable evening at the Opry to salute the troops with a special performance.
The evening was full of great country music celebrating our nations finest military and their families, and we are thankful for the Opry who made the decision to have this annual event celebrating our nation and those who serve our country and keep the U.S. as land of the free and home of the brave.
Check out some photos from the event below:
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What this night is all about — honoring our heroes! ❤️? #Opry #SaluteTheTroops
Here is a video from the red carpet parade entry:
