21 June Today was our first day on our Normandy adventure, and it is any indication of what the week will be like, it is going to be awesome! The Institute started tonight with a welcome/opening dinner at the George Washington University (GWU) City View Room. The room and its balcony is just 4 blocks from the White House and has the most amazing views of the city – from our vantage point we could see from the Lee-Curtis House in Arlington, to the Jefferson Memorial, to the Capital Building. As luck would have it, Taylor and I were seated at the head table with Mr. Albert Small (who founded the Institute), Mr. Robert Perry (NHD and GWU trustee), and Mr. Mortimer Caplin (a US Navy Beach Master on Omaha Beach)! I think for both Taylor and I, it was like a brush with history. They were the most gracious dinner companions who retold stories of their workings in DC for the past 60 years. When you sit with people who talk about working with “Jack and Bobby” (the Kennedy’s), it just kind of leaves you speechless. It was an amazing dinner and one that we will not soon forget. All three men spoke to the entire group and gave very moving words that spoke of their appreciation of the research the teens were conduction to memorialize their ‘adopted’ fallen soldier. At our table, Mr. Small had to brush away tears when he was told the story of Taylor’s soldier, LT. Leroy Jacobson. If you do not know all the moving details of his story, ask Taylor sometimes to tell you about them. Before dinner ended, Mr. Small gave us a copy of General Eisenhower’s D-Day message to the troops. Mr. Small owns one of the 4 original signed documents. You can bet I am going to frame this and put it in Room 24 when I get back to CWA. Tomorrow the program kicks off with lectures including The Geopolitical Origins & Unfoldings of World War II and Intelligence, Counter-Intelligence, and Deception in Operation Overlord. We then head to the National Mall where we will receive a tour of the National World War II Memorial. Teens from the Institute will lay a wreath at the memorial while a USMC bugler plays Taps. We then will take a walking tour of the monuments before heading back to our GWU dorms on the Mount Vernon Campus. I will end each blog post with something we learned or heard that day. Tonight I would like to quote Mr. Small: “You (the students) are the torchbearers of what happened on Normandy for the next generation. I want you to never forget what you see during these two weeks and I want you to tell you children and grandchildren about how important D-Day is to our nation and American culture.”
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 02:35:41 +0000
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