Surgoinsville Middle School Students Produce Book About Nursing Home Residents

CHURCH HILL ? Surgoinsville Middle School 8th graders recently chronicled the lives of Church Hill Care and Rehab Center (CHCRC) residents in a stories and photos as part of a class project that ended with the production of a hard-bound book.

On Thursday, May 18, they delivered copies of the book, which is titled "Long Before Us," to all the CHCRC residents except one who passed away after the students interviewed the residents earlier this spring.

The newly published authors are the students of Surgoinsville Middle School 8th grade English Language Arts teacher Angelia Hensley and 8th grade social studies teacher Cody Sauceman who won a grant to pay for production of the book and worked with the students to produce it.

Hensley said the SMS 8th graders took a field trip recently to the National D-Day Memorial and Bedford, Va., and noted that she had learned from fellow SMS teacher Lee Ann McConnell that McConnell's 98-year-old father, Ubert McConnell, was both a D-Day veteran and resident of CHCRC.

The memorial is located in Bedford, Va., because that community suffered the single highest casualty rate of any community in America during the D-Day landings.

Thirty-four National Guard soldiers from the town of Bedford were part of D-Day, according to the D-Day Memorial's website. Nineteen of them were killed during the first day of the invasion, and four more died during the rest of the Normandy campaign. The town and the "Bedford Boys" had proportionately suffered the greatest losses of the campaign, thus inspiring the U.S. Congress to establish the D-Day memorial in Bedford.

The elder McConnell, who is recovering from a broken leg at CHRC, became, for her, the inspiration for the "Long Before Us" book.

Lee Ann McConnell, a 6th grade English language arts teacher at SMS, was visiting her father at the CHCRC when the SMS students delivered copies of the new book to the nursing home residents on May 18.

During a brief interview, she said her father was a native of Nicklesville, Va., and was one of the first men drafted into the Army from Scott County, Va., at the outset of WWII. He also became one of the first me to land on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.

He survived Omaha Beach unscathed, but was later wounded while in the Brest, France, area. But Ubert McConnell said the wound wasn't serious enough to get him sent home. But Lee Ann McConnell said her father's wound did keep him out of the Battle of the Bulge that took place in December 1944 during one of the coldest European winters in a generation.

Ubert eared the Purple Heart medal for being wounded in action and also earned a Silver Star and a Good Conduct medal for his military service in WWII. He had the medals with him on May 18, along with a WWII photo of himself that he said had been taken in England before the D-Day invasion.

His daughter said Ubert was part of a machine gun crew during the fighting in Europe.

Although Ubert survived the savage fighting in Europe, Lee Ann McConnell said, his brother William Francis McConnell, a U.S. Marine, was killed fighting the Japanese on Iwo Jima in the Pacific during WWII.

And Ubert's is just one of the stories that chronicle the lives of CHCRC residents. There are 25 stories and a number of photos in the book.

Teacher Angelia Hensley noted that the cover art for the "Long Before Us" book was created by a SMS 8th grader. It depicts a tree with the names of the SMS students written on the leaves and the names of the CHCRC residents written on the roots.

Hensley also noted that male students generally interviewed male CHCRC residents, especially military veterans, while the female students interviewed female residents.