Students Learn About WWII From Those Who Lived It On Museum Trip

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Local high school students are in the Big Easy this week to learn firsthand from the Greatest Generation on a trip that pairs those studying history with those that lived it. On Wednesday, 32 students and 10 staffers from Deerfield and Highland Park high schools, along with 40 veterans of World War II, traveled to New Orleans as part of the Soaring Valor program.

The program is sponsored by the Gary Sinise Foundation to honor the nation's surviving veterans of WWII. The three-day trip is centered around a trip to the National WWII Museum, which offers students a chance to accompany the veterans through the exhibits.

"That's the most important," said one participating vet in a program video. "It's teaching the younger generation."

In addition to tours of the museum, the foundation also sponsors a historian to go to the homes of WWII veterans that can no longer travel to conduct interviews for its collection of oral histories. (Find out more about the oral history program, including how to collect and submit a recording, from the National WWII Museum. Oral histories and photographs that have already been digitized are also available online and are continually being added.)

Sinise is an actor, director, philanthropist and a 1974 Highland Park High School alum who got his acting start there in a production of "West Side Story." He went on mow lawns at Ravinia Festival before co-founding Steppenwolf, which would become one of Chicago's most prestigious theater companies, inside a Unitarian church in Highland Park before it moved to the basement of Immaculate Conception on Deerfield Road.

Best known for his roles in Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and CSI:NY, Sinise is a longtime supporter of veterans organizations. He founded the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2011 and received the U.S. Army's highest civilian honor for its work. He started the Soaring Valor program to help WWII veterans experience the museum in New Orleans and provide an opportunity to commune with fellow vets.

The Soaring Valor program was expanded in 2017 to include high school students. According to the program's website, the District 113 students are some of the first to take part in the inter-generational exchange.

There was a pool of passionate applicants at HPHS and DHS to pick from, according to the district. Students were eligible to apply if they had studied WWII or recently completed a relevant social science course. All participants will be tasked with sharing their experiences on the trip with classmates later in the school year.

Veterans, students and their families attended a welcome dinner on Tuesday where they met for the first time, according to the district. Two seniors spoke at the dinner, Katerina Tchilinguirov, a senior at Deerfield High School, and Micah Ingram, a senior at Highland Park High School. They offered opening remarks about the importance of veterans and their impact on their lives. The next day, students, staff and veterans departed from O'Hare.

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