More than 800 people filled the Canton Memorial Civic Center on Saturday night, Nov. 7, for the annual Patriot Ball, a black-tie gala honoring veterans that drew eight Congressional Medal of Honor recipients to Stark County on the weekend before Veterans Day, The Canton Repository reported.
The ball is the annual fundraiser of The Patriot Project, a North Canton-based nonprofit founded by chiropractor Dr. Timothy P. Novelli to provide free chiropractic care to veterans, active-duty military members, their families, Wounded Warriors and Gold Star dependents, according to the organization’s own site. Novelli told The Canton Repository that 15 of the nation’s 65 living Medal of Honor recipients serve on the project’s board of directors, and that eight of them were in Canton that night.
“There are men and women who still need our care,” Novelli told The Canton Repository during the event. The Repository reported that the evening at the Civic Center was scheduled from 5 to 10 p.m. and featured dinner, live and silent auctions and entertainment, with Q92 radio host Nikolina serving as emcee.
The keynote speaker was retired Army Master Sgt. Cedric King, a Ranger and double amputee who lost both legs to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on July 25, 2012, according to biographies published by the Executive Speakers Bureau and the University of Central Missouri. Those biographies confirm that 21 months after his injury, King completed the 2014 Boston Marathon on prosthetic running blades — a story The Canton Repository said he brought to the Canton stage on Saturday.
Chad Grant, executive director of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, told The Canton Repository the ball was “really a show of community support,” adding that it “raises the right type of awareness” and that “none of our lives would be possible without them.” Grant told The Canton Repository this was his seventh visit to Canton, and that the community is part of why he does not miss the event.
The weekend began a night earlier, when M Bar in Jackson Township hosted a free public meet-and-greet on Friday, Nov. 6, with eight Medal of Honor recipients, The Canton Repository reported in a Nov. 5 preview. The Repository named the recipients taking part in the festivities as Gary Littrell, Leroy Petry, Clint Romesha, Ken David, Sammy Davis, Jim McCloughan, Don Ballard and Bob Patterson.
For some in Saturday’s crowd, the night was personal. Curtis Kirksey of Alliance, a Marine veteran who served from 1963 to 1969 and in Vietnam from 1964 to 1966, attended at the request of his daughter Ragan, The Canton Repository reported. “She’s so proud of my service. I just wish some of my brothers were here with me. We should never forget,” Kirksey told The Canton Repository.
The Patriot Project’s roots reach back to 2012, when Novelli volunteered at a HALO for Freedom event in Texas and treated more than 150 wounded veterans before founding the project on his return home, according to a National University of Health Sciences profile. The Stark Community Foundation reported the project built an all-volunteer network of chiropractors and that ball proceeds also support scholarships for veterans pursuing a doctor of chiropractic degree.
The need the project answers is documented on its own site: although a 2002 federal law made chiropractic care a permanent veterans’ health benefit, the Patriot Project says the care was added at only a limited number of VA centers at first, and active-duty families have no chiropractic coverage through TRICARE. The project’s volunteer doctors treat eligible patients without billing them, the organization says.
Jeremy Novelli, a Marine veteran and a major with the Stark County Sheriff’s Office who is Timothy Novelli’s nephew, helps with the event every year alongside his wife Shanna, The Canton Repository reported. “I just think it’s really important for the community to support veterans,” Jeremy Novelli told The Canton Repository.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: The Canton Repository’s on-scene report confirms the crowd of more than 800, the eight Medal of Honor recipients in Canton, the keynote and the weekend’s events. No fundraising total for the 2026 ball has been reported, and no date for a 2027 ball has been announced — NewsForce247 will not estimate a total the organizers have not released. Related coverage of Ohio veterans this week includes a Columbus veterans nonprofit marking 10 years of mentoring transitioning veterans.
What happens next stretches beyond one night in Canton. Veterans with service-connected disabilities, active-duty service members, their families and Gold Star dependents can sign up through patriot-project.org to find a participating chiropractor, and chiropractors can volunteer through the same site, the organization says. Stark County’s observances then culminate on Veterans Day itself, Wednesday, Nov. 11.
Photo: Niagara66, CC BY-SA