PepsiCo honors veterans with ‘Rolling Remembrance’ event

By Alberto Gilman
Posted 11/9/21

As the American flag blew softly in the wind, a PepsiCo rig, guided by a police escort and the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club, made its way down 1 Pepsi Way to the crowd of people waiting for its …

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PepsiCo honors veterans with ‘Rolling Remembrance’ event

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As the American flag blew softly in the wind, a PepsiCo rig, guided by a police escort and the Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club, made its way down 1 Pepsi Way to the crowd of people waiting for its arrival.

Greg Ordway, Senior Director of Franchise & PepsiCo Valor Executive Co-Chair, oversees the “Rolling Remembrance” event. The Valor Group serves an employee resource group for the veterans at PepsiCo.

Beginning with greetings, Ordway began discussing the journey of the flag in the truck’s cabin. It has traveled over 8,000 miles from the city of Seattle. With the help of JetBlue, it got to its starting point safely before the journey began. The flag will conclude its journey at the PepsiCo world headquarters in Purchase, New York. PepsiCo driver Mike Lentz, who drove the rig into the ceremony presented the flag to Master Sergeant Eric Engstrom who led Master Sergeant Anton Kiren and First Sergeant Andrew Morales and Lentz to the podium and saluted the flag.

This year marks the sixth annual “Rolling Remembrance” relay. With the ‘Rolling Remembrance’ relay, Ordway spoke about the specific flag in the truck cab that came from overseas in Afghanistan from the soldiers that PepsiCo would send care packages to.

Fast forward, Ordway spoke about the flag sitting in a case in the office for some time and a suggestion to take the flag and see if it could make the cross country trip back in time for Veterans Day, an idea made possible with the rig and veteran drivers of PepsiCo. In the first year, Ordway said that $25,000 was raised and sent back to PepsiCo during the course of its journey. With those funds, PepsiCo partnered with Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation. This program specifically provides children of fallen soldiers college scholarships and educational counseling. “So far in the last six years, PepsiCo, through this program, has raised $1.2 million towards scholarships,” Ordway said.

Sergeant Engstrom came forward to the podium and shared his personal thanks for their support of their veterans and continued support going forward. This is the first Veterans Day week event for Senator James Skoufis’s district, who joined the list of speakers at the podium. He shared with his fellow constituents thanks for the work that PepsiCo has done for the veterans. For Skoufis, Veterans Day is special to him because the veterans during World War II that liberated his native country of Greece, allowed his family to immigrate to America and start a new life.

Tim Tenney, President and CEO of PepsiCo thanked all those who came out to support this day and this program and was presented a check from $10,000 for the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Tenney said he was “feeling pretty proud” of the ability to give back to the community, especially the veterans. Even during the pandemic, PepsiCo did not lay anyone off, Tenney said.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Lentz handed off the flag to veteran Luther Reed as he makes his travels to Albany.