Local veterans honor Veterans Day and Marine Corps birthday by giving back

Veterans Tony and Winnie Molnar have been reaching out and helping other veterans since they moved to Emblem.  They started hosting a Veterans Day event for their service buddies and family who would fly in for a week.  It started as just a time to drink beer, hunt pheasants, tell stories, bond and blow off steam. 

The event is a way for the Molnars to honor veterans. Because they are both Marines (there is no such thing as a “former” Marine even after retirement) they also celebrate the Marine Corps birthday with a traditional Marine ceremony at the event.  

As they became involved with the American Legion and VFW, they started inviting some of the veterans they were becoming friends with. This year they have invited even more local veterans to come out. 

When asked why they do this event, Tony replied “A lot of veterans need this. My buddies come out. They are retired but working other jobs. This is an opportunity for them to come out and decompress. They are paying for the flights, so my wife and I try to cover all the food costs while they are here. It is another way we can give back.” 

The Molnars are also helping raise money for the purchase of the new American Legion/VFW building in Greybull. 

Tony gives back as a member of the ski patrol at Antelope Butte and is a member of the county’s Search and Rescue team. He coaches his daughter’s soccer team and helps coach wrestling in addition to being a farmer/rancher family. 

They know firsthand what a veteran is. 

MILITARY SERVICE 

Tony joined the Marine Corps in 1999 as an enlisted service member While stationed in Okinawa, Japan, he met his wife Thanh, who goes by Winnie. She too was an enlisted Marine. 

He started in administration for the Marine Corps. He later became a drill instructor (DI). Later he was picked for Officer Candidate School (OCS). As an officer, he was a combat engineer at Camp Pendleton, Calif.   You may wonder what a combat engineer does. He explained, “We build stuff.” One example was pontoon bridges that tanks could be floated across the river on or a contiguous bridge across a body of water. In his 22 years with the Marines, he also went to schooling in Quantico for warfare school. 

Tony was deployed to Iraq in 2006, to Korea for 60 +/- days, then in Afghanistan in 2014. 

Why the Marines?  All his brothers were in the Corps as was a sister-in-law. 

Winnie was a Marine for 10 years, then was selected to be officer in the Navy. She served another 10 years. 

One of the hardest parts for them about being in the service was the time apart. “I deployed to Iraq April or May of 2006. I came back April of 2007. Then went to DI school, which was 3 months. Getting up at 4 a.m. in school until 10 or 11 p.m. Then you become a DI working 20 hour days, seven days a week for months on end.” 

He was a DI for 3 ½ years. While he was a DI, Winnie got selected to become an officer in the Navy. (Marines are considered a part of the Navy — something most Marines don’t always admit.) She went to Baylor University to get her master’s degree. She was gone for a year. 

When Tony was selected for OCS, he was gone for 14 months. “So, it was like four out of six years we were separated. That was rough for us. It was like relearning how to be a couple again because we were so used to making decisions on our own.” 

They didn’t have children at this time but later welcomed their daughter Madaline. She is 8 years old. 

WHY WYOMING

They were traveling before he headed out on deployment, stopped in Jackson and fell in love with Wyoming. Tony noted, “We said this is where we are going to retire.  Four years later we talked to a realtor who asked what our budget was. We told him, he started laughing and said that won’t get you anywhere within 2 ½ hours of Jackson. We had never looked east of Yellowstone or been to Cody or Greybull.” They found the home where they are living online, bought it sight unseen in 2020. They moved here in 2021 and cherish being able to be a part of this community.