RALEIGH, North Carolina (WTVD) -- Gov. Roy Cooper delivered the 9 millionth meal for Meals on Wheel of Wake County on Wednesday to a 99-year-old World War II veteran - a woman who helped break barriers in the military and for civil rights.
"Serving our country, a veteran, but also she came back and got her master's degree and served in Saint Augustine's College, she's part of the civil rights movement," Cooper said. "She is a piece of history herself."
Millie Dunn Veasey joined the military's first all-black-and-female battalion when women were called to service in WWII - serving overseas in France and England when the war came to a close.
She also broke barriers for civil rights - organizing for the March on Washington and becoming Wake County's first female president of the NAACP in 1965.
"She always does things from the heart and just loving, loving the love of people," her niece Elsie Lundy Thompson said.
Now she's thankful for all of those who serve her.
"I'm very appreciative," Veasey said. "People have been very kind.
"When I have to get a wheelchair, to come and push me somewhere, I feel so helpless," she added. "It's - Jesus, because I've been walking, and you know all these kinds of things - and now I can't, but people are very kind."