Flint Hill Elementary school got a thank-you for its thank-you. The school had taken up a drive to collect supplies, including items which are fairly mundane here like toothpaste, to send to the troops in Iraq, thanking them for their service.
One Marine, Lt. Col. Jerome Driscoll, was able to come and thank the school for its care package. "Everything you put inside it made us feel really appreciated," he said.
Driscoll was speaking at the school's 19th annual Patriots Day event on Nov. 11. Each of the grades sang different patriotic songs and read writings of great Americans of the past before reading some of their own works.
Remembering veterans was another theme of the event. School Board member Stuart Gibson (Hunter Mill) told a story of the uncle he was named for who trained pilots in World War II before dying in a crash during a training flight.
Gibson seemed moved as he related the story and tried to impress upon the students the significance of those who die for the United States. "I like to think that the sacrifices of our men and women, that those sacrifices inspire all of us," he said.
— Ari Cetron