CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Holy Spirit youths place flags on veterans' graves

New Castle News - 5/18/2021

May 17—Normally, school isn't in session on a Saturday.

But that doesn't mean that the learning stops.

Students from Holy Spirit Academy's Service Club got a lesson in giving back over the weekend when they reported to Greenwood Cemetery in Union Township to help American Legion Post 343 place flags on the graves of 935 veterans buried there.

"We have done various projects since our inception," club adviser Melanie Widelko explained. "The kids actually wanted to do something for veterans, something for military."

That outreach began with a cookie cart, with cookies supplied by the club that were sold around the school. The sale netted $300, which was donated to the Legion.

"Then we wanted to take it one step further, because money is great, but we wanted to do something and help out in some way," Widelko said. "The kids and parents just jumped right on this and a lot of them came out today."

Students and parents arrived at the two-century-old cemetery just before 9:30 a.m. and, with flags supplied by the Legion, fanned out among grave markers to spend about an hour replacing the red, white and blue banners that had been waving since last Memorial Day with new ones.

"This is very exciting," post commander Bill Schafer said. "This is the largest crew we've had for a while. I think we have about 50."

The initiative, Shawnee Sokoloski said, demonstrates why she had enrolled her two children in Holy Spirit.

"(It's) the foundation of learning, serving, succeeding," she said. "This is part of the serving ... the kids can get involved in this stuff and it becomes part of their everyday living, and they want to keep doing it."

The youths who were placing the flags realized that they could have been sleeping in or just relaxing on a Saturday morning, but believed the occasion was important enough to sacrifice such activities.

"We always do all kinds of stuff, like go and give money to people who don't have stuff," 12-year-old Joseph Mastropietro said of the service club. "So we decided to come here and plant flags for all the people that died, for the soldiers that fought for us."

His sister, 9-year-old Giavanna, added that "It's important to take care of graves because if you don't, what they say would fade away, and for respect."

Avery Robinson-Goodnight, 10, wanted to be a part of placing flags "because I feel bad that many people have died from fighting in a war to help and save us. I'd rather be helping other people and showing gratefulness than sleeping in."

And 11-year-old Gwen Connell, who was working with 10-year-old Marika Measel, looked around and noted that "All these graves are so old and no one's taking care of them, and we thought we could try to serve them by adding new flags to honor them."

Those efforts may have been a part of the final activity for Holy Spirit's Service Club. The school is closing for good next month, and most students likely will be attending St. John Paul II Elementary in Hermitage, where a partnership has been worked out between the Holy Spirit Parish and the Kennedy Catholic Family of Schools.

Still, Widelko is hoping to squeeze in one final project, one that would be a joint effort with an existing service club at the new school, as a way to begin meshing the two groups of youths together.

"It is bittersweet, of course," she said of Saturday's event, "but I'm glad that we are able to show them that despite the sadness, we can still be service oriented and be positive and do things that are good for the community up until the end of our time."

It was a lesson that was not lost on 11-year-old Maitland Assegai.

"They could be the reason we're even able to come to a graveyard today," she said of veterans she was helping to honor. "We're doing something little for them when they did something huge for us."

___

(c)2021 New Castle News (New Castle, Pa.)

Visit New Castle News (New Castle, Pa.) at www.ncnewsonline.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.