<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3eE0YT_1GzwORfk00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3eE0YT_1GzwORfk00" width="860" height="280" ></figure>Sgt. Jerry Forsyth served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and, like so many others, didn’t talk about it much when he returned home.But he did talk about it with his father, an Air Force veteran.“They found a place with each other where they could share,” Katy Kennedy told the Great Falls Public Schools board earlier this fall.Kennedy is in her first year as principal at Lewis and Clark Elementary School.Forsyth was Kennedy’s father, and she learned more about his service later in life.One day, he went to work and was “really yellow,” Kennedy said. He wouldn’t go to the doctor until he fell in the shower and was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, common among those exposed to Agent Orange.Kennedy taught fourth grade at the time and said her father wasn’t expected to live much longer.She was going through his paperwork and found a piece of cardboard from the back of a notebook with about 10 names written on it of people who served that Forsyth wrote thank you letters or sent cards to every year.Forsyth was going into home hospice at the time and Kennedy said she asked her father if she could keep writing to those veterans.“I knew how important it was to him, because when he came home it was so hard as it was for so many,” Kennedy said.Forsyth agreed, but he had some rules:<ul><li>the card/letter should not arrive on Veterans Day; Forsyth didn’t want the recipient to feel like the veterans were only remembered on that day</li><li>the cards/letters can’t arrive late, lest the veterans feel forgotten</li><li>the cards/letters needed to arrive before Veterans Day so the recipients felt appreciated before the holiday and the feeling could last longer</li></ul>She was teaching at a school north of Chicago at the time and Kennedy said she worked with her teaching partner on the project.They thought, “why do we only do these 10 people,” Kennedy said.Great Falls man to be inurned at Arlington National Cemetery [2024]Another of Forsyth’s rules was that the letters or cards had to be personal.She had her teaching partner knew a lot of military families and their principal gave them permission to do what they could with their students.The first year, two classes of fourth graders wrote 300 individual letters to veterans and some military members still serving.“Man those kids, they were writing like crazy, but they loved every minute of it,” she said.After three or four years, the project started to get costly, primarily for postage, as well as envelopes and stickers and a business card that’s a tribute to Forsyth and his letter-writing idea.Kennedy and her family founded Respect with Gratitude for Veterans, a nonprofit, to carry on the project.Kennedy said they often receive letters in return, some saying they’d never been thanked for their service.Vietnam veteran presented with Bronze Star after 48 years [2019]Kennedy said they share those return letters with the individual letter writers but are careful to protect privacy and safety for letter recipients and letter writers.Schools nationwide participate in the project and C.M. Russell High students have participated for years.Now that Kennedy is a GFPS principal, more local students have participated in the program and she hopes it continues to grow.</div></body>

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Sgt. Jerry Forsyth served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and, like so many others, didn’t talk about it much when he returned home. But he did talk about it with his father, an Air Force veteran. “They found a place with each other where they could share,” Katy...

Local students write thank-you letters to veterans

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Sgt. Jerry Forsyth served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and, like so many others, didn’t talk about it much when he returned home. But he did talk about it

Local students write thank-you letters to veterans

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