Pelican Post Commander Dan Williams and Post Vice-Commander Ron Johnson are adamant on making sure every middle school and high school student in the Klamath Basin have an opportunity to apply for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Marine Corps League Patriot Pen and Voice of Democracy essay competitions.
Year after year, Williams and Johnson spend their personal time going to every middle school and high school in Klamath Falls to hand out Patriot Pen and Voice of Democracy applications. This year, two Klamath Union High School students, one Ponderosa Middle School student and instructor earned top honors.
In the Voice of Democracy competition, the topic of this year’s essay was “Is America today our forefather’s vision?”
This past Saturday, VFW recognized and handed out $900 in scholarship funds.
First place went to Klamath Union sophomore, Thomas Biggs. It was the second time Biggs submitted a VFW essay after he won the Patriot Pen when he was a seventh grader at Ponderosa.
For his accomplishment, Biggs earned $300 as his essay now has the chance to win at the state level.
“I would just tell myself, just write something down; it doesn’t have to be good. I asked my dad, how does this sound? It got better. I wanted to read it like a speech and not have it sound monotone and say, well, the founding fathers did this,” Biggs said.
“It does not really look like we got much better as a country but I started looking back and it was worse back then. It has never been perfect but there are ups and downs but ups get better.”
KU senior Bryce Peterson earned second place for his essay and described how the United States can do better at being united as a country.
“I focused on partisanship and polarization, similar to a video I made and submitted in a C-SPAN competition. There is a quote by John Adams that talks about the biggest threat to the United States is the division into two party’s,” Peterson said.
Teacher of the year recognition
Williams is a familiar face at Klamath Falls City Schools as an esteemed substitute teacher.
Ponderosa instructor Michael Overstreet was also honored by being named teacher of the year through VFW. Williams is a substitute teacher for Overstreet on occasion whenever he was called away during football and baseball games while coaching for Klamath Union.
The awards presentation this past Saturday brought back memories as Overstreet was Biggs’ instructor in his history class two years ago.
“He (Williams) takes my job a lot when I am doing sports and nominated me. I was never military but US history has been my favorite thing and I put a lot of effort into teaching; I probably do a better job teaching my US history class than my world history class. It seems patriotism has been down. I push having a love for your country in my lessons as much as I can,” Overstreet said. “Coming from a veterans group like that has more meaning to me than if it was something else because I really push patriotism and the idea of the great country we are fortunate to live in.”
For the Patriot Pen, Alexander Jaskrewiz of Ponderosa Middle School won the competition as well.
“If you are thinking of doing the essay competition, I think it is worthwhile. Even if you do not win, it is still going to help with your writing,” Biggs said. “At KU, we write about three or four essays a year. I think by doing something on your own, you learn how it might be in college and the real world. It is worthwhile to do that.”
