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For my topic this semester, I have chosen the concern of war. I felt that our veterans deserve more of our respect than they receive. This topic seemed most appropriate due to the fact that I would be presenting my oral component sometime in late may (around Memorial Day). After a long and sometimes depressing working period, I have cumulated my project into a two-part action.
The process started back in February, when I first looked at my project. Most people had chosen topics that were going along smoothly. People were able to find a sufficient amount of material on their topic in just a few weeks. I, though I had a topic that interested me, was unable to find anywhere near the information that others were accomplishing. I realized some time later that my topic was going no where.
It was in April that I went to go see Saving Private Ryan in theaters. That film touched me as no other movie had since Field of Dreams. I had never cried during a movie before either (I did not let anyone else see me). I came home and realized that the men who fought over there were brave beyond my own belief. It came to my attention also that these were the same people that I see walking down the street. They deserved more recognition than they receive.
I came to the conclusion that I wanted this to be my topic. It was easy to find resources that included this topic, especially any sources that dated after Vietnam. After I had found my sources and done my Annotated Bibliography, I desperately wanted to discover a way I could address my concern. Then I came up with a perfect way to do so. Since this project was due near Memorial Day, I could incorporate my project with the day's ceremonies. In addition, to publicize my feelings and actions towards my concern, I could accumulate all of my information on a web page.
Since Memorial Day was far off, I decided to get a jump-start on my web page. My friend that I keep in contact with from England helped me get my own online space using Fortunecity.com, a community of homemade web pages. He also had his own web page through this organization. I signed up instantly with hopes that I would have no problem making every square inch of the page to my own liking. I was wrong.
First, I needed to begin with the basics. I began with Homebuilder, a program for beginner web users, but I could do nothing as I wanted to. Homebuilder had none of the pictures I wanted to include, not to mention that I could not fashion the page to my liking. I then decided to use File Manager, a more complicated program, but a better one for fashioning web pages. This would require much more research because I would have to learn a whole new computer language.
For this, I turned to "Create It ~101; Basic HTML-1," a guide to HTML, the computer language of File Manager. Over the course of a month, I learned the language and became an expert at web pages. I learned color changing, font changing, character arranging, and many other aspects of making web pages. By the time I was done, my web page included my thoughts on war veterans, pictures I had seen occasionally on the Internet, and links to thevirtualwall.com and to the web site of my grandpa Rex's
Everything was in line for an easy project, but I decided that there was one more thing that I wanted to do. I wanted to take pictures of all of the events that I would attend on May 31 and present them on my web page, so I taught myself how to upload pictures into my web page. (I must admit, by this time, I was having some fun building my page.)
While in the course of my learning uploading, my mother showed me an article in the Naperville Sun that included a list of events on Memorial Day. I almost choked when I noticed I would be waking up at 7:00 in the morning to go to these things. Nevertheless, I told myself that if a bunch of sixty year-old veterans could do it, I could certainly encourage myself to also do so.
Our first stop was City Hall at 8 am. The ceremonies began with a presentation of flags and a prayer for those lost in battle. Three men (including the mayor), then laid out a wreath in honor of all veterans of foreign wars. Then my Uncle Mike led a group of veteran soldiers in a gun salute. I thought that the ceremony was cool. We were then dismissed and invited to the next of the day's events at Veterans' Park.
We headed out in that direction since the event was starting in only ten minutes. I was surprised (and pleased) to notice that many of the people that had gone to the first of the events were at the second also. They then proceeded to perform the same ceremony as City Hall. The wreath, salute, and prayer were repeated and then we were again dismissed to Burlington Park over by the train station.
As before, many of the same people came to this ceremony as the last one. I was a bit disappointed at this location, however, that the statue was three parts surrounded by trees. Once again, the same group of veterans performed the same ceremony and continued on their route. I, on the other hand, headed home to help prepare for the parade.
We went quickly and got good seats. It was crowded, but we had some scouts (my cousins) on Jackson, saving seats. The parade began as scheduled and (as in years passed) did not fail to impress me. I found myself amazed that the same group of guys that had been performing the ceremonies throughout the town was marching together in the parade. I had to admire their dedication to their country.
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