For One Oskaloosa Student ‘Remembering Our Fallen’ Memorial Has Special Meaning

Erik Leao points towards the top right corner of this display where the tribute to his fallen uncle is located.

Oskaloosa, Iowa –  Local students filled the display area occupied by ‘Remembering Our Fallen’ in Penn Central Mall Tuesday, learning about sacrifices made by others.

But for one Oskaloosa student, this day had extra meaning, as his friends and classmates visited the display where his uncle is honored. Erik Leao said it felt “good” to have them there. “I didn’t really know,” Erik said of finding out how his uncle had been killed. Jason G. Pautsch, who was 20 at the time, from Davenport, Ia. was killed April 10, 2009 by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Meghan Moorman was one of the many Oskaloosa Elementary Students that visited the display on Tuesday. I asked her about her visit to the memorial and she told me, “I think it was good and I thought it helped me learn a lot about how people get hurt and how they fought for our freedoms.”

I posed the question to Oskaloosa Elementary 4th Grade Teacher Dawn Deffenbaugh about how important it is for the students to visit the memorial. “I think it’s very important to come and see this, for them to know that their neighbors, their relatives and friends and people from Iowa have fought for their freedom. These are real people with real families. I think it’s very important.”

“It’s really nice to educate the kids,” Dave Polkowske of the Oskaloosa American Legion said about the students visiting the memorial. “So many that don’t understand what’s happening and what we’re even over there doing and why we’re over there doing it,” Polkowske also said.