Hello, my name is May and I’m a Senior at Independence High School. In Ms. Zausch’s 6th period economics class, my classmates and I created a company to learn about entrepreneurship and how a business is created and managed. We were sponsored by Junior Achievement, a non-profit, volunteer based organization created to help K-12 students prepare for their future. Our company name is Libertatem, or Independence in Latin. As a class we chose to sell baseball caps with an original design by the VP of Finance, Dillon. The design was an eagle with the American flag imprinted inside. Libertatem chose this design to represent our school and our nation because it is the U.S. national emblem. Because our design focused mainly on independence, we chose to donate 10% of our profit to a veteran organization because the veterans once fought for our independence. As the Public Relations representative, my job was to seek out a charity. But the President of Libertem, Melisa, mentioned VSSA to me since we passed by it on our way to teach students at Noble School. I immediately searched VSSA on Google and called their number. I spoke with Tiara about setting up a meeting with the veterans to have an interview, take pictures and videos.

On April 6th, Melisa, Kristy, Amy, our photographer, and I dropped by VSSA for the interview. We spoke to 7 veterans (Tito, Sam, Cris, Pastor Bill, Mike, Larry and Jerry) and learned about their years in the service. I learned so much more that day about the Vietnam War from them than I ever did through a textbook. I understand that talking about their past experience in the service wasn’t easy, but they told us more than we could ask for. It was truly an amazing experience to listen to these wonderful veterans share their story with us. I truly cherish and appreciate the time the veterans took out of their day to meet with us and the years they spent in service fighting, not just for me, but all of us.

I enjoyed our conversation so much I asked if we could schedule another day so my class could meet them also. On May 5th, Tito, Cris, Pastor Bill and Mike came to our school to speak to my class. My class enjoyed meeting the veterans and even some stayed behind to ask more questions. VSSA is an amazing organization to work with and meeting the veterans was a wonderful experience. Thank you again VSSA for working so closely with us. Thank you Tito, Sam, Cris, Pastor Bill, Larry, Jerry and Mike for your service.