Veterans Day assembly celebrates freedom

The Veteran’s Day celebration at Wahkiakum High School has taken on a familiar form in recent years, with student leaders lighting a candle for each branch of service and reading essays or poems they write in Mrs. Tina Landroche’s classes.

For veterans and students alike, the highlight appeared to be the opportunity for students to personally thank veterans for their service.

As Haylee Budd’s poem “Veteran’s Day Poem,” said, “Whether they wanted to or not,/The boys of our country had to become men./They strapped on their boots, helmets, and carried their guns,/ The over looming question of fate filled their heads./Would they ever see their loved ones again?/Some of them did, Others did not./They fought for our country,/A debt that can never be repaid./That is why we give thanks to them,/On this special day.”

The line from Eli McElroy’s “Veteran’s Day” poem, “making sacrifices,/

Incomprehensible to you and me” carried the feeling for many students.

In “What It Means To Be an American,” Azery Gribskov wrote “I have read and seen documentaries and heard accounts of countries crushing their people down and walking all over them. I had to really think about that to understand and I still do not because I was raised here.”

Gribskov also took on the stereotypes of Americans as rich, fat and stupid, and ended her essay, “I love being an American I cannot imagine living anywhere else.”

In her essay, “Why I am Proud to Be an American,” Ashley Silva wrote “Without freedom, how are we supposed to chase our dreams?”

After the band played the national anthem, the assembly watched a video clip which explained the evolution of Veteran’s Day from Armistice Day, which commemorated the armistice (cease-fire) signed between the Allies and Germany in World War I, which first took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.

Another music video by Big and Rich, the “8th of November,” recounted the story of an ambush of US troops on Nov 8, 1965, in Viet Nam and a veteran who survived.

After the assembly community members present, like Sheriff Jon Dearmore and Undersheriff Mark Howie, and students like Levi Cothren, shook hands with the veterans.

Cothren enlisted into the Army on September 12 and leaves for Fort Benning, GA in July.

“He goes in a boy, and comes out a man,” said Dennis Reid. “That’s what happens.”