Clasping small hand-made U.S. flags in their hands, a group of first-graders know more than most children about what Memorial Day means.
They are among more than 335 students at West Meade Elementary School on the Fort Meade Army Base who are children of members of the Armed Services, Principal Carole Janesco said.
Gov. Martin O?Malley and a large entourage of state and local officials and media visited Diane Jaeger?s class, which drew wreaths to commemorate the holiday honoring the nation?s deceased soldiers.
Nearly two-thirds of the student body is new to the school each year as they follow their parents to military assignments, Janesco said.
“How many of you have been here all year?” asked O?Malley, sitting in one of the classroom?s pint-sized chairs.
Half the class of about 15 students raised their hands.
He then asked them who was the newest to their class.
Jamal said he?d been there a month.
“Where did you move from?” O?Malley asked.
Jamal replied, “Alaska.”
“Alaska! I?ve never been there,” a wide-eyed O?Malley said. “Is Alaska as nice as Maryland?”
“No,” he said, to laughter.
The discussion then switched to children who had a parent serving in what they euphemistically called “the desert” ? the war in Iraqand Afghanistan.
One little girl said one parent would return soon and the other was headed there.
“I served in the desert,” said Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a colonel now in inactive Army Reserves who was part of a humanitarian aid unit in Iraq in 2005.
Before he left for that tour, he told the students he asked his young son Jonathan to pay attention in school and write letters to him “in the desert.”
Brown advised the students to write letters to their parents overseas.
“Tell them how you?re doing, how your mom is doing,” Brown said Friday.
They really want to hear from their children, he said.
