Moments of Thanks
Korean War Veteran Visits Washington Township High School to Thank Students for Their Letters of Gratitude
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP – Bernadette Bogacki just wanted to help a friend’s father gain a little bit of thanks for the time he spent serving and defending our country. Thanks to a dedicated group of Washington Township High School students, led by a senior Air Force Jr. ROTC cadet, she was able to do that in spades.
Earlier this school year, Bogacki, a WTHS mathematics teacher, was talking with her friend, Karen Grosmick, whose sons, David and Matthew, are WTHS graduates. Karen Grosmick told Bogacki that her father, retired U.S. Army Corporal Norman Longfellow, is a Korean War veteran who is part of the Veterans Village organization that provides housing – for more than 150,000 people – and takes care of veterans in Florida. Through the Village Flight for Veterans program, Cpl. Longfellow was invited on an “Honor Flight” to Washington, D.C., for a tour of veterans’ memorials. Knowing that Bogacki helped run WTHS’s Stockings for Soldiers drive for years, Grosmick asked if she might be able to find a handful of students to write letters of thanks to her father in conjunction with his Honor Flight.
Bogacki sent a message out to some of her students, and one, Briana Hoskins, took the idea and ran with it. A senior Air Force Jr. ROTC cadet, Hoskins invited her fellow cadets to join in the letter-writing campaign. What Bogacki hoped would yield a dozen or so letters ended up providing 86 heart-felt, hand-written notes to send to Florida.
“About two-thirds of them were from the ROTC kids, and Briana deserves all the credit for that,” Bogacki said. “It was really amazing.”
Karen Grosmick read every letter before taking them to her father. Cpl. Longfellow was overwhelmed with emotion and immediately asked if he could meet with Bogacki to thank her when he next visited New Jersey. Bogacki did that one better, setting up a meet-and-greet for Cpl. Longfellow with the students who wrote the letters on Thursday, May 17th, in the WTHS instructional media center.
“It means so much to me that you wrote those letters,” Cpl. Longfellow said to the group of 40-50 students. “I enjoyed reading every one of them.”
Cpl. Longfellow took time on Thursday to talk about his military experience, his time abroad during the war, and even answered some of the students’ questions. He was drafted in the army and served during the Korean War in 1954-55. He was sent to Japan and was in a supply unit, issuing M1 rifles to the troops in Korea. He later transferred to a unit that dealt with classified information, where he was selected to handle top secret documents when they had to be transported to the officers. He had to make sure each document got to and from the vaults each day, since there were no computers then.
After serving, Cpl. Longfellow used the G.I. Bill to earn his associates’ degree from Temple University in electronics. He was hired shortly thereafter by AT&T, where he had a long career as a telephone technician.
Cpl. Longfellow is 85 years old and was married for 52 years until his wife passed away after battling Parkinson’s disease for the last 10 years of their marriage. He is a loving father and grandfather, part of a heavy military family. Four of his eight brothers fought in World War II. His son-in-law, Karen’s husband Glen, served in the Marine Corps. Grandsons Matthew (WTHS class of 2014) and David (2017) are in the ROTC at Rowan University, and David was part of the AFJROTC program at WTHS. Matthew Grosmick will graduate from Rowan in December, and he plans to enlist as an officer in the U.S. Army immediately after graduation.
The students who wrote the letters took turns shaking Cpl. Longfellow’s hand at the end of the presentation, many taking time to look at photos that the veteran brought from his time overseas, as well as his Honor Flight to Washington.
- WTPS -