Principal apologizes for speakers

BELLINGHAM – Two members of Veterans for Peace got a standing ovation when they addressed a high-school Veterans Day assembly, but their appearance prompted a letter of apology from the principal.

Sehome High School officials received some complaints that the Wednesday event was too one-sided, principal Jim Kistner said. He told the Bellingham Herald that staff members had said that graphic descriptions of war had upset a number of students.

“I want to apologize for making any student or staff member uncomfortable because the presentation at Sehome’s Veterans Day Assembly today was used to advance a particular political agenda,” Kistner wrote in the letter distributed to students.

“Our community speakers had agreed that this assembly would honor our veterans. We deeply regret that they did not.”

“I completely disagree with that last statement,” Marshall Petryni, 17, a student organizer of the assembly, said in a Thursday telephone interview with the Associated Press.

“A bunch of kids came up to me after – some were crying, some gave me hugs,” Petryni said.

One of the speakers, Mark Polin, who served in the Navy from 1979 to 1997, told the gathering of nearly 1,000 students that Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day – commemorating an end to war.

In a telephone interview Thursday from his Bellingham home, Polin said he was at the assembly “to honor the warrior and not the war. The way to honor veterans is to not keep repeating the same mistakes and sending young men and women to their deaths.”

Army veteran Ben Sherman, author of “Medic: The Story of a Conscientious Objector in the Vietnam War,” described war casualties in detail to the students and unfurled a scroll with the names of the more than 1,100 U.S. troops killed so far in Iraq.

They were introduced to the audience by Dr. Bob Olson of Bellevue, a World War II veteran who founded the Bellingham chapter of Veterans for Peace, Sherman said, noting that three generations of veterans were represented.

“We weren’t there to tell them to believe one way or another,” he said Thursday from his home on Mercer Island, near Seattle. “We were there to say, ‘Here’s the cost. Maybe your generation will find ways it won’t cost that much.’ Any veteran who’s been in a war will tell you there has to be a better way to solve our problems than this.”

The men received standing ovations, and students gathered afterward to shake their hands.

“It wasn’t your normal Veterans Day ceremony,” Sherman said, adding, “If he’d had three generals talk about how wonderfully we’re doing in Iraq … would he then write a letter to parents about how only one side of the story was told? That side is always told.”

Two parents who attended had strong reactions – one pro, the other con.

“I believe it was totally inappropriate for the venue,” said Amy Thomas, mother of Sehome junior Hannah Thomas. “It was an assembly to honor the veterans. This gentleman (Polin) used it as a platform for his political agenda. I thought it was disappointing, and hurtful to any veterans who were there.”

“The speakers were incredible,” said Elizabeth Rocks, mother of junior Erika Harrington. “They were veterans who said what it meant to be in a war. I think kids need to hear that. I can see how people can say it’s one-sided, and yet it’s just as one-sided to have a Veterans Day assembly that’s full of nothing but flags and patriotic songs.”

The assembly also included recognition of school staff members who are veterans, recitation of John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Field,” Sehome’s choir singing “America the Beautiful” and a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace.” It closed with “Taps.”

“One girl said to me, ‘I never understood Taps till today,’ ” Sherman recalled.

“If the principal wanted to honor veterans, why did he write a letter apologizing for us standing up and telling the truth?” Sherman said. “We appreciate the students who thanked us and showed us such respect.”

Kistner’s letter said the school would make counselors available for students or staff who needed them. A second Veterans Day assembly is planned, he said.

He said he was not told the speakers belonged to a peace organization, and that he would review the process for arranging assemblies.

“No blame, nobody is in trouble,” Kistner told the Herald.