By Patrick Adrian [email protected]
CLAREMONT — For a second consecutive year, a handful of Unity Elementary School students brought a personal message of gratitude to military veterans at American Legion Post 29’s annual Veterans Day ceremony.
More than 50 local veterans and community members gathered in Broad Street Park on Wednesday to reflect and pay honor to those who served the United States and its people through military duty. The skies were overcast but dry and cooperative throughout the morning, in contrast to last year when the steady precipitation throughout the day forced American Legion Post 29 to hold their ceremonies indoors.
As in 2019, American Legion Post 29 invited three students from Unity Elementary School to read their personal essays about the importance of Veterans Day to the gathering: Kayla Whipple, eighth grade; Scott Hagar, seventh grade; and Krystyna Whipple, a fifth-grader and younger sister of Kayla.
“The real heroes are not the ones we see in movies or books,” Kayla Whipple read. “They are everyday people who sacrifice their lives, knowing they might never see their family again. They are the ones who know they might never be the same because of what they have seen or felt.”
“When Francis Scott Key wrote The Star Spangled Banner around 200 years ago, the last line was ‘The land of the free and the home of the brave,’” Hagar read. “Those words still stand today. Those veterans are the ones who defended our freedom, our country and rights.”
Hagar and the two Whipple sisters were among five prize-winning essay writers selected by the Unity Historical Society and American Legion Post 29 this year. Two additional students, eighth-grader Cameryn Simpson and sixth-grader Honey Miller, were also awarded though did not read at Wednesday’s ceremony.
All five students read their essays on Sunday in Unity for the Unity Historical Society’s unveiling of its new veteran memorial, a double-sided black granite monolith built upon a patio of bricks with inscriptions of the names of Unity’s veterans.
Though this was the first year of involving a contest, Unity Elementary teachers have integrated reflective writing into lessons about Veterans Day and civics for many years.
The annual project provides “a fantastic opportunity” to teach writing and a meaningful understanding of the country’s patriotic holidays, said Jennifer Thompson, the language arts and social studies teacher at Unity Elementary.
“The students always step up to the challenge,” Thompson told the Eagle Times. “They work very hard and are brave to read in front of their families and community members.”
The project was a collaborative effort overseen by Thompson, fifth-grade teacher Rebecca Vent and Suzanne Boyington, the music and arts teacher.
“Teachers did an amazing job with the students to have them work hard and understand what [this holiday] was about,” Boyington said, who incorporated patriotic music to teach students about patriotism.
This was the first year that fifth-grade students participated in the writing project, which the Unity Historical Society requested as part of their contest structure.
Unity Elementary and American Legion Post 29 have a long history of partnership. The school, which annually holds ceremonies to commemorate Memorial Day, Veterans Day and 9/11, regularly invites American Legion Post 29 members to act as flag bearers. This is the second year that American Legion Post 29 has invited Unity Elementary students to their ceremonies to share their essays.
Unity students also participated in American Legion Post 29’s Memorial Day ceremony in Broad Street Park in 2019. The Memorial Day event this year was not held due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
While the pandemic did not impede American Legion Post 29 from honoring its annual Veterans Day traditions, the veterans had to make a few concessions for public health and safety. Each year American Legion Post 29 follows their morning ceremony with a luncheon and a visit to the Sullivan County nursing home, where they replace the flag outside the facility and present the old flag to the oldest veteran in residence. This year, American Legion Post 29 limited its luncheon attendance to veterans and immediate family members and the flag ceremony at the nursing home was held outside. American Legion Post 29, which traditionally presents the replaced flag directly to the resident, had to leave the flag with the nursing home staff to present.
Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day, a holiday to commemorate the truce between the Allies and Germany to end World War II. The U.S. celebrates Veterans Day on Nov. 11 because the treaty went into effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, hence the phrase “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”
In 1954, the United States changed the day to Veterans Day to honor all people who served. In the British Commonwealth it is called Remembrance Day.
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