{"id":5179,"date":"2016-05-10T14:23:06","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T18:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=5179"},"modified":"2016-05-18T14:23:52","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T18:23:52","slug":"vets-and-cadets-narrow-the-generation-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/vets-and-cadets-narrow-the-generation-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"Vets and Cadets narrow the generation gap"},"content":{"rendered":"

The student looked across the table at the World War II veteran and asked quietly, \u201cWere you ever scared?\u201d A slight grin appeared on the veteran\u2019s face as he responded, \u201cSon, I was part of a bomber crew. I was terrified every time our wheels left that grassy airfield in England for a mission over German territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was just one of more than two dozen conversations that took place on a recent Saturday morning at the Military Aviation Museum in southern Virginia Beach. Resident veterans from Atlantic Shores Retirement Community were paired with cadets from the Cox\/First Colonial High School Navy Junior Reserve Officers\u2019 Training Corps (NJROTC) to help the students understand combat experience and the value of military service.<\/p>\n

\"Vets<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cToday is our very first Vets and Cadets event,\u2019\u201d said Merri Abernathy, a member of the NJROTC unit\u2019s booster club. \u201cThis event brings together World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans with our student cadets today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the second floor of the museum\u2019s main building, one-on-one conversations were being recorded by the cadets using an app called Storycorps.me. The veterans were happy to share their stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the war zone; Southwest Pacific, Fifth Air Force, 345th bomb group,\u201d stated one World War II pilot. \u201cWe were a low level strafing and skip bombing outfit, located in the Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations. Our targets were mostly Japanese shipping across the South China Sea and other bodies of water over there; plus, Japanese air fields and the island of Formosa\u00a0which is Taiwan today. We were hitting Japanese industrial sites that contributed to the Japanese war effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Vets<\/a><\/p>\n

Once the interviews were completed, each veteran\u2019s personal story was uploaded to the Library of Congress for posterity, keeping history alive for future generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a community service project, but it\u2019s also a history lesson,\u201d Abernathy added. \u201cIt allows students to interact with veterans and see history that they may not have learned or had an opportunity to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cadet Vinnie Lolla thought the experience would help him in the future. \u201cWe\u2019re interviewing veterans from generations ago and we\u2019re finding out about history that we\u2019ve learned from textbooks and are actually hearing about the real things right now. We read about stuff, we read about World War II and the Pacific Theater. I\u2019m getting ready to move on; on to\u00a0college and then the military. And now, I am learning about how the military was back then. It\u2019s nice to have a deep rooted feeling of how the military was back then and how it operates today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Grimshaw, a retired World War II Navy fighter pilot, was impressed with the students. \u201cI think it\u2019s great to see these ROTC young men and women and how well they carry themselves. It\u2019s nice to see the younger people meet the older guys and hear their stories because they don\u2019t know much about us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Vets<\/a><\/p>\n

The NJROTC unit plans to continue recording oral histories with veterans living in other retirement communities. Merri Abernathy hopes the students appreciate the opportunity. \u201cHopefully the students will learn that anyone can be a historian, anyone can be an archivist. Anyone can sit down with a living person and ask them, \u2018Tell me about your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Check out the rest of the Vets and Cadets pictures on the VBSchools Facebook page at,\u00a0https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/media\/set\/?set=a.979718955476795.1073742050.299985226783508&type=3<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The student looked across the table at the World War II veteran and asked quietly, \u201cWere you ever scared?\u201d A slight grin appeared on the veteran\u2019s face as he responded, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":5181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[78,59,139],"class_list":["post-5179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-connections","tag-cox-high","tag-first-colonial-high","tag-njrotc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5186,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179\/revisions\/5186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}