Veterans enliven study of history

Inside Newport-Mesa district high school classrooms, history has escaped the pages of textbooks in an uncommon lesson that matches sophomores with military veterans.

The real-life curriculum started 15 years ago with five World War II veterans. Today, it has grown to more than 100 veterans representing nearly every theater of war. On Thursday, a few hundred students and veterans gathered inside the Corona del Mar High School gym for the annual luncheon that caps off the program.

The veterans’ stories “bring history alive,” said Scott Williams of The Freedom Committee of Orange County, an organization that connects students with service members.

Sophomores can be assigned a veteran or interview a relative who served. Working in groups, the students videotape their veteran, transcribe the interview and research the era in which the veteran served. The result is a brief documentary.

Along the way, students soak up life lessons about service, honor and integrity, many students said Thursday.

Sophomore Josh Morrison talked about his 96-year-old grandfather, Leonard Smith, who left law school to enlist in the Navy on the eve of World War II. Smith was stationed at Pearl Harbor and narrowly escaped the Japanese attack.

“He has taught me what it means to be a true American,” said Morrison, 16.

Former Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. Robert Friend spoke at the luncheon. He said the assignment was an important way of educating students, exposing them to knowledge that isn’t necessarily contained in a textbook.

“Children need to know what they might face to prepare themselves,” said Friend, one of the first African American pilots to serve in the U.S. military. “Who knows how much longer we’ll be around?”

Last year, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board agreed to expand the program, which started at Corona del Mar, to all district high schools. Denise Weiland, who coordinates the program, said junior high school officials now are contacting her. They also are interested in offering the program to their students.

“It’s a living history, something they would not get out of a book,” she said.