Kate Dickerson is “not a big heights person,” but her first time on a plane this summer “will definitely be worth it,” she said.
The Starkville High School junior and her history teacher, Craig Wood, will be one of 16 student-teacher teams nationwide traveling to Hawaii to study World War II in June, as part of the Sacrifice for Freedom: World War II in the Pacific program.
The program is run by the nonprofit National History Day, in which middle and high school students create projects displaying their historical research, interpretation and critical thinking skills. Students from SHS and Armstrong Middle School participate every year in NHD’s state competition and regularly advance to the national competition held every June in Washington, D.C.
Dickerson was first exposed to the program when her older brother, Tyler, participated in it, but she herself became interested in history last year when she took Advanced Placement European History, she said.
“It opened my eyes a little bit more to history,” she said. “(At first,) it was just another class I had to take, but now it’s something I’m actually interested in.”
She applied for the Sacrifice for Freedom program — which is separate from NHD’s regular competition — by writing a paper about what WWII means to her and her family’s connection to it. Her great-grandfather, Air Force Sgt. James Donovan Gautier Jr. of Moss Point, was a prisoner of war for three and a half years and survived the Bataan Death March, the forced movement of thousands of American and Filipino POWs by the Japanese army across roughly 60 miles of the Philippines.
Dickerson and Wood learned in December they were one of 16 teams chosen from a pool of 129 applicants, though the information was not publicly released until earlier this month, something Wood said was “a really hard secret to keep” due to their excitement.
They were one of only two teams from the South, the other being from Georgia, and Dickerson said this was part of why it was a surprise to be chosen.
“(Being) from Mississippi, you don’t really think you would stand out, but I’m excited that I did,” she said.
Wood wrote his own application letter detailing how he teaches WWII history and explaining his own family’s connection to the war. His great-uncle served in the Pacific Ocean on a patrol torpedo boat, he said.
“He never talked about it, except for one random Christmas when he brought it up and then never spoke about it again,” Wood said.
Local participation in NHD grows every year, with 15 students from Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District qualifying for the national competition in D.C. last year. Wood said the success comes from the district expecting its NHD participants to create college-level projects using skills they will need in higher education, such as finding both primary and secondary sources, working with a word limit and developing public speaking skills. He and other history teachers are there to guide students through their projects but let them take initiative, he said.
“These kids are learning the topics that they want to learn about,” Wood said. “We don’t tell them to pick one specific topic, because if we did that, we wouldn’t have as many people do it.”
Dickerson and Wood’s Hawaii trip will include a visit to the airfield that was attacked in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and they will spend a night on the U.S.S. Missouri, the site of the Japanese surrender that ended WWII.
All 16 teams are assigned a list of books to read about WWII and Hawaii history, and each student will research a fallen soldier from their home state who is buried at the national cemetery in Hawaii in order to write and deliver a eulogy for that person during the trip. Dickerson said she is considering researching a soldier from the Copiah area whose remains and family were identified only recently thanks to advancements in forensic science.
Part of the program’s goal is to understand the sacrifices that soldiers and their families made, Dickerson said.
“It’s almost a way of saying thank you to his family as well, because (the soldier) made a sacrifice, but so did the family,” she said.
Her grandmother, Gautier’s daughter, grew up moving regularly because of her father’s service, Dickerson said, and she was “ecstatic” to learn that her granddaughter had been chosen to honor WWII veterans in this way.
“A big part of my great-grandfather’s story was to never forget, to remember your history because it can repeat itself, and she just loved that me doing this is a way to live that out for him,” Dickerson said.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 40 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.