A Tribute to Petersburg's Veterans

Each year Petersburg High School commerorates Veterans' Day. Beginning in the 2003 school year, the students began to collect interviews with local veterans. The first "documentary" was A Tribute to Petersburg's WW2 Veterans. This movie was put together long before PHS had a videography class. The instructor and students did not know how to do interviews; the equipment was limited. Our goal was simply to preserve stories of our veterans. The next year we followed the WW2 documentary up with A Tribute to Petersburg's Korean War Veterans. As viewers will note, much was learned while shooting the WW2 documentary that helped make the Korean War documentary better. For Veterans' Day 2005, we broke from the documentary process and made several short pieces including What is a Veteran? PHS added a videography course in the 2007-2008 school year. Utilizing the high end equipment, the Videography class shot A Tribute to Petersburg's Afghan and Iraq Veterans. This was done several months after Petersburg's National Guard had returned from a year tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the 2008 Veterans' Day Assembly, then senior Mac McCullough shot and editted a 25 minute documentary about 2 Petersburg's Veterans who were in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.

Veterans' Day 2007:

Each year the seniors put on the Veterans' Day Assembly for our high school. They come up with a plan for the assembly and then put the plan into action. This includes everything from the presentation to programs to posters for our commons to a reception for our local vets. Please check out Thoughts About Veterans, a short video (9 mb) created by seniors Jayne Aiken, Ian Braun, Jaclyn Lyons, Ariel Norheim, Kayla Wright, Sean Aliberti, and Casey Thompson. Also, please view Three Bronze Men which is a poem by Chuck Hawkins put to video by Natasha McDonald, Cam Severson, Katie Peeler, Coty McKoewn, and Scott Hedlund. In addition, Eric Martinsen created a History of Veterans' Day which is a short video explaining the background behind Veterans' Day. Finally, MacKenzie Peeler and Max Craske put part of F.D.R.'s Four Freedoms Speech to video as a demonstration of what our Veterans' have preserved through their service to our country. PHS thanks all our Veterans.