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Veterans share personal stories
"I pledge allegiance to the flag ... "
Four U.S. veterans helped East Ward elementary students recite the Pledge of Allegiance, as the students started their Veterans Day program Thursday.
One of the students' paraprofessionals, Melissa Tucker, said she joined the National Guard and served her country just like her grandfather and her great-grandfather did. "I became much more outgoing," she told the students. "You can't rappel down walls and build rafts, and be shy," she said.
Tucker told the students her college education "was a gift," paid for, in part, by the U.S. government because of her service in the National Guard.
McCook Police Officer and School Resource Officer Jerry Calvin told the children he joined the U.S. Marine Corps because he knew he wanted to be a police officer, and he knew he wanted to travel.
Calvin said he did both in the Marines -- he went to classes and training and became an officer, and he traveled the world. He told students about sailing on the USS Trenton, traveling through the Suez Canal, watching camels on the African desert, discovering "just a big hole" after climbing to the top of Mount Fuji. "It was all really, really cool," he said.
Joe Haag told students about "sleeping in a bathtub in Saddam Hussein's palace" in Baghdad during his service with the National Guard in Iraq just last year.
"That was really cool," Haag said, "but Iraq is a dangerous place to be."
Haag told students that last year at Christmas, as they were safe at home with their families, he was spending time with Iraqi school children and hauling food supplies for native people -- "people who were starved for so long by Hussein."
The students' music teacher, Charles Coleman, said the Pledge of Allegiance took on a deeper meaning when he joined the Air Force.
Haag told the students he listened closely as they recited the pledge to open their program.
He wiped away tears, telling the children, "Thank you. The pledge means a lot to me."