Tesseract Community Outreach (TCO day) took place on Friday, November 8, 2013. Twice a year, our entire student body spends the day doing something community-minded in order to serve something/someone outside ourselves.
The 7th graders spent the day interviewing War Veterans (from various wars) and recording the interviews. We will be transcribing these interviews and delivering them to the Library of Congress when we visit in April. Here are last year’s interviews:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/search?query=ted+strickland&field=all
One of the Veterans, Fred Quick, was a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) gunner from WWII! (He is pictured here with Sgt Ben Luoma who is holding Fred’s Purple Heart and magazine from the rifle)
He noted that he had to carry over 40 lbs worth of artillery. At 150 lbs, that was more than 1/3 of his weight. He was not allowed to carry his gun into school, but I had a chance to hold it. Definitely a power house!
The kids reflected on the day and were overwhelmed with gratitude and understanding of the plight of these Veterans. We appreciate them fighting FOR US. 🙂