http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2013/...ds-911-for-to/
History lesson: Community School holds 9/11 ceremony for students too young to remember
By LANCE SHEARER
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
You often hear, attached to the date 9/11, the phrase or slogan “Never forget.” But for students now attending school in Collier County, they can’t forget Sept. 11, 2001, because many of them were too young to remember it in the first place.
The teachers and administration at the Community School of Naples understand this, and so, for their Patriot’s Day Ceremony on Wednesday, the 12th anniversary of that date that will “live in infamy,” they realized that the kids needed to be taught what the day is all about.
Community School, or CSN, hosted a highly decorated military veteran as the keynote speaker for their 9/11 commemoration, before an audience of more than 500, including invited veterans and dignitaries. Sheri Kleintop, appropriately a CSN history teacher, as well as a mother of two students at the school, aged 9 and 13, introduced the speaker.
Lt. Col. D. Scott Mann, recently retired from the U.S. Army after a career of more than 22 years, much of it spent in the Special Forces in hot spots around the globe, began his presentation by pointing out the difference in viewpoint on 9/11 between youths and adults.
He asked students where they had been that day, and they either hadn’t been born yet, or couldn’t grasp the significance of the events at the time. Even the seniors, the oldest students, were only 5 years old on 9/11/01. Questioned privately, senior Pierce Gleeson said that what he remembered was being picked up by his mother, rather than the babysitter he was expecting.
“I just knew something bad had happened, and my parents were scared,” he said.
While the students couldn’t remember, Mann demonstrated to them that their elders never could forget, asking at random the teachers and invited guests, including Collier County Emergency Medical Services Chief Walter Kopka, where they had been when they heard the news. As their crystal clear recollections showed, that day is imprinted on their memories just as December 7, 1941 — the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor — was seared into the minds of an earlier generation.
Mann continued by running through a brief history of that day, with videos, a timeline of the events and some of the relevant statistics. On the large screen in the front of CSN’s Morris Activity Center, jetliners smashed into the Twin Towers over and over, just as they had on television sets all around the world 12 years earlier.
In all, 2,977 innocent victims died that day, and as Mann pointed out, all aviation in the United States was shut down for the first time in history.
For the military, he said, the transformation was immediate and complete.
“All the pagers went off at the same time,” he said of his fellow soldiers in the Green Berets. “We deployed immediately, and really, we’re still deployed. We went into Afghanistan so quickly, we had no vehicles, so most of us rode horses.”
Mann, who served three tours in Afghanistan and earned three Bronze Stars in addition to the Defense Meritorious Service medal, was instrumental in creating the Village Stability and Afghan Police program. He is also a published author of a children’s book, “Daddy Keeps Us Free,” helping youngsters cope with the challenges of having parents who are deployed with the military.
Mann concluded by paying tribute to friends of his who had not come home alive, and one who did, paralyzed from the neck down from wounds sustained in combat. He shared lessons he had learned from these heroes with the students, including “never leave anything unsaid,” from Major Cliff Patterson, who died at his desk in the Pentagon on 9/11, “never quit,” from Chief Warrant Officer Rony Camargo, who should have died from his wounds but didn’t, and if you must go, “go with style,” from wounded veteran Sgt. Major Willie Lubbers, who died saving others when a flatbed stalled on the tracks in front of an oncoming train.
While he had spoken before at Sept. 11 ceremonies, said Mann, this was the first time he had done so in civilian clothes, and in rumpled khakis, loafers and a polo shirt. He was noticeably lowkey, in contrast to the sheriff’s deputies, EMS and North Naples firefighters who attended in their full dress uniforms, and even the color guard from Naples High School, resplendent in their mirrored helmets.
But the most important thing, Mann told the students, is the future, not the past.
“I’ve seen kids all around the world, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Colombia and here. You guys are the future, our reason for hope. You can make the world a better place,” he said.
Community School of Naples is an independent, pre-K through grade 12 college preparatory day school in North Naples. CSN is the largest independent school in Collier County with a student body of approximately 700 students.
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