Mahwah Teens Honor Local Vets

With the distractions of a holiday like Memorial Day, it’s easy to forget the real reason for the festivities. The veterans who sacrificed their youth and, in some cases, their lives to defend American freedom often get lost in the shuffle.

Today’s youth are even more susceptible to losing touch with those that are honored on Memorial Day. For many of them, veterans are in their history books, not in their lives.

For this purpose the students of Mahwah High School’s Future Problem Solvers class have focused their project this year on honoring veterans. This culminated in a breakfast held Tuesday to celebrate Memorial Day.

The event began with veterans signing in at the door of the Mahwah High’s expansive library where the event was held. After that, students and faculty (including project leader, Jaime Lichay, and teacher Joan Garris) greeted the veterans and explained the genesis of the project.

The members of the project then asked everyone in attendance to remember the veterans from Mahwah who had passed away with a slide show and a reading of names.

Following the ceremonies, a lavish buffet breakfast was served. Once all of the guests had eaten heartily, Garris invited them to a viewing of Alex Haas’ film “Our Veterans”.

Culled from hours of interview footage, the film (which Haas was literally working on up until the viewing) was presented to the viewers.

“It has a lot of interesting stories from the veterans who are here today.” He added, “It was hard because all of the veterans’ stories were all so incredibly interesting but…if I put everything in there it would be a four hour film,” says Haas.

The 20 minute film put together veteran interviews as well as footage of a speech given by Lichay during the school’s previous event to honor the veterans.

“I thought it was great. Really super. He did a good job,” said Bill Reid after seeing the film.

 “I think this event was great. To honor the veterans and those who are currently serving. I think it’s great that the high school takes the time to do this for us,” said Saldana Isabel.

Principal John Pascale had nothing but praise for the students involved.

“Our students have worked diligently all year long honoring veterans…These kids really love to give back to the community and really love to recognize the service of others and I think that’s kind of unique to them. What’s nice about it is, these kids give a lot of service to our school so I think it’s very appropriate that they want to recognize our veterans and citizens who’ve given service to our country.”

The district's Future Problem Solvers were commended at Wednesday's Board of Education meeting.