On 10/13/2014, TSP Executive Officer Ted Coffin wrote — Ended this weekend the right way. Yesterday I had the extreme pleasure and honor of carrying Stones from The Summit Project on a hike with a class from Lake Region High School. These girls have been involved in a 6 week curriculum all focused around The Summit Project. They have studied the families and the stories of these fallen Heroes from Maine. They all carried their Stones with honor, pride, and complete respect. There were no selfies, or disrespectful discussions. Once at the summit we all shared the stories of these Heroes and had a moment of silence to honor them and think about their families. They will now write letters back to the families and are going to reenact the hike and do an interpretive dance for their school. Three of these girls are foreign exchange students. To think someone from another country would choose to honor one of our fallen blows me away. Tears come to my eyes when I think back to the discussions I had with these young women as we hiked on Pleasant Mountain. My faith has been renewed in our youth. These young women are making sure that Maines Heroes are not forgotten. Read more here.
Watch the VIDEO here.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQUhzItNcw&rel=0]
Also, the poem below was written by Michaela Tripp. Michaela is a junior at Lake Region High School in Naples, Maine. On October 12, 2014 she hiked Pleasant Mountain with her classmates as part of The Summit Project. Michaela carried the memorial stone and memory of SPC Justin L. Buxbaum of South Portland, ME. Justin’s stone was chosen by his grandparents from a beach on Chebeague Island off the coast of Maine. Thank you Michaela for ensuring that Maine Heroes are NOT Forgotten.
More pictures from a fantastic event. Thank you LRHS. MHANF.
8 Comments
What an amazing morning! The partnership with The Summit Project has unfolded into more than I ever thought possible. It was a wonderful and truly moving experience for my students, my colleagues, myself and others in attendance to witness the sadness yet celebration of the life’s of our fallen heroes. After the performance, families of the fallen met and shared their stories of their loved one with the students. What an honor and a privilege it was to be a part of something so transcendent unfold before my eyes. This is the type of project, event, experience that begins, but never ends……….and I thank you David Cote for not only the conception of this great idea but the birth of a wonderful project that we can all be a part of.
I would like to thank the person who took such wonderful photos of the presentation…thank you.
We had a wonderful presentation today. We are filled with gratitude and appreciation for having the opportunity to participate in The Summit Project. What an honor to carry the stones of our fallen heroes from Maine, and today it was an honor to meet some of the families of our heroes.
My colleague Carmel and I, as well as our students, have been deeply moved by this entire experience, and we will continue to let others know of this project. Thank you, David Cote, for allowing us to be part of The Summit Project and thank you, Ted Coffin, for helping us during and after the hike (as well as today).
I carried Capt. Christopher Scott Cash’s stone and I was immensely honored. You see on the same day I ran the “Run For Cash” 5k (June 21) my own son was coming home from Afghanistan. My happiness that day was bittersweet–I was running for a soldier who did not come home.
We are forever grateful for The Summit Project and our fallen heroes will not be forgotten.
Thank you again,
Linda Davis
I am Denise Knight.. I am proud to say Sgt Edmund McDonald was my
son-in-law he was and still is very special to our whole family. Thank you all.
Throughout this entire project I’ve fallen more and more in love with the idea of The Summit Project. I first joined this academy group thinking it wasn’t that big of a deal. I was wrong. Getting to know what kind of person SPC Jason E. Dore really was, definitely changed the way I view the military. He was so passionate in what he did that it made me also want to make that difference. Watching the videos and getting to know his family made me feel a connection with people I’ve never even met yet. Not many people get to know that feeling.
The hike up the mountain was harder than I thought it would be, but remembering who and what I was doing it all for made it much easier. It was really a touching moment placing the stones on top of the mountain and hearing little characteristics about each soldier made everything so much more powerful. You could tell that the other people there felt it too.
I’m so grateful I joined this academy group. The Summit Project gave me a totally new perspective on our fallen soldiers. It made them important again, and it made them and their families know that they won’t be forgotten.
Tommy Dostie and Chris Gelineau both were in the 133rd engineering battalion with my dad Todd Crawford when they got deployed to Mosul Iraq in 2004. They are the reason I participated in The Summit Project. They are the reason I can eat dinner with my dad every night. To them I am grateful and to them, I owe everything.
Starting this project I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into, and I didn’t know the emotions that would be brought up. Immediately I knew my dad needed to participate in this hike with me. The days leading up to the hike I got very nervous, I knew my dad has PTSD and I didn’t know if the hike was going to trigger anything. My dad was very close to both Tommy and Chris which just made everything more emotional and nerve wracking. When we got to the high school the emotions started, tears when I saw the rocks, nerves while looking at my dad, nerves hoping I can help take grief from the family. While hiking there was so much laughing between my dad and me; he told me stories about both Tommy and Chris. The stone wasn’t on my mind so much, it was almost as if the stone didn’t exist. While hiking it felt like Tommy and Chris were there with us and that they weren’t just stones.
It’s like, I could feel the grief leave the families shoulders and fall on mine. The rock got heavier and heavier the more I hiked the mountain, and I loved it. I know the weight of the rock didn’t actually change, but it felt like it and it made me feel like I was doing something right. Getting to the top of the mountain was a breath of fresh air, literally. It was as if all of the trouble and pain shared with everyone who lost a soldier went away for a few minutes. During the ceremony at the summit, listening to everyone talk about yet another lost loved one was hard. I felt so blessed to be able and grab my dad’s hand knowing he was so close to not coming home. I was blessed; blessed to have my dad home safe, blessed to be able to carry Tommy and Chris, blessed to know that they are at peace.
Speaking while holding Tommy’s rock, a heaviness overcame me. All I could think about was how Tommy and many other deaths could have been prevented. How if one person said the bomber wasn’t a soldier, Tommy could still be alive. I carried Chris’s rock down the mountain and it was as if I was carrying two people. Chris and his wife both knew my father and so while I was carrying Chris’s rock, I was carrying her with me too. All I could think about was that it could have been my dad that I was carrying.
My dad ate lunch at the same time Tommy did the day he died. My dad’s friend had a gut feeling something was wrong and rushed him and a few others out of the dining tent. Right as they got across the street the suicide bomber set the bomb off. Although I didn’t know Chris, his big heart will be the one thing I remember most about him. Chris was selfless; he wasn’t suppose to be on the mission he was on; he was suppose to be asleep. One of the guys in Chris’s group just got back from a mission when he got word he had to leave again. Chris told him he would take that mission for him so he could get some sleep that night. The worst part about this story is Chris knew something was going to go wrong. He knew that he was risking his life to make other people at peace. I guess that’s part of the reason you join the army, sacrifice for the people you care about, but not everyone can do it. These two men will be in my heart forever; they were a huge loss not only to their families but also to the State of Maine and the United States army.
The Summit Project is something I would like more people to participate in; I think that people should sacrifice an afternoon of their lives to show gratitude and appreciation to men and women who sacrificed their lives for us. I am eternally grateful to Mr. Cote and everyone else who is involved with the Summit Project. My dad opened up about his war experience, and I was able to be there in a way I’ve never been able to before. Listening, connecting, understanding; Tommy and Chris helped my dad nine years after he got back from war just because of this project.
The Summit Project made the beginning of my year in Maine much better. I’m an
exchange student from Slovakia, and I am spending my year studying at Lake Region High
School. Everything was new for me, so was Academy class. To be honest, I chose that one
because I am untalented, I really like hiking, and I like helping people. But as time went on, I
started realizing the main reason why I chose it. I lost a few people in my life, so I can tell how
much it has hurt all the families. We can call their sons real heroes, because they died for their
country, while they were helping people and we all should be thankful for people like them.
Our main part, the hike, happened on October 12th. It was hard to leave our warm beds
on Sunday morning, but we had great reason for it. Firstly, we all met at the high school to pick
up our stones and meet with some family members. Then we took the bus to Pleasant Mountain.
The hike took us a while. Some of us were really fast and some needed their time to hike,
but we all were patient and stayed as a group. We reached the top at noon and finally we were
able to take our stones out of our bags. I can’t tell how long it took us; I wasn’t paying attention
to the time. Even though a wind was blowing, I can’t tell if I was cold or not. The only things I
was paying attention to were my classmates talking about their soldiers, trying to not cry. This
moment was really strong, and I’m pretty sure that each of us felt it.
After our hike, the last thing we had to do was to present what we did. I consider our
presentation as a really important part of the project. We didn’t know how it would all end up,
but we knew how important it was. And I can say I am really proud of us. We were able to meet
with some family members and Ted Coffin from The Summit Project; and we had the
opportunity to show other students of our school what we did. We were all nervous of the fact
that some family members of the soldiers would come to watch it. Now, we all know that we
didn’t have to be nervous. It was the most wonderful moment when we could see how pleased
they were with what we did.
Even though I have never had the opportunity to contact or meet Ssg. Dale J. Kelly’s
family, I hope it means something for them. I can understand why they didn’t want to be
contacted, and I would like to let them know that I was really pleased that I had the honor of
carrying the stone of their husband, father and son.
The Summit Project was an amazing month and a half, and I realized how thankful I
should be for people who risk their lives for others and how thankful I should be for my family
and friends. Also, I had a great opportunity to see how beautiful Maine is in the fall, to see
another mountain here and to get to know my friends from school better. I never thought I would
participate in something like this, and it makes me feel good to know I helped some people to
feel better.
As the day of the hike grew nearer, I was thinking quite a lot about Joshua and his family, glad to have the chance to help keep his memory alive. I suppose I felt a bit anxious too. Not so much in the negative sense, but rather the way I feel before a performance; filled with nervous energy, but neither worried nor excited. Just ready to carry out this service.
When we got to the mountain, I didn’t think going up would be very hard. My family hikes a lot, and I was familiar with the trail. But carrying the stone made a huge difference. Everything was more difficult than I had expected, and there were times I honestly wanted to stop. But I kept going, thinking of how Joshua was known for being persistent. I suppose I channeled a bit of that persistence to keep myself going.
Reaching the summit, everything felt a bit surreal. Perhaps a part of this was due to feeling exhausted from the ascent, but most of it was due to the reason we were all there. Even then, not so much literally as symbolically. Hiking up the mountain with the stone felt the equivalent of going through the struggles that a soldier goes through, and reaching the top felt like successfully getting through those struggles. Getting to bring the fallen with us through that was an honor.
The ceremony we held was moving to say the least. It was the perfect mix of solemn and celebratory that had everybody crying. During our moment of silence, I found myself offering up a prayer, thanking God for these men who were willing to die while serving their country and praying that everyone who knew these people would see their loss as something more monumental than their son, brother, or friend dying.
As a whole, the experience was pretty much what I expected. A lot more emotionally charged than I had thought, but these things always are. When I first signed up, I thought it would merely be a project about honoring soldiers. Then as we talked as a class, and I started researching, I realized it was more than that. I never knew Joshua, but the process of researching and creating my poster allowed me to create a connection to him. Even as I was hiking up the mountain, I still underestimated just how emotional the ceremony would be. Talking about the life of this soldier, I began to feel it. It was somber, but uplifting at the same time. This wasn’t about his death, but about what he had done while he was alive.
I didn’t get to see much of the presentation on Monday, but I could hear everything from my position holding the flag behind the scrim. The video of the hike sounded very moving, and I have to imagine that the reenactment of the hike was as well. When Leticia and I did our dance, it was slightly problematic, as we were supposed to have another there. I believe, however, that we still managed to convey the symbolism of a soldier at war being torn between battle and family and having hope through it all.
From this project, I will take away not only the emotions tied to the experience, but the connections I made as well. Unfortunately I was not able to talk to Joshua’s family, but I have a connection to him and connections to every single person I worked with. Having a lot of my family in the military, I’ll also take away a stronger understanding of just how important their service is.
It was a great day when David, Chris and Ted arrived at LRHS with the display case and the stones. As each person left after the busy morning I decided to stay and continue to finish the overall exhibit with posters and photographs into the late afternoon. Without realizing it a quietness befell me as the hallways hushed to silence and the library became still and my thoughts drifted to the faces on the posters and hike of the stones, until a young man came along the hallway. As he approached me with a few of his friends he took out his phone. The student explained to me that he thought the project was a great idea and that he had seen the stones at the MEPS offices in Portland. The student had been taking his entrance exams to join the army and had seen the room where the stones were housed. He knew of the project because of the HS and so decided to take photos to bring back. He proudly showed me the photos and sent them to me for posting. One can never foresee how we touch one another with the actions we take. Sometimes they are immediate but sometimes they can weeks or months to manifest. The Summit Project has grown and reached far more students and families than I foresaw. Many thanks to David and everyone involved for making this happen. MHANF