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Students explore Veterans Day

Klint Lowry/SUNCOAST

Members of VFW Post 10167 of Holiday tell students at River Ridge Middle School about their various war experiences during a visit Monday to accept the students' Veterans Day gift of a paper link American Flag.

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: November 13, 2009

Updated:

NEW PORT RICHEY - In countless classrooms in countless schools, students participated in countless lessons and projects this week in observance of Veterans Day.

River Ridge Middle School teacher Barb Gilbo's special needs students were no exception, the only difference being their relatively simple Veterans Day project may have left them with memories they can honor for years to come.

On Monday, 10 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10167 paid the class a visit to accept an American flag made from paper chain links, and to give the students a better understanding of what being a veteran and Veterans Day are all about.

"We came up with this last-minute," Gilbo said. She hadn't really planned on doing a Veterans Day project. Actually, the focus had been on Thanksgiving and what to give thanks for during the month of November. The classroom discussion drifted toward holidays in general, and how this thing called Veterans Day was also this month.

"We found they really didn't know that much about Veterans Day," Gilbo said. As can happen even to educators, sometimes you just assume kids already know about something; that they picked it up somewhere before, so it never gets taught.

Some of the students thought the holiday had something to do with veterinarians. Others knew it had something to do with soldiers, but they thought it was for those who are serving right now. Gilbo, along with instructional assistants Arie Diamantoulos and Claudia Levesque, realized that they stumbled off the lesson plan and into an opportunity for a history and civics lesson.

"It just took on a whole life of its own," Diamantoulos said.

They began by explaining that Veterans Day is in honor of those who have served in the past. For the sixth- through eighth-grade students, American troops have been fighting overseas pretty much as far back as they can remember. It was a curious concept to hear how there had been several other wars that started and ended all through our history.

With all the talk of soldiers and sacrifice, they decided to have the class do something for the holiday. Back in 2002, the school had made a large paper chain American Flag for the one-year observance of the 9/11 attacks. They decided to do something similar - on a smaller scale - but with a different twist.

While the flag was accurate in its dimensions and details like the numbers of stars and stripes, with the concepts of veterans and Veterans Day fresh on their minds the students decorated the links that made up the white stripes of the flag with personalized messages to those who've served, turning the flag into one big thank-you card of sorts.

All they needed was a recipient. Harvey Wilcox, commander of VFW Post 10167, in Holiday, accepted their invitation. The post takes pride in its community involvement, and always welcomes the chance to share their knowledge and pass on their patriotism to young people, Wilcox said.

Even though they knew the veterans were coming, the students were a bit awestruck when they came back to class after lunch on Monday to see Wilcox and nine of his fellow post members in full VFW uniforms waiting for them.

One by one, the veterans introduced themselves and where they had served - Iraq, Vietnam, Korea. One World War II vet was a Pearl Harbor survivor; another had been at the Battle of the Bulge.

The children had come up with some questions for the veterans, and they were fascinated by the answers they got about what it was like to serve in the military, what were the fun parts, what were the scariest.

There were some laughs, like when the veterans talked about the food or when they tried to find age-appropriate answers to what they did for recreation.

Other times, you could hear a pin drop as one soldier recounted how 200 men in his unit were killed one freezing night when they were ambushed in their sleep, or when another told about seeing children in the Dominican Republic have to pick through a garbage dump just find something to eat.

With each story, the students saw more than a group of old men in cool uniforms.

They got a sense of what those uniforms symbolize, a better sense of what the flag they made symbolizes and something to remember in years to come when Veterans Day rolls around.

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