BATON ROUGE - East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President's veterans breakfast was held Friday morning at the main branch library ahead of Veterans Day on Monday.

Veterans, along with their families and local leaders, were in attendance to honor all of our members of the military who have served for our country.

According to Pew Research Center, about one percent of the United States population are actively serving in the military.

"So, you have less than one percent protecting the other 99 percent. That's a pretty big responsibility and fortunately we still have people willing to do that an we don't have a draft or anything like that. So that's what it means to me we need to say thank you to that group because they're pretty important," retired United States Army Maj. Gen. John Basilica said.

Basilica says serving one's country is the most respectful career.

"It's a dangerous world. There are no guarantees out there. Freedom has to be protected. Somebody has to do it. It only happens when you got people that are willing to deploy and to go and maker sure any confrontation is gonna be an away game not a home game," Basilica said.