Remembering Our Vets

11-11-11

Students wrote letters of gratitude instead of reading on 6th period ... I got some silly ones, some partial ones, and some very good ones. Yes, we're doing the "Operation Writehome" letters as part of a project. I just didn't write the grant to get money from Sunset alumni to buy the suupplies we need to create cards. We even had a few letters to faculty members who've served -- and the Sunset Purple Marching Machine led the Veterans Day parade in Dallas. I hope someone took pictures; I was stuck in #339.

At the end of the day, Coach Stirman and I discussed our dads' involvement in WWII. His dad fought in the Pacific front; his troops arrived at the front just about the time the Japanese gov't surrandered. My dad fought in the European front with the Timberwolves under General Terry Allen. They went in D-Day plus 90 and fought their way into Germany, where my dad was wounded by shrapnel and sent back to the States to recuperate. Sharon's dad fought too; his name is listed on the Sunset roster next to the Registrar's office ... Our building -- just like North Dallas -- has many plaques that commemorate teachers & students who passed through the double doors on Jefferson Boulevard. Unfortunately, the portraits of the Honor Society students on the third floor were taken down during construction; I hope they find a hallway where they can be displayed again ... and that Sunset doesn't choose to forget its past just because the students are a different ethnic group from the ones who currently go there. They keep bucking to add black too the official colors -- so far, they haven't succeeded. I suspect the alumni would never agree to that break in tradition.

Here's a virtual toast to our American heroes, past and present: the thanks of a grateful nation.