<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2k1PYR_1H0O6h5400" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2k1PYR_1H0O6h5400" width="800" height="500" ><figcaption>A hand-colored card made by Clear Spring High School students and handed to each veteran after the school’s Veterans Day ceremony on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (Photo: Rich Roche / Tri-State Alert News)</figcaption></figure>Retired Marine 1st Sgt. Starlene Hamilton told the crowd at Clear Spring High School on Wednesday that she had chosen her earrings with care.They were pearls, she said — a fierce reminder not to get emotional, because tears can fall like pearls from a broken necklace.It was a reminder that did not hold for everyone in the auditorium.Veterans of every age and every branch filled the seats, men and women whose service likely spanned every American war from World War II to today. The students who hosted them did not look like teenagers sitting through an assembly. They looked glad to be there, and proud to be the ones saying thank you.A tradition three decades strongThat pride has deep roots. Clear Spring’s Veterans Day assembly began around 1990 under teachers Richard Snyder and James Hutson. From the start, it ran from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., and organizers tried to have the guest speaker at the podium at 11 o’clock, in honor of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when the guns of World War I fell silent.Hutson, a Marine who served in Vietnam, took over the assembly in 2001 when Snyder fell ill, and he organized it until 2018. Robin Papa, the 2026 Teacher of the Year, and Karri Ernst have directed it since.When Hutson narrated the program, he had a favorite way of describing the veterans in the seats.“When they were called to take the hill,” he said, “they didn’t run for the hills.”‘They have stood the watch’Hamilton enlisted in 1981, served two tours as a drill instructor and retired as a first sergeant in 2003, once her husband, retired Sgt. Maj. Ian V. Hamilton, came home from Iraq. She has taught at Boonsboro High School since 2005. Two of their children are Marine and Navy veterans, and a third will soon be commissioned a Marine second lieutenant.She wore her dress blues, the gold-on-red service stripes on her sleeve marking more than two decades in uniform. Every Marine in the room knew what those stripes cost.She built her speech around the uniforms her family has worn.Her father, a Bronze Star recipient, fought in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. “I can’t imagine the painful memories he must have carried,” she said.Her brother served in Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive and kept nothing in his cargo pocket, so that if he were captured, there would be nothing personal for the enemy to take. He came home, became a firefighter and saved the life of a 3-year-old boy — “becoming my hero all over again,” she said.Her husband watched empty ships return after the 1983 Beirut bombing, knowing he would replace a Marine who was not coming home. Two decades later she met him at the bus after combat in Iraq: worn desert boots, camouflage that smelled of sand, 25 pounds lighter.“He was not the same,” she said.As a casualty escort, she knelt beside grieving families at Arlington National Cemetery more times than she wished. She called it one of the saddest, and greatest, honors of her service.“Oh, if those uniforms could just talk, I wonder what stories they would tell,” she said.“Going back is the only way some veterans move forward,” she said.She asked the students to hold a hand to their hearts whenever they salute the flag, because veterans who step out of uniform still stand the watch — not because they have to, but because they want to.“They have stood the watch,” she said. “You are saluting them.”‘It was just another day’Teacher Jim George read a letter his great-uncle, Lawrence “Buddy” George, wrote by candlelight in a shelled-out German town on Dec. 26, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. There was hardly a window left in the town, he wrote, and the artillery shook the walls around him.“As for Christmas, I didn’t hardly know it was Christmas,” he wrote. “It was just another day.”He told his brother not to worry, and that he hoped to see him before long.Senior Xavier Smith, who plans to enlist after graduation and is leaning toward the Army, read “What Is a Soldier?” to a room full of the men and women he hopes to follow. Teachers Robin Papa, Karri Ernst, Cameron Collins and Amy Kelly shared the history of the holiday and poems honoring the ordinary neighbors who quietly carry their service home.The Reflections Advanced Choir led “The Star-Spangled Banner” and later, joined by Clear Spring Middle School eighth-graders, sang “Arlington.” The Blazer Band played Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” for the nation’s 250th anniversary, and veterans rose one by one as “Marches of the Armed Forces” reached the song of their branch.Three Union soldiersNear the end came the part of the program Hutson calls its proudest: a slideshow of the veterans in the lives of Clear Spring’s students and staff. This year’s presentation, produced by teacher Stephen Schawalder, filled the screen with faces from the students’ own families: Shannon Hornbaker, cousin-in-law of Charlotte Bryan; Teena Burtch, mother of Jace Burtch.Then came a faded photograph of three Union soldiers. One of them, the caption said, was the great-great-great-great-grandfather of a Clear Spring student.Many young people cannot say whether a relative served in World War II. Someone in that crowd had traced a family’s service back more than 160 years.After Johnny Cash’s “Ragged Old Flag” told the story of a worn flag carried from the Delaware to Vietnam, the auditorium rose, and sophomore Wyatt Eby played taps for every service member who did not come home.As the veterans filed out, students handed each one a card colored by hand in red, white and blue: “Thank you for protecting our country.” The message inside ended simply: “We thank every veteran just the same.”Hutson has another line he has carried with him for years. “When America forgets its veterans,” he said, “we will no longer be America.”Clear Spring has not forgotten.Hamilton had come to plant a seed. On the way out the door, Clear Spring’s students handed a few back.Reporter’s noteI am a Marine veteran, and in my 60 years I have stood through more military ceremonies than I can count. None matched Wednesday at Clear Spring High School. I held it together through the speeches and the music. It was that faded photograph of three Union soldiers, and a teenager who took the time to know one of them, that finally got me. Small towns still know what this day means. It showed. — Rich Roche</div></body>

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Retired Marine 1st Sgt. Starlene Hamilton told the crowd at Clear Spring High School on Wednesday that she had chosen her earrings with care. They were pearls, she said — a fierce reminder not to get emotional, because tears can fall like pearls from a broken necklace. It was...

‘They Have Stood the Watch’

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Retired Marine 1st Sgt. Starlene Hamilton told the crowd at Clear Spring High School on Wednesday that she had chosen her earrings with care. They were pea

‘They Have Stood the Watch’

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