Students at local school honor veterans

J.G. Johnson Elementary School celebrated Veterans Day on Friday afternoon with songs, poems and good food to honor the local veterans of the community.

The hour-long presentation was performed by the kindergarten and first grade classes before the school fed the vets and parents who came to celebrate Veterans Day.

Principal Jeff Skelton said to the vets who had gathered, “We can not say enough about you guys. They say my job is tough because I am with these guys (pointing to the kindergarten students and first graders). Some days it is, but my day is nothing like what you went through. At the end of the day I get to go home… So we thank you.”

Skelton said the school has a tradition of coming together each year to honor the veterans.

“We have been doing this for three years at least,” he said. “I know Mr. Norton did it before me and the principal before him did it. How far back I don’t know, it has been going on for quite a while. Each year teachers step forward and say they want to do it and they say they want the honor this time. Last year it was the upper grades, and this year the kindergarten and first graders said they wanted to do it.”

Skelton said the program was a good lesson for the younger kids on what a veteran was.

“The younger kids didn’t really understand what a veteran was, so we went through that whole thing of what it was like. We actually had some veterans come in and talk about how they did not get to go home. Some of these kids just did not understand and others had fathers who were overseas. We wanted the kids to be respectful of what these men sacrificed for their country,” he explained.