With $25K Donation to Honor Fight, Local Students Halfway to Goal

By Beth Palmer | Email the author | 5:20pm

The Lyons Township High School student council has dedicated the 2010-11 school year to fundraising for a nonprofit that sends WWII veterans to Washington, D.C.

There are now more funds for a program that flies World War II veterans to Washington, D.C. to visit WWII memorials after local students mailed in a check to Honor Flight Network to the tune of $25,000.

Read more here: http://burrridge.patch.com/articles/with-25k-donation-to-honor-fight-local-students-halfway-to-goal or for another article go to http://lagrange.patch.com/articles/how-honor-flight-has-touched-la-grange-park-veterans-residents

Did you know that Lyons Township High School invited the feeder school community to take part in this enormous fundraising effort? 

Seven feeder schools got on board. Participating schools include Park Jr. High, McClure, Gurrie Middle School, Highlands, St. Francis, St. Cletus, and St. John of the Cross.

We were told every school got involved with this endeavor but one. Can you guess which middle school principal did not have the common courtesy to return phone calls or emails from one of the event's organizers? 

An LT student council member who was a former Pdale student sent an email to Pleasantdale encouraging their participation, but got no response. 

Finally, principals from other schools were asked to reach out to Pleasantdale, but they too got no response. 

That is what we are talking about when we say district 107 needs to work on communication. While they are at it, they should also work on building a sense of community with our neighboring school districts. We heard from on Pleasantdale grad that was embarrassed when it was announced that Pleasantdale was the only school not participating in this community-wide effort.

Here is what Park Jr. High posted on their website:

Park Jr. High is working with Tracey Rousonelos, a former Park parent, who is one of the coordinators of Honor Flight Chicago.  The mission of Honor Flight Chicago is to send World War II Veterans to Washington D.C. for an all expense paid trip to visit the World War II Memorial and experience a full day of honor.  Honor Flight Chicago is one of 108 chapters nationwide who all share the same vision of sending our veterans to Washington to see their memorial. If you are interested in learning more about Honor Flight Chicago please visit the website at www.honorflight.org. 

Lyons Township High School and the LTHS Student Council voted Honor Flight Chicago as the charity of the year to support. LTHS Student Council will raise $50,000 and sponsor one full flight in May 2011, for 90 World War II veterans to visit Washington D.C. This is a community-wide effort by gathering support from local businesses as well as schools that feed into LTHS. A total of 8 surrounding schools in the community have joined the mission.  In the upcoming weeks and months you will see press releases and news articles in efforts to help raise money to support our WWII Veterans.


If you would like to donate please contact the Park main office for further details.

Sincerely,

Phil Abraham

Principal

This was one of the events Gurrie Middle School hosted - Salerno's Adult Fundraiser:

http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d6a4d794e444d334f4446384e5451794d6a41324d54493d0d0a&sb=1

The kids of Gurrie Middle School raised another $2500 for Honor Flight Chicago when they hosted an event called Party With A Purpose 2011.

St. John of the Cross hosted several fundraisers for Honor Flight and are in the running for the top fundraising school. 

The feeder school that raises the most money will be a awarded a plaque from Lyons Township High School to hang in their school and will also have a special role to play at the May 11 Welcome Home Celebration at Midway Airport. Also, the LTTV camera crew sill be interviewing the principal of the school who raises the most money. The camera crew is taking footage of the Honor Flight in the morning at Midway and upon their return that night. Each one of the 95 veterans on the May 11 flight will also be given a DVD that the LTTV camera crew is making that day. Each participating feeder school will also have a copy of that DVD for their school as well.

To learn more about Honor Flight go to www.honorflightchicago.org.