Dist. 218 cadets to honor vets at Lincoln Cemetery

By Matthew Piechalak

Dozens of youths in an officer commissioning program in Community High School District 218 will put their core beliefs into practice next month by honoring thousands of dead military veterans in a ceremony at one of the nation’s largest national cemeteries.

Roughly 45 Shepard and Richards high school students in the district’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program will join other local and national organizations at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, 27034 S. Diagonal Road in Elwood, on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, to place red, white and blue flowers on roughly 20,000 graves.

“The [cadets] are honored and excited,” said Major Dan Johnson, JROTC Air Force instructor at Shepard High School in Palos Heights. “Community service is a big part of what we do, especially when it overlaps with honoring veterans and those who have gone before us.”

The JROTC program at District 218 began last year and incorporates military training including wearing uniforms, and teaching drills and formations into its curriculum, Johnson explained. The program is offered on four levels, so students can enroll all four years if they choose, he added.

“Our primary job here is character development,” said Johnson, who will take about 15 cadets to the ceremony. “Our curriculum focuses on leadership, communication and military history.”

While the program’s basic concepts of leadership and citizenship are the same, the content at each school is slightly different, said Doug Groters, senior naval science instructor of the JROTC at Richards High School in Oak Lawn. Shepard’s program highlights the Air Force, while Richards focuses on the Navy. The Navy’s core value is honor, Groters said.

About 28 cadets from Richards will attend the ceremony, he said.

“They are excited,” Groters said. “We’re trying to help our cadets see that there is a lot of personal satisfaction and value to be earned in helping others.”

The District 218 JROTC cadets will be in charge of one of 10 sections that include about 2,000 graves each.

One of the largest national cemeteries, Abraham Cemetery covers 982 acres and roughly 20,000 veterans are buried there, said Anthony Cutrano, one of the ceremony’s organizers.

The ceremony, which has never been held at the cemetery, will coincide with the cemetery’s 10th anniversary and the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, explained Cutrano.

“I want the community to come together to honor the sacrifices [veterans] make to keep our country free,” he said.

Cutrano, of Palos Heights, began organizing the event when he discovered no ceremony had ever been held Lincoln, he said. He began planning by talking with a friend from the Flowers for Heroes and contacts from other local and national organizations include the Boy Scouts of America, Purple Hearts, American Knights Motorcycle Club, American Lawmen Motorcycle Club, American Veterans Motorcycle Club, Rolling Thunder, Gold Star Families and the District 218 JROTC.

Following a briefing at 8 a.m., groups will disperse to different areas of the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of veterans, Cutrano said. The groups will then reconvene for a short ceremony that will include a prayer, the National Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silence, a military flyover and speeches from several military personnel, Gov. Pat Quinn and Cutrano’s son, Chance, who is a student in District 218.

Cutrano said he is anticipating between 500 to 1,000 people at the ceremony, and encourages anyone who wants to participate to be at the cemetery at 8 a.m. The co-founder of the Middle East Conflicts Wall Memorial, a granite wall erected in 2004 along the Illinois River in Marseilles, Cutrano said he is always looking for new ways to remember and honor veterans.

“I’m trying to think of other ways to create awareness,” he said.

This is part of the October 29, 2009 online edition of The Reporter.

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