Veterans, Gilberts students gather for Pearl Harbor
When Gilberts Elementary School students go to school every morning, they will walk past a reminder of the USS Arizona, a battleship the Empire of Japan sunk in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
A local World War II veteran presented that reminder -- a flag that flew over the USS Arizona memorial -- at a ceremony Friday to mark the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The flag will be professionally mounted and displayed in the lobby of Gilberts Elementary School.
Rudy Wrublik, the Algonquin veteran who presented the flag to Gilberts Elementary Principal Jeff King, remembers the "date which will live in infamy."
"I was at home, and all of a sudden, (planes) came in and bombed Hawaii," Wrublik said after the schoolwide assembly. "There was no discussion. Soon as they hit, it's war."
The most poignant moment of the assembly came when an arthritic Bill Dohm, a volunteer bugler with American Legion Post 57 out of Elgin, played taps on an old brass trumpet.
Dohm said he enlisted in 1946, but his arthritis, which kept him in a chair during taps, prevented him from serving.
Dohm found a way to serve anyway, joining the post in 2000 to play taps at military funerals in Illinois.
"It's an honor to play for these veterans," said Dohm, who reckoned he first picked up a horn more than 70 years ago.
Friday's speeches and ceremonies were interrupted by a video produced by American Legion Post 57 that showed Pearl Harbor's wreckage and pictures of POW camps, dead bodies and a mushroom cloud, accompanied by upbeat songs like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and James Brown's "I Feel Good."
The video didn't seem to bother the kids, who started clapping along to the Marine Corps Hymn at the end of the video -- a lengthy montage of recruitment posters for the armed services.
Even the students got to weigh in on the significance of Dec. 7, reading from the book "We the Kids" and reciting poetry they had written for the occasion.
"America wants us to have a good life, even through all the pain and the strife," fifth-grader Jenny Magalit said.