Students honor veterans

While the COVID-19 virus is disrupting events throughout Crook County, including the annual Veterans Day celebration of the local men and women who have fought for this country, Moorcroft High School teacher Lona Tracy and her class are still on track, not having missed a year in the last almost 30 in making a gift projects for both the local veterans and active duty soldiers currently overseas of calendars or poems and sweets.

“Every year the project is a little different, it’s a gift. [We make] about 250-300 every years,” she says.

Tracy says they send these gifts not only to the Moorcroft area vets, but also to Pine Haven and Sundance, and the remainder to the veterans’ hospice.

“We just want to make sure our veterans know we appreciate what they do,” she explains.

“Some of them send us very nice thank you cards. You know, our job is to thank them!”

She says the vets occasionally will come in to the class personally to thank the kids for their gifts. The soldiers from overseas actually sent the class a gift in return.

According to Tracy, “We got a flag that flew over an American base back there. They sent me a tea set from Iraq and sent the kids [foreign currency].”

This year, the class sent out a gift bag of candy, poems and pictures.