The Invite

For the last couple of years, I’ve been honored to be able to go to Westridge Academy here in Greeley, Colorado and talk with the students on Veteran’s Day.

Last year was my first year and I was especially thrilled to see a work of art done by one of the art teachers. It was a painting of the U.S.S. Arizona, a painting done my Nikki Straton, the granddaughter of Arizona survivor Donals Stranton. Displayed along with a very unique artifact. In this case, the artifact was a piece of the Arizona. It was heavy, blackened, and showed the heat of the explosions and fire that destroyed the ship.

It felt very odd and humbling to touch a piece of that hallowed vessel.

This year, I got to speak with the 5th grade classes and I took an artifact from my collection. In this case an old helmet. It’s an MP helmet that was found in, of all places, a chicken coop. The owners of the property have no idea where it came from or who it belonged to. It’s in terrible shape but if I managed to decipher the worn off numbers correctly and if my research is correct, then the helmet might have been, just might have been mind you, at The Battle of Bulge.

One thing I pointed out was the helmet had once been worn by someone. Perhaps a great grandfather or a grandfather. Once, someone could point at it and say, “My father or my brother wore that.” Somehow, the family got separated from it and I’ve no way to know who it belonged to. when asked what I’d do with it, I said when I die, my collection of helmets will go to the Military Police Musuem at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.

So, I spoke about the Battle of the Bulge, but I approached it from the point of view of preserving family history. So, I told them the story my ex-father-in-law had told me on how he got the Bronze Star at that long march to Bastogne. Links to that story here.

Then I skewed into Joy Kidney and the books she’d written concerning her uncles and family during the depression, WW II, and the search for information afterwards. Joy had been good enough to send me a couple of books (she signed them of course) that I presented to one of the teachers for the school library.

I did something I’d never done before and that was to record it. I have to admit, my equipment wasn’t up to the task (they had some Christmas lights for instance on the wall and every time they flashed, the camera went out of focus for a second. The sound quality isn’t the best and even in post-production, I could only do so much to enhance it and delete noise.

So, with my apologies, I’m including it for your view pleasure. Like I said, I’ve a way to go before that’s perfect technology for me. Apologies.

Link is click on the picture for video.

After the talk, we were all invited down to the gym where the students sang for us and generally, honored us. it was totally cool.