GLASGOW — With financial help from the Disabled American Veterans Auxiliary and other donations, the Barren County Veterans Association will hold a dinner Thursday for area veterans.

Last year, the auxiliary made its first donation, totaling $100, to the association for the dinner and decided to double the contribution this year, according to Naomi Jordan, a DAV Auxiliary member.

“We just want to try to help the locals and we knew, this way, that we’d be doing that,” she said.

Jordan said she wanted to ensure that the veterans’ meals were paid for at the annual dinner.

“In the past, they’ve been short on funds and the veterans had to pay for their own meals,” she said.

The dinner will be at the National Guard Armory on Cavalry Drive in Glasgow at 6:30 p.m., said association chairman Darrell Pickett, an Army veteran. The meal is free for veterans and $7 for other guests, he said.

Pickett said the group received donations from other people in the community that will go toward the dinner and other efforts.

“People are getting pretty generous and sending us donations so the veterans can eat,” he said.

The association goes to hospitals to hand out things like toiletries and fruit baskets to veterans and some of the donations the group has recently received will go toward funding this, Pickett said.

“This community is very patriotic because they’ve always supported our veterans,” he said.

The veterans’ dinner has been held annually for more than 30 years, with roughly 250 veterans attending in an average year.

This year’s dinner will feature a speech from Laura Phillips, who recently retired from Kentucky State Police and is a former 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Billy Houchens, a member of the association, said the event means a lot for the veterans who attend it.

“This is the day where we honor all veterans. This is to honor our veterans for what they did for our country. Without our veterans, we wouldn’t have this great country we live in.”

The dinner has great therapeutic value for the veterans who attend it because it shows that the community supports them and because it allows them to talk to other veterans with similar experiences, Jordan said.

This is especially important because many Vietnam veterans weren’t warmly welcomed back into the country when they returned from the war, she said.

Her husband of 46 years, James E. Jordan, a Vietnam veteran, rarely talked about his experiences in the war before he started attending the dinner a few years ago, she said.

“I reckon him being around the other veterans has brought all the memories back,” she said. “It’s helped him.”

— Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.