Gwinnett students salute veterans

At precisely 9:30 a.m., 230 fifth graders filed into the Sycamore Elementary School gymnasium.

They wore red, white and blue T-shirts with their Sugar Hill school’s name emblazoned across their chests in the form of an American flag.

Charles Simpson, Clem Childs and some 40 other military veterans waited in front row seats marked reserved. Some were stooped with age. Some were young and fit. Some were in the reserves. Some were active members of the Navy, Air Force and the Marines. All of them were worthy of the honor students, teachers and school administrators had gathered to bestow.

Simpson, 76, of Conyers, proudly noted the diversity in the parade of students taking their places on risers.

“That’s what this is all about,” the former Navy tail gunner said. “Despite what some would have us believe, that’s America. We should all unite and come together like these kids have. They set a wonderful example.”

With song and the recitation of history, with certificates of honor and gold medals bearing an eagle, a school and a community had come together to observe Veterans Day.

Fifth grade teacher Linda Cashion looked on with pride. This was all her idea, born many years ago when her own children, now adults, were about the ages of her students.

They lived, she said, in Alabama then and her father, 78-year-old Harold Bearden, a Korean War veteran, was among the honorees.

“I witnessed how touched my dad was,” said Cashion .

And so when her family moved to Atlanta in 1995, Cashion decided she’d extend the honor to other veterans, first at Norton Elementary and now here at Sycamore school, where she has spent the past three years.

“They think we’re doing something for them but they are giving children the chance to put faces and names to history,” Cashion said of her honored guest. “When they listen to them describe how their life was, it’s better than any text book.”

A short while later, applause broke out as the students introduced and sang first the Army’s song, Caissons Go Rolling Alone, then the Marine’s Hymn followed by Anchor’s Aweigh, Off We Go, and veterans from each branch stood together — proud men and women who’d served back as far as World War II.

Then the moment to pay honor to each of their guest arrived. Silence fell over the crowded gym as their names and branch of service were called: Sandra Mills, Air Force; Alan Warrick, Navy; Thomas Paschall, Air Force; Ed Shaw, Army. Clem Childs, Navy.

Childs, 83, of Dunwoody, said he’d normally be participating in the Veteran’s Day parade but had been asked to come to the school program by a former neighbor, 10-year-old Sydney Colvin.

When he was drafted into the Navy in 1943, Childs said the military and America were still segregated.

And when the war ended in 1945, after marching in a parade through downtown Chicago where he and comrades were welcomed home, Childs, African American, said he couldn’t even enter the University of Cincinnati where he’d grown up because of the color of his skin.

“It hurt,” he said.

Child, however, went on to graduate from New York University with a degree in accounting.

Echoing Simpson’s sentiments, he said yesterday’s ceremony had added meaning because of the changes he has witnessed, most notably a new commander-in-chief who looks like him and the little girl who invited him, president-elect Barack Obama.

“What a turn around in history,” he said. “I was so proud to see him go to the White House yesterday. It made my heart sing.”