Features - OnLine

Sending the Holidays Overseas
Masonites Compose Letters, Greetings
To Alumni in the Armed Forces

By Olivia Farrow (December 15, 2005)

Mrs. Planas’s classroom was filled last Thursday with over 20 students – many of them participants in the new Mustang Ambassadors program -- who spent the afternoon munching on chips, chatting, and writing holiday greetings to the alumni of George Mason High School who are now soldiers posted all over the world.

The project began with senior Kristin Schwind – who devised and organized the endeavor— writing nine names on the chalkboard.  While she printed photographs of the soldiers sent to her from their families, history teacher Mrs. Hawkesworth told the assembled students where each former Mason student is currently stationed or where they are scheduled to soon be stationed. The list, which is also posted (along with each serviceman’s photo) in the hallway across from Mrs. Planas’s room, includes Jeff Walton, David Deitz, Michael Cummings, Devlon Melancon, Mac Cohe, Joey Cohe, Sam Lee, Daniel Colman, and Owen Durham. There are additional Mason graduates in the military and ROTC, but their addresses are currently unknown.

Schwind got the idea of sending letters to the troops from her brother, Zach, who is now a sophomore at Virginia Tech.  “My brother has a lot of friends that are in the military,” she said, “and one of them was talking so casually about dying at any time and that really freaked me out. Writing letters--not emails--is the least I could do for them.”

Senior Kristin Schwind arranges photos on the bulletin board outside of guidance of Mason graduates now serving in the military. Schwind has initiated the “Troops Project” that encourages current Mustangs to write letters to the graduates. Over 20 students, many of them participants in the Mustang Ambassadors program, and others representing various TA’s, met in Ms. Planas’s room to compose the letters. (Photo by Olivia Farrow)

Sending letters online would have been a much easier way to send the messages to the military alumni, but Schwind had second thoughts after talking to an uncle who served in the Vietnam War. “He said that letters were the best thing to get over there. They were tangible and you could hold them in your hand and see the effort put into the letter just by the handwriting. After he said that, I realized that e-mails just wouldn’t have the same effect as writing the letters out instead,” she commented.

Fifteen TAs are currently participating in the writing process in addition to the students who attended last Thursday’s meeting.  Another meeting will be held this Thursday, December 15, to write the final letters because they must be sent no later than December 16. The messages do not have to be elaborate -- a significant letter could simply tell the soldier that GM students are thinking of them during the holidays, which is exactly what the troops want.

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