Rocky Run Teacher Jamie Sawatzky Heads to Spirit of '45 National Leaders Conference

at Rocky Run Middle School, will represent the school at the Spirit of ’45 National Leaders Conference in San Diego Friday through Monday.  

The interactive conference supports the "Spirit of ’45" national movement, which includes plans for a nationwide commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II in August 2015.  

Sawatzky founded the World War II oral history project at Rocky Run in 2004, which, over the past nine years has included interviews by students with hundreds of eyewitnesses to World War II who have shared their personal accounts of the war. 

Related Story: Lessons From the Greatest Generation at Rocky Run Middle School

Many of these interviews have been videotaped and are now part of the Veterans’ History Project at the Library of Congress. Rocky Run students also meet honor flights of World War II veterans arriving at local airports to visit the World War II memorial under Sawatzky’s guidance. 

As a conference participant, Sawatzky will work with youth leaders from around the country on the Spirit of ’45 program, a national commemoration and celebration of the end of World War II in the planning stages.

Proposed events include:

• national and state ceremonies
• recognition by professional baseball teams, senior and assisted living facilities, veterans organizations
• reunions of World War II veterans around the country

Read More: Jamie Sawatzky Helps Connect the Past to the Present at Rocky Run Middle School