GALLERY: Veterans’ experiences come to life for fourth grade students

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

When Lincoln Elementary School fourth-graders met the three speakers on Friday morning, they had a lot of questions ready.

“Where did you get your water?”

“How old are you?”

“Where there any girls there?” students peppered at U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jordan Masters.

Masters, the son of fourth-grade instructor Melinda Masters, brought a few peeks of his days in the Army — showing off his heavy gear with teacher Diane Sande and passing around binoculars for students to glance through.

“The worst part was the flight (to Afghanistan). We flew 18 hours,” Masters told the young crowd, seated in front of a classroom whiteboard.

The classroom erupted in gasps. “18 hours?!”

“Sometimes they feed us all right —” he pulled out a Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) package, and a few observant first row students laughed when they saw what’s inside — “There are M&Ms in this one, so that’s all right.”

Just down the hallway, U.S. Army veteran Glenn Hansen, who was deployed from 1954-1955 in Europe, was showing off his uniform, dog tags and boots to another group of fourth-graders.

“What are barracks?”

“Did you ever get to take a break?”

“What was your favorite part?”

“I think I enjoyed my vacations the most,” Hansen said thoughtfully, recalling three-day trips to Italy, France and through Germany. “But I didn’t mind marching.”

After Hansen, the two groups of fourth-graders came together in one classroom to hear from a unique witness — Jean Knapp, a Waterloo native and a witness to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the catalyst to U.S. entry in World War II.

Knapp, who was 20 years old and newly married to a U.S. Navy doctor, told students a few of her memories in the hours after Japanese bombed the Hawaiian naval base. Her husband’s ship, the U.S.S. St. Louis, was able to escape with barely anyone wounded, she said.

“My husband’s captain had kept the boilers going, so they were able to get out of Pearl Harbor that morning,” Knapp told students.

“One of the Navy wives called and said, ‘Jean, the island of Oahu has been attacked.’ I thought, ‘Oh my golly. The island of Oahu is real close to here.’ I didn’t realize where I was.”

Knapp’s testimony and the experiences of Masters and Hansen brought new meaning to fourth-graders still thinking about Veterans Day, fourth-grade teacher Cara Ludemann told the Press.

“As Veterans Day was approaching, we realized that our students did not know a lot about Veterans Day, and we have fewer and fewer students who have military families,” Ludemann said.

So Melinda Masters contacted her son, and Ludemann asked her father, Hansen, if he would be willing to speak. Then, she learned about the experiences of Hansen’s neighbor, Knapp.

“I just recently had learned about Mrs. Knapp, and then I thought, what a perfect experience that they may never get again, and I have never had,” Ludemann said.

“We spend a lot of time in fourth grade looking at how the past has changed the way things are today, and so it tied right into our curriculum,” she added. “I hope the kids go home and share with their parents. … We hope that next year when Veterans Day comes around, that they remember this experience.”

Service is life-changing, Hansen told fourth-graders.

“It gave me a chance to look around the people I was with, and see where I fit in,” he told them. “You’re worth something, and you can do something. … Time is on your side.”

Then Hansen took a few more questions from students before Knapp was to speak.

“What did you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?”