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Bryan County schools honor those who served
BCHS Vets Day cropped
The Bryan County High School Junior ROTC color guard retires the colors at the end of the schools Veterans Day program Tuesday at the schools gymnasium. - photo by Brent Zell

Honoring military service was, naturally, the top theme of the Veterans Day program Tuesday at Bryan County Middle and High schools. But a close second was pure emotion.

And it was the personal touches that drew some of the day’s strongest responses.

During the program, about a dozen middle- and high-school students spoke to the audience with tributes to veterans.

In South Bryan, McAllister Elementary held its own Veterans Day observance Tuesday.

Kearsten VanRyswyk a junior at BCHS, spoke to the audience about her father. VanRyswyk said it was always sad when he left for another tour of duty, but “he fights to make this a better world for us,” she said, adding that her dad is her hero as the crowd applauded.

Ninth-grader Makayla Douglas spoke about her grandfather, Richard David Williams Sr., who was a Marine. Douglas said Williams “always helped out with us” and described him as “one of a kind” and a “very unique person, very different from others.” Williams passed away Jan. 22, 2009, and the family was heartbroken, Douglas said.

“I love you, and you’re always in our hearts. Happy Veterans Day,” she said, again drawing a strong response from the audience.

Others read passages, such as “The American Hero” by Roger Robicheau, and personally written short essays.

Alexis Hovis, a seventh-grader, focused her speaking time on the “normal people,” the ones who weren’t famed soldiers like Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson and George Washington. She especially pointed out the living soldiers and honoring their efforts.

“Maybe it would help if we just made them feel a little less forgotten,” she said.

Another stretch of strong emotion came during the video presentation “Honoring Our Veterans — A Photographic Tribute.” The slideshow featured photos of family members of the school’s faculty, staff and students, all set to songs such as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.”

Many people were visibly moved to tears during the program, although hugs and support were plentiful for them.

The tribute also featured the eighth-grade and high-school concert band performing “America on Parade” and “American Heritage March” and the sixth- and seventh-grade combined chorus singing “My America.”

Many veterans in the audience were recognized as they stood while recordings of the songs of their military branches were played.

The mistress and master of ceremonies were BCHS Junior ROTC members Logan Scott and Brett Kohler. That group’s color guard made the presentation of colors.

McAllister Elementary

Hundreds of parents and students paid a musical tribute to the nation’s veterans at a McAllister Elementary School ceremony Tuesday night.

Under the electronic images of area veterans, the kindergartners through fifth graders sang songs honoring the contributions of military people to the safety and security of the country. The school was decked out in dozens of flags from one end of the building to the other, and patriotic music permeated the halls. Songs ranged from “You’re a Grand Old Flag” to “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

The ceremony honored members of each branch of service with their individual service songs and asked the veterans to rise during their branch’s song. Audience members applauded the veterans. MES music teacher and program coordinator Lori Roberts said she was proud of how hard the students worked preparing for the night’s presentation.

“We’ve been practicing since September. They did a wonderful job,” Roberts said.

Bryan County News correspondent Steve Scholar contributed to this report.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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