Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Nicole Fagan finished third in the Veterans of Foreign Wars district Voice of Democracy competition.
The Sweet Home Chapter of the VFW had three participants from Sweet Home High School in the first competition held in eight years, organizer Cathy Lindsay said. Fagan finished first. Tracy Smith finished second, and Larissa Bjornsen was third.
In the event, participants give a three- to five-minute speech on a selected topic, Lindsay said. “They have a theme they have to go by each year.”
The VFW awards scholarships to the winning participants at each level, post, district, state and national, where speeches are given on the House or Senate floor. The top scholarship award is $50,000.
The VFW has been running the program since 1946.
In past years, more than 100 Sweet Home students have submitted applications, Lindsay said, and the club is attempting to rekindle that kind of involvement.
The purpose is to involve youth with veterans and to “let youth know we’re here to support the youth of our nation,” Lindsay said.
“I wrote a paper on what respect means to the younger generation and how we don’t give respect to veterans as much as we should,” Fagan said. The VFW asked participants to write about showing respect.
Fagan built her thesis from there, she said, “only because of the fact that we don’t give as much credit to them as we should.”
She believes that younger people have lost the understanding of what it means to go to war, she said. It was about pride and honor but has become more about land and money.
“It was really interesting actually,” Fagan said of the process. “I didn’t know about this at all.”
Her English teacher, Jonathan Bonner, had participated when he was in high school, and he gave his class the assignment as class work. Submitting the paper and speech to the VFW was optional.