by elizabeth farina
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Midlothian High School student Alexis Moraski, 17, admits the bigger picture about the current war wasn’t necessarily in focus until she penned a letter to the surviving parents of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2005.

As part of an assignment in teacher Danny Abell’s government class, Moraski and 100 other students sent letters expressing their condolences and appreciation to the relatives of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The letters were sent the Friday before Thanksgiving.

“What’s so important for these kids is that I told them that ‘For you this is an assignment, but for the people that receive these, it’s not an assignment. It is much more,’ ” Abell said.

Abell reviewed all the students’ letters.

“You want the students to have the experience realizing how much a thank you, a simple letter – which anyone can do – how much it means to the families,” the teacher said. “This is meaningful.”

Those words rang true when Moraski received an unexpected reply from her letter’s recipients, John and Joanne Burri of Wyoming, Mich. Their son, Army Spc. Eric Burris, 21, was killed in Baghdad in June 2005. The Burri family sent a package to Moraski that included the letter, newspaper clippings announcing their son’s death, a T-shirt and a photo of Eric with his birthday written on the back: Nov. 27.

“She [Joanne Burri] spent her Thanksgiving writing a four-page letter to a student from Midlothian, Virginia,” Abell said. “She put this in the mail on his birthday … we didn’t intend this; she didn’t know [about the project].”

In Moraski’s initial correspondence, she told them that “no one will forget, even I won’t. He will be remembered not only by his family and friends, but by me and by any American that is serving this country.”

Moraski was moved by the candor of the family as she and her mom read the letter together at home. “They said that he wasn’t afraid to die. He would say that ‘God’s got his back’ and that’s stuck in my mind,” the teen said. “I feel that I knew him, and by reading her letter, I got to know him better.”

For senior Jessica May, the response from a grandmother was also more than she expected after writing her letter. Lona Mooney, whose grandson, Spc. Zachary T. Myers 21, was killed in an explosion in Baji, Iraq, in September this year, replied to the teen.

Myers, of Delaware, Ohio, was promoted posthumously. His grandmother said she and Myers were talking about how he would return home for his upcoming 22nd birthday, Mooney shared in the letter. “They were excited that he was coming back and they were going to throw a party for his birthday,” May said.

Mooney, who also wrote on Thanksgiving, noted that she shared May’s letter with the family, including Myers’ widow Megan and their child. Mooney wrote, “My heart is so sad.”

And the sadness is the fear that many of the students faced when writing to surviving family members. “I felt like what I said wasn’t good enough,” said senior Gayle Wiles. “I just thought about what I would want to hear if someone had written me if I’d lost my son.”

Wiles wrote to the mother of Army Pfc. John D. Amos II, 20, who died from serious complications after being wounded in a roadside explosion in northern Iraq in 2004.

“I told her [Susan Amos] that I really supported her and I have a lot of respect for her,” Wiles said. “They’re my heroes.”

The government class experience has provided over 100 letters to surviving families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. - Photo by elizabeth farina

Senior Mimi Glass faced her trepidation as she began to learn more about the soldiers and spoke with her mom about the project. “I actually told my mom that I was writing to a family about their son and she told me to be polite, appropriate and ask questions to learn more,” Glass said.

Glass was not the only teen to ask his or her parents for advice. Senior Darrius Meadows elected to write the surviving family of Army Staff Sgt. Leroy E. Alexander, 27, who was killed in Afghanistan.

“As I’m reading about his family – he was a staff sergeant and my dad was a staff sergeant – it wasn’t easy,” Meadows said.

The teen spoke with his father Curtis, who is now retired, about the letter project and how it opened his eyes to the war and helped him understand what families go through on a day-to-day basis.

“He said he was very proud and wanted to read it after I was finished,” Meadows said.

“I hope that they found my letter to be sincere and know that I care and know that I’m not just doing it for a school project,” he said. “I want them to know that everybody is thinking about them and their loss, and that we do care.”