Chief Warrant Officer 5 Patrick Nelligan will give the keynote address at West Hartford’s Veterans Day ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026.

Submitted

Chief Warrant Officer 5 Patrick Nelligan, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired), will deliver the keynote address at the West Hartford Veterans Day Ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 11, at 11 a.m., in the Town Hall Auditorium at 50 South Main Street. The community is invited to attend.

Speakers at the Veterans Day ceremony will also include Mayor Shari Cantor and state Sen. Derek Slap. American Legion Post 96 Commander James Caley will serve as emcee, and Pastor Dana Hallenbeck will give the invocation and the benediction. Ellen Hill, a Conard High School senior, will sing the National Anthem, and Lucas French, a Conard High School junior, will perform TAPS on the bugle. Color guards from the American Legion Post 96 and the West Hartford Police and Fire Departments will also take part in the ceremony honoring veterans.

Chief Warrant Officer 5 Patrick Nelligan, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired). Courtesy photo

Cantor and Nelligan will lay a memorial wreath at the Veterans Memorial, located at the corner of North Main Street and Farmington Avenue, on Veterans Day at 10:30 a.m., prior to the ceremony.

Keynote speaker Nelligan is a veteran leader, entrepreneur, inventor, healthcare-technology professional, and community advocate whose 42-year Army career and post-service work demonstrate the power of applying military identity to civilian problem-solving.

Nelligan began his Army service in 1982 and rose from enlisted Field Artillery Soldier to Chief Warrant Officer 5. He served in Germany, Honduras, Guatemala, and Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and ultimately became the 8th Command Chief Warrant Officer of the U.S. Army Reserve, the command’s senior warrant-officer leadership role.

His ventures and community leadership have centered on practical needs: protecting equipment, improving systems, supporting veteran employment, honoring military service, helping disabled veterans access functioning care equipment, and strengthening veteran and military-family support networks, especially those struggling with PTSD and suicide. He is a graduate and longtime contributor to UConn’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans, bringing firsthand experience of the veteran-founder journey to other transitioning service members.

A Connecticut Veterans Hall of Fame inductee, his example reinforces a central principle of the Veteran Founder Blueprint: the strongest veteran-led ventures are often built not around profit extraction alone, but around a mission to solve real problems for people, communities, and fellow veterans.

CW5 Nelligan received an Associate’s Degree in Biomedical Equipment Maintenance, two Bachelor’s Degrees: one in Applied Behavioral Studies and the other in Liberal Studies, and a Master’s in Business Administration with a Health Care Concentration.

Nelligan resides in Bristol, Connecticut, with his wife, Nancy. They have three adult children: daughter Darby, son Thomas (an SMP Minute Man Scholarship recipient and Army Reservist), and son Owen.  He is also employed by the Veterans Administration, where he works as the Lead Biomedical Equipment Support Specialist (BESS) onsite at the Newington, Connecticut campus.

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