‘We owe it to him’: Wheaton school keeps Medal of Honor recipient’s memory alive through art and music

He signed his letters Jim or Jimbo.

He wrote about a haircut his mom would approve of, the food and, later, the “stifling humidity.”

“Dear Folks, Well, we start another month! Each time we do, I get closer to home,” he began on Feb. 1, 1967.

Army Pfc. James Howard Monroe never made it home.

Later that month, his platoon in Vietnam fell under attack. The 22-year-old responded, as if by instinct, to a live grenade. His Medal of Honor citation recounts his heroics, how Jimmy Monroe shouted a warning, pushed a wounded radio operator and the platoon sergeant to one side, and finally “lunged forward to smother the grenade's blast with his body.”

“I can get teary-eyed, right now, as a dad reading those letters,” said Michael Divelbiss, an art teacher at James Monroe Middle School in Wheaton.

In the main office of the school that bears the Army medic’s name, a memorial wall shows old newspaper stories and, encased behind glass, his Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military award.

The school is more than its guardian. Teachers and students preserve Jimmy’s memory through a series of ongoing tributes that make him part of the school’s very fabric, generations after he gave his life. One in particular extends far beyond its walls.

Under the baton of director Jeff Novak, the Monroe Middle School band program commissioned an original piece of music, a symphonic march by composer Timothy Loest that salutes Monroe.

Students from Monroe and other Wheaton middle school bands will play “Guardians of the Golden Star” — side-by-side with the municipal band — at its first concert of the season in downtown Memorial Park on June 11. The eighth-grade symphonic band debuted “Guardians” at a school concert in March — its world premiere — and earned a standing ovation from the crowd.

“They were moved by this piece. We were moved by this piece,” said student Giulia Serpico, who plays the flute and piccolo.

Sheet music publisher Belwin has also released “Guardians,” so school bands across the country can play it.

“We owe it to him to connect to him and help others connect to him and know his actions and what he stood for,” said Lincoln Estes, a guidance counselor who remembers Monroe at school assemblies on Veterans Day and around Memorial Day.

“Even in his letters, before he makes the instinctual decision to jump on a grenade and save those around him, his letters ooze just thinking about others, putting others before himself, caring about others before himself,” Estes said. “That is what he was all about, and especially in his final moments.”

A ‘sense of heroism’

Loest begins “Guardians” with a rhythmic unit called an ostinato.

“That is a thread that ties the entire composition together, and that pattern represents or is similar to marching feet of soldiers,” he said.

Then the clarinets, the first melodic instrument, join in, “and coupling those two together gives you a real sense of heroism,” Novak said.

As the work progresses, more voices come in different instruments, Loest said, a layering effect meant to reflect the teamwork of a military organization.

There are fragments of “Reveille,” a bugle call. Chimes sound a total of eight times.

“Jimmy had earned eight valorous citations, so each chime toll represents one of his citations, and I decided to have those tolls presented in pairs, because no soldier goes to war alone,” Loest said. “They also bring their family with.”

The program notes published by Belwin detail Monroe’s “valorous actions” the night of Feb. 16, 1967.

Because “Guardians” is also dedicated to Gold Star families, it’s “written in a way that other high schools and middle schools across the country would be able to pick it up and play it and tell Jimmy's story in a broader sense,” Novak said.

An anonymous gift, a contribution from the Monroe band Class of 2025, other donations and a grant from the Student Excellence Foundation in Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 allowed Novak to pursue his dream project.

“With this story being very much a Wheaton story, and knowing that Tim is a Wheatonite himself, there was no other direction we were going for who should write this piece of music,” Novak said.

While brainstorming with students, Novak and Loest reached out to family members of Monroe to make sure his survivors were comfortable with the project and assured them that it would not glorify war.

“We learned about Jimmy,” said Loest, a retired middle school band director.

His letters home give a humanizing portrait of a war hero who absorbed a grenade blast.

“When you hear about it, it sounds like this tough, war-ridden soldier who just chucked himself over it. But it was really this young boy who was drafted into war, and he chose to save others over himself, and you just see it from a different perspective after essentially getting to know him,” percussionist Austin Attaway said.

In one letter to his folks, Jimmy made a request: “Just the news from home is all I really need.”

‘This is generational’

The “Guardians” debut inspired another legacy project: A mural made mostly by seventh- and eighth-grade students commemorating the world premiere date. Jimmy’s medal is at the center.

“I just felt like it was a piece that we needed, something to memorialize this very special occasion for the school,” said Divelbiss, the art teacher. “I've been teaching 24 years and been a part of other school communities and have never seen anything remotely close to this.”

Divelbiss grew up in Warrenville, thinking the school next to the county fairgrounds was named after the nation’s fifth president. He certainly was not alone.

“I start every quarter talking about how I don’t know of another Medal of Honor school,” he said.

Jimmy’s medal found a place of honor at the school bearing his name about 15 years ago.

Former Assistant Principal Susan Baldus Strauss decided to call Jimmy’s niece to form a connection. At that moment, she was visiting her uncle’s grave in Wheaton Cemetery. She had been keeping the medal in her home.

“So then Jimmy's niece said, ‘It is such a lovely twist of fate that you called, and this, this tells me exactly what I need to do, and I would like you guys to have it,’” Estes said.

The future of ‘Guardians’

The performance with the municipal band is “only the beginning of what this piece can become over the years,” Novak said.

His hope? That students play it year after year at a finale concert and that it “may forever be the piece of music that generationally binds all of our student-musicians together,” he wrote in the program for the premiere.

“I just could not be more proud of how this came together,” Principal Ashley Huettemann said.

Novak will lead his students in a patriotic medley, “Salute to Freedom,” in the Wheaton Memorial Day parade.

“What I tell them is that we march for Jimmy,” he said, “because he is unable to be here to march for himself.”

The next “Guardians” performance

What: Students from Monroe and other Wheaton middle schools will join the city’s municipal band on stage at its first concert of the season, featuring “Guardians of the Golden Star.”

When: The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 11.

Where: Memorial Park, 225 Karlskoga Ave., Wheaton

These Monroe students were among the first to play “Guardians”:

“This was probably the best thing I have ever done musically and just in general.” — Owen Wagner, euphonium

“It kind of just represents the school in like a really nice way.”

— Aashrith Alluri, clarinet

“For me, it felt like an accomplishment, like we had crossed the finish line and that we like successfully played the piece in front of this big audience.”

— Ingrid Allison, clarinet