Before They're Gone

From a June 6, 2006 Washington Post article entitled "Surviving Voices Bearing Witness: WWII History Alive at Rocky Run School":

"Students at Rocky Run Middle School set out to answer some questions about World War II yesterday. What was life like in a Jewish ghetto? How were prisoners of war treated? What kind of music did U.S. soldiers listen to back then?

"But students at the Fairfax County school didn't turn to history books for their assignment. They talked to more than 40 people who lived the war experience -- veterans, concentration camp survivors, Japanese Americans held in U.S. internment camps and others....

"The school's World War II Oral History Day project began a few years ago when one student's grandfather, a veteran, visited Jamie Sawatzky's history class. The next year, with help from the National Archives, family members and friends, Sawatzky found about 15 people to share their stories with his students. The program has grown each year....

"At a table in the school library, Thomas Miller, who served as a U.S. Marine on Iwo Jima in the Pacific, leaned in to tell Emma, Julia and a few of their classmates about the morning when he was startled out of bed by a noise he thought was the sound of firecrackers. It was Dec. 7, 1941, and he was serving at an ammunition depot near Pearl Harbor....

"Across the room, other students sat transfixed as Charlene Schiff, who grew up in Poland, talked about living in a wartime ghetto. She told them how she and her mother tried to cross a river to escape but had to hide for days to avoid flying bullets. She dozed off and, when she woke, her mother was gone.

"'How old are you?' Schiff asked the youngsters gathered around her. 'Thirteen,' they chimed.

"'You're much older than I was,' Shiff told them. 'I was 11 years old. I ended up all alone, with no family and no money. I lived like an animal: I ate worms, insects, whatever I could put in my mouth.'...

"Robert W. Patrick, director of the Veterans History Project, said the students also are helping to preserve memories and experiences that otherwise might soon be lost. About a dozen interviews conducted by Rocky Run students in past years are among the thousands collected as part of the project....

"Michael Ingrisano, who was a radio operator on troop carrier airplanes, told the students about bullets tearing through his plane and just missing him. He talked about missing home cooking and recalled writing 343 letters to the woman who later became his wife. He promised to visit Rocky Run next year.

"'I'll keep on coming until they carry me out to Arlington Cemetery,' Ingrisano said. 'All I can do is give you what I feel, so you can pass it down the line.'"

Such enrichment activities bring history alive for students. Kudos to Rocky Run Middle School and to the the Veterans History Project!