Nicholas Ashmore had more than a few butterflies in his stomach Wednesday night. He was about to read his winning eighth-grade Veterans Day essay — an interview with a Cold War submariner — to an audience of more than a hundred people.
“I was nervous,” Ashmore admitted afterward. “It took all my concentration not to have my legs fall down.”
Out in the audience, the submariner was watching with a sense of pride. Willard Ashmore, Nicholas’ father, had not only relived his Navy days for his son, he had let Nicholas wear his old jacket with the markings of his old boat.
“It’s the first time that jacket has been out since ’78,” Willard Ashmore said. “It’s been hidden away.”
Nicholas’ first-place effort — delivered without fainting, by the way — was one of five winning essays read at Emporia Middle School on Wednesday as part of the All Veterans Tribute Week.
The essay contest had its start in 2000, when Army veteran Ken Bradstreet decided it would be a perfect way to help kids understand what it means to be a veteran. Bradstreet has since passed on, but the contest survives and has even grown, adding a poster contest this year.
Both contests are open to area students who are between the fifth and 12th grades, with first- through third-place awards given in five age categories. Entries come not just from Emporia, but also area towns such as Council Grove, Eureka and Reading. An especially large contingent seemed to come from Olpe this year, including several in the class of Olpe Junior High School teacher Michelle Barnhart.
“Where is Mrs. Barnhart?” asked Liz Martell of the Convention and Visitors Bureau after yet another of Barnhart’s students stepped forward to the sound of applause. Reluctantly, the teacher rose to her feet.
“I didn’t want to embarrass you,” Martell said as the audience applauded Barnhart, “but I did want to recognize the impact you made.”
This year’s theme was “Preserving Life, Ensuring Freedom.” Several of the first-place winners commemorated family members, such as sixth-grader Braxton Butler of Madison Elementary School who wrote about his grandfather, “Papa,” a World War II veteran.
Each year, Braxton said, the grandkids spend the night with Papa on Memorial Day weekend, then eat breakfast with the veterans and put up and take down flags at the cemeteries.
“Papa has told his grandkids that it is important that all veterans need to be honored and remembered for what they have done for all of us,” Braxton read to the crowd.
Nicholas’s essay also had its origins in a Memorial Day service where the Olpe Junior High School student helped play “Taps and Echo.” As the ceremony ended, he saw the emotion in his father’s face and wondered about it. That eventually turned into an interview, with his fathers’ answers forming the core of the essay.
“As they read the list of names, I felt I had more in common with those veterans than I did with the crowd,” Willard Ashmore told him. “These men understood the great cost of maintaining a free country.”
During the Cold War, he told his son, each Soviet submarine carried between 12 and 24 nuclear weapons. Those weapons were kept at bay, he said, by the power and presence of America’s own submarine force. Those veterans, Willard Ashmore said, preserved a free country even for those who disagreed with them.
“Those veterans believed that the preservation of human life and the freedoms that we enjoy today are more valuable than the life of any one man,” Nicholas said, reading his father’s answer. “Men will only be free as long as there are men and women who are willing to sacrifice everything for the common good.”
Other first-place winners in the essay contest were Megan Bitler of Hamilton Elementary School (fifth grade), Jake Brinkman of Olpe Junior High (seventh grade) and Vanessa Rogers of Emporia High School (ninth through 12th grade). First-place finishers in the poster contest were Rolando Jerez of Lowther South Intermediate School (fifth-grade), Braxton Butler (sixth-grade), Paige Blankley of Olpe Junior High (seventh grade), Glen Haag of Olpe Junior High (eighth grade) and Laura Pennington of Hamilton High School (ninth through 12th grade).
Martell grew more and more impressed with the winners as the evening went on.
“I don’t know about you,” she said toward the end, “but I think I see tomorrow’s leaders.”