On Tuesday, April 4, Steve Hardwick and Bob Swift came to Lawrence North to speak to students about WWII.  Steve Hardwick is a fifth grade teacher who has written a book called ‘Those Who Were There’ that contains 84 memories and stories from WWII veterans.  He came to speak at LN along with Bob Swift who is a WWII veteran from Fountain City, Indiana who was a medic in the war.  Rachel Couch tries to organize these events every few years with Hardwick so students can hear from a WWII veteran.

“Unfortunately there are not as many WWII veterans that are able to tell about their experience and there is not going to be as many opportunities for your generation to hear it so this is one of the times where if I can bring that part of history to students alive, and see that this is not something in a book this is something somebody has lived through, I think it’s really important that they understand that these were kids your age,” Couch said.

One student that was there was Mina Florkowski who is an exchange student from Germany.  She thinks it is really interesting to hear a point of view from an American soldier because she has only ever heard about the German perspective of the war.  

“It’s really interesting to hear about it because all we hear about it is all about the German part. So I’ve never heard a story from an American soldier.  I’ve never heard a different perspective.  Germans don’t think it was great or anything.  They teach us what happened.  It’s really interesting to hear it from a different perspective because I never got the chance to hear something like that,” Florkowski said.

Hardwick believes that it is important for all high school students to hear about WWII from the perspective of a soldier.  He believes that their generation went through so much that we can now look at how they handled the Great Depression and then WWII after that to learn about how to handle situations today.

“They experienced something that we never had.  As we go through our world today we can learn so much on how our country handled the situation, how we personally can handle ourselves in a tough predicament by learning about these veterans and how they handled the great depression, how they handled their situation in WWII and we can learn about perseverance, courage, and teamwork by just watching a learning through these men,” Hardwick said.

Florkowski thinks that it is important so that everybody learns about WWII so that we can prevent conflicts like this from happening again.

“All this information is important for us to hear so that it does not happen again.  I  t’s important because those people are the only ones who actually know how terrible it was and it’s not just from books,” Florkowski said.

Another student at the event was junior Nina Beyfuss.  Beyfuss believes it is important for people to remember and address WWII so that it does not happen again.

“It’s really important because it was so devastating that we don’t want it to happen again.  It’s an important lesson to learn.  I learned how important it is for people to remember,” Beyfuss said.

Couch believes that this experience to have an eyewitness account of what happened in WWII is important for students to learn from it.   She believes that students need to hear what the veterans have to say because no one else has been through the kind of events they have experienced.

“I think that we owe a debt to them that we have not had to see a generation that went from a great depression to WWII they way that they did,” Couch said.

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Sara Muina