Honoring All Who Served
Eli England (12) playing the trumpet while marching in the Veteran’s Day parade.
December 16, 2022
Smiles and Cheers filled the front of the parking lot of Fredericktown High School Thursday, November 10th. This wasn’t because of some fabulous pep rally or fun award for the students; instead, it was because of a parade held by Student Council and JROTC to honor the fearless dedication the Veterans of the United States demonstrated during their time in service.
Veterans day isn’t taken lightly at FHS. Student Council and JROTC both put in a tremendous amount of effort to make each Veteran feel recognized and appreciated. Much planning and crafting occur during the weeks leading up to the celebration of the Veterans. The Leadership class at FHS picks out gifts to give them. In addition to this, they print out cards and add hand-drawn details to each one of them to make it more personal. After this part of the process is handled, the leaders of STUCO then partner up with JROTC to work out a plan of attack for the famous Parade. This year it was decided that STUCO would handle the parking for the Veterans while JROTC would host a breakfast!
The breakfast was held in the highschool cafeteria from 8am until 9:30am. Colonel Francis shares, “A lot of coordination went into this because it hadn’t been done in multiple years. There were several meetings prior to the event for scheduling, resourcing, manning, and deconfliction.” All this hard work payed off in the end! JROTC successfully put on an enjoyable breakfast for the Veterans and recieved many postive reviews.
After all the thrill of the honorable event died down, STUCO and JROTC were able to refelt back on their intricate work. Student Council President, Linley Rehkop (12) remarks, “Our goal was to represent each branch of the miltary the best that we could, and I believe everyone felt some type of inclusion throughout the day.” In addition to this it was JROTC’s goal to increase awarness for what each veteran had sacrificed. They were successful in doing so by incorpating the many student interactions througout the morning. The combination of STUCO and JROTC’s goals lead to the ultimate experience for the veterans to show how much they are appreciated by FHS.
