Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Samuel Northrup | Lt. Col. Jeremiah Jette, the III Corps’ Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion...... read more read more
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FORT HOOD, Texas – Students, faculty members, firefighters, and Soldiers gathered for a Patriot Day ceremony held at Eastern Hills Middle School, Sept. 11 in Harker Heights.
The ceremony included performances from the school’s cheerleaders, band, orchestra, singers, and several speakers. The ceremony was a reminder to students, who are all too young to remember the attacks of 9/11, of the events that changed the course of America’s future.
“Today we remember those nearly 3,000 men, women and children we lost in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and we honor more than 8,000 service members who have given their lives in Afghanistan and in Iraq, as well as tens of thousands of our wounded,” said Lt. Col. Jeremiah Jette, III Corps’ Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion commander. “In a community such as ours, with such close ties to Fort Hood … the sacrifice made by every family member resonates with everyone here today, young and old.”
“Today is less of a condemnation of our enemies,” Jette said. “What we have to pull away from it is the lessons that are learned that lead up to that day -- it is the lessons that we learned that we bring forward to create a more unified country.”
This year marked the first time in which the sixth grade student body is made up of those who were not yet born on Sept. 11, 2001, said Jeremy Key, the Eastern Hills Middle School principal. For these students, Sept. 11 can seem ‘Pearl Harborish.’
Children view 9/11 very much as history without any context and days such as Patriot Day help provide context, said Jette. Even though the attacks were designed to create fear, attack American ideals, and society, days such as this will help people realize how much the nation has grown and is still persevering.
“I think children growing up in a post-9/11 America wouldn’t necessarily know how the U.S. has changed, but ceremonies such as these help kids understand this was one of the few situations, such as Pearl Harbor, where an attack happened on American soil,” Key said. “I think that helps them to … see that we are not immune to outside acts from other countries.”
Sometimes it takes a wake-up call for people to really recognize what first responders and the military sacrifice, said Key. Quite often when complacency kicks in, people can take what the military and first responders do for granted, but after 9/11 happened it really brought them all to the forefront of the people’s attention.
The ceremony is also an opportunity to help keep the relationships strong between the community and the Army, according to Jette. These events bring the Soldiers and the people from the local school district together.
“We are showing our support to our local community through our adopt-a-school program,” said Jette. “Eastern Hills Middle School is our adopted school, and we give support as they need it, whether it is providing a color guard or just having a little bit of a presence so there is more of an opportunity for our Soldiers to interact with the community they serve.”
“A community such as Harker Heights has more opportunity to put a human face on Soldiers than other parts of the U.S., but we definitely need to take that opportunity wherever we can,” said Key. “I think this is a great place to be because you get to see the true Soldier.”
| Date Taken: | 09.11.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.12.2014 19:07 |
| Story ID: | 142037 |
| Location: | FORT HOOD, TX, US |
| Hometown: | FORT CAVAZOS, TX, US |
| Hometown: | HARKER HEIGHTS, TX, US |
| Hometown: | HOUSTON, TX, US |
| Hometown: | NORWICH, CT, US |
| Web Views: | 163 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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