Otherwise Lost by Benjamin Weinstein, Stuyvesant High School 6 September 2017 In early June, when I learned that I was going to Paris with my family during the summer, the first thing that came into my mind was one name: Calvin William Greene, World War I soldier and Stuyvesant graduate. Greene’s story had been brought to life by Dawei Huang as part of Mr. Hanna and his A.P. U.S. History students’ contributions to the Monuments Project. The Monuments Project was started by the American School of Paris (ASP). It centers around honoring and telling the stories of the soldiers interred at Suresnes American Cemetery, just outside of Paris. Since Justin Chan of Period 3 had found Greene’s name etched into the bronze plaque on the first floor, Mr. Hanna had talked a lot about how wonderful it would be to have someone go to France and visit Greene’s resting place in person. They could bring a little piece from the Stuy of the today to the gravesite of a soldier who graduated from the Stuy of one hundred years ago. I was honored to be able to be that person. Mr. Hanna got me in touch with Jeffrey Lippman, ASP's Middle School Director, and we set up a time to meet at the cemetery on August 17th. There, I met Mr. Lippman and Claude Lord, ASP's Technology Integrator and another leader of the Monuments Project, in person. Mr. Hanna was also able to obtain a small Stuyvesant pennant, courtesy of the Stuyvesant Alumni Association, that I brought along to the cemetery. After introducing ourselves and walking around the cemetery a bit, we found Calvin William Greene’s grave. The moment was touching. I remember thinking about what it would have been like to talk to him. On the surface, he seemed stoic and even a little bit intimidating. In one of the two pictures of him, Greene was dressed in full army getup. In the other, he wore a three-piece suit. He was a star athlete in tennis, and he was the manager of the rowing team. Like your typical Stuyvesant student, he had the grades, too. Albeit, not the academic grades, but the physical: Greene passed the army’s training and conditioning tests with a resounding 99 percent score. A Second Lieutenant at the age of twenty, Greene was one of the youngest officers in the United States Aviation Corps. He had quite the resume. What would he think of a Stuyvesant student body that’s now coed and three-quarters Asian? Or of the new Stuy building, ten stories high, not even being in Stuytown? I can’t imagine any of my fellow classmates becoming officers in the army two or three years from now, but then again, could he have imagined the academic reputation that Stuy has now? We live in completely different worlds, one hundred years apart. Even though, looking at a map of Manhattan, we only live two miles apart. After a moment spent taking in the scene, and posing for a couple of pictures, the American official on site, Matthew Brown, came up to us and offered a tour of the grounds. He explained the history of the cemetery as we walked around. Although there hadn’t actually been any fighting in Paris during World War I, the site of the cemetery had been chosen so nearby for good reason. Each one of the 1,541 American soldiers buried at Suresnes who had served in World War I had gotten wounded on the front lines, had been taken to the American Hospital, and hadn’t made it. The cemetery sits on the slope of a hill. At the top, there is a commemorative chapel, from which we could see into Paris from above. The chapel has two wings, one in memory of the American soldiers from World War I, the other in memory of those from World War II (there are 24 graves dedicated to unknown dead from WWII as well). The walls of the chapel are lined with four bronze plaques. They bear the names of 974 additional missing American soldiers from WWI, most of whom, Brown told us, were presumably killed by German U-Boat attacks before they could make it across the Atlantic. From that vantage point on top of the hill, we could also see through a web of trees down to the American Hospital. Brown explained to us that, at the start of the war, the hospital had only 30 or 40 beds, but by the war’s end, it could hold almost 650.
One fact that I remember very clearly from our tour was when we saw, etched in marble, a list of the other dozen or so American WWI cemeteries in France. Next to the name of each of the cemeteries was the number of soldiers that had been buried there. The American Cemetery at Suresnes was one of the smallest. The sheer amount of death in WWI was incomprehensible. I remember thinking that. The work that the Monuments Project is doing is so important because it helps to shine a light on Americans of the past, who would be lost in the numbers and the statistics otherwise. For me, my fellow students, and the entire Stuyvesant community to be a part of that experience–by connecting through Calvin William Greene–was really something special.
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From Footnotes to Forefront by Dawei Huang, Stuyvesant High School 4 July 2017 When our teacher, Mr. Hanna, announced that we would be collaborating with students from the American School of Paris on a research project, the first feeling that I experienced was bravado typical of a Stuyvesant student. I came into this expecting to see familiar sights, but encountered a research landscape that was altogether distinct from anything I had seen before. The research that we had to collect for this assignment was not for a paper we had to write, or a presentation we had to give, but for the sake of sharing the information we would find. Although some may claim that being able to write a history paper (which I have) more than qualifies your ability to summarize information, I would say that the kind of research that I had to do for this assignment was entirely different. I had to dig through many primary sources — reading newspapers, interpreting data, and understanding figures — no longer relying on the secondary sources of historians to sort through the chaos of history for my convenience. Simply said, the experiences of individual soldiers are often overlooked by historians, and Stuyvesant students were now helping do the work. For myself, I feel like there is great significance and satisfaction lifting the lives of soldiers reserved for the footnotes of history to the forefront of our attention and appreciation. After Mr. Hanna’s introduction, the next major step we took in this project as a class was a skype session with Mr. Neville’s students in Paris to discuss research techniques and what was expected from us. Despite some technical difficulties at the beginning, we were able to hold a meaningful conversation with our counterparts across the Atlantic. We were introduced to helpful sources to start our investigation and methods to ascertain the reliability of the sources and information. I was very impressed with the degree of sophistication they had put into their research and the effort they had expended to get to the point where they are now. I had expected to have a “smile and wave” session with middle school students but what I got instead was a true intellectual handshake with a prestigious overseas academy. Towards the end of our session with the Paris students, we were discussing any interesting things we found about our soldiers. When Mr. Hanna asked about the possibility of there being a Stuy Alumni being among the ranks of the fallen American soldiers at the Suresnes American Cemetery in France, one of my classmates, Justin Chan, responded that there was. The soldier’s name was Calvin William Greene and when he revealed that I was assigned to him, it does not take one with a good imagination to imagine my shock. When I skimmed the roster of the four names I was assigned to previously, they initially seemed unremarkable as the highest rank (belonging to Greene) was that of a Second Lieutenant. When I found out that Greene was a Stuyvesant alumni, it was quite ironic that that same soldier had now became the object of my interest. When I contacted Justin later that day to extract all the information he knew of Greene, he directed me to the Great War Plaque outside of the principal's office that commemorates all of the fallen soldiers during the war that were alumni of Stuyvesant High School. Although the plaque was not a major lead, it primarily served a motivational purpose for me — a big “Greene was here” at both Stuyvesant and France. I have much to thank Justin for because had it not been for him, I would never have known about the plaque and perhaps would never had known that Greene was a Stuyvesant alumni. The next week or so after this revelation, Mr. Hanna reserved lab space for us in the computer room so that we could devote class time to gathering research on our soldiers. The first few days were without much success because we could only access sites that provided general information that rarely went beyond what was already provided to us in the roster. Although the NYC DOE computers were technically supposed to have access to important online databases, we were blocked by paywalls after paywalls. After Mr. Hanna was able to resolve this issue with our school’s technology department, our access to these rich databases greatly added to the quality of our research. My classmates and I were having a field day on the internet and were excited every so often after each finding that our exhaustive search was finally starting to bear fruit. I was not only able to access the military record of Greene and the rest of my soldiers but also newspaper clippings of obituaries written for some of them following their death. In addition to doing research online at the computer lab, I was able to look through our school’s newspaper records for any information relating to my assigned soldiers. Mr. Hanna was nice enough to contact our school paper, the Spectator, on my behalf and arranged for me to browse its archives. Although the initial search through the Stuyvesant archives proved unfruitful for any records of Greene or World War I, Mr. Hanna was later able to acquire a yearbook from Greene’s year at Stuyvesant. Scans of this yearbook, which Mr. Hanna had made available to me, proved to be the best source I had come across because it offered an extremely detailed account of Greene’s characteristics as a charismatic leader with an undeniable physical aptitude. During his time at Stuyvesant High School, Greene was a star tennis player and manager of the school’s rowing team. As crew manager, Greene was both the student coach and the fitness trainer for the team. Given these personal attributes, it is no surprise that Greene aced his physical test with an almost superhuman rating of 99 and became one of the youngest commissioned officers in the country. Yet his transition from Stuyvesant tennis star and crew manager to aviator in a matter of years is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Had his life and career not been cut short by an unspecified aerospace accident, it is not hard for me to share in his friend’s beliefs that Greene would be numbered among America’s greatest aces. At the conclusion of my research into the experience of these soldiers, especially that of Greene, I had much to consider and reflect upon. Had I not been motivated to participate in this project by Mr. Hanna, the lives of these soldiers altogether invisible in the annals of history would have been consigned to obscurity. In a way, these quiet men and women by actively enforcing the nation’s wartime policies did more to further their country’s agenda than the speeches given by any politician.
These words by Iain Duncan when given in the context of my research made me realize how much the efforts and experiences of these soldiers are undervalued by our historians in favor of politics and policy. Although national policies do give us a good picture of an era, I believe that the individual and collective experiences of soldiers should be evaluated in order to better capture the zeitgeist of the era. Since even the most prominent historians tend to favor politics or the military over the experiences of soldiers, it is no surprise that their texts meant to record past human affairs could feel so cold and distant to the average reader. Coming across the experiences of these soldiers and manner in which they died (either by accident or disease) made me abandon my romanticization of warfare for a much more realistic picture. The research that I had done, along with my classmates, on Greene and his fellow Americans buried at Surnes Cemetery would now become part of the database created by Mr. Neville and his students in Paris. I am excited to share what I have found with the world and I can only hope that all the work my classmates and I have done will contribute to the public’s knowledge and appreciation of these soldiers buried in Paris. It has been a great honor to contribute to this work and to allot to these soldiers the recognition and respect that they, by giving their life for their country, most certainly deserve.
Dawei Huang Stuyvesant High School 4 July 2017
A bit of time has passed since the last post. Here's a quick overview of what took place in the interim. We had one week straight of conversations and collaboration that reached beyond the classroom. This heady mixture of outside counsel, internal reflection, and the continued work of telling these stories left us little time to share all that we documented and more documentation than we can sort through and share here. Find below a quick summary of these powerful connections, some mentioned in previous blogs, others that emerged unbidden. We hope to enjoy more of the same in the time we have left in this school year. 1.Jon Deiss of www.soldierSource.com. Wednesday 17 May 2017.Jon took time out of his busy schedule, doing just the kind work we're trying to accomplish on this project, to give ASP students general tips on research, answer specific questions they had about their unit, and emphasize the importance of researching and gathering context. In the week following Jon compiled and shared a slew of files with us about the soldiers our students are researching. 2. Descendants of Suresnes Soldier, Louis Thor: Lois Herbst and her father, Stan Thor. Thursday 18 May 2017. Lois wrote a blog for us just a few days before.The blog Lois wrote for us offers more than I can here. However, having students connect with Stan and Lois made our interaction with their family's story more personal and more visceral. They shared perspectives of Louis Thor, talked about his place in their family story, and shared research tips and encouragement for our students as they proceeded in their own work. 3. ASP Music teacher & WWI Researcher, Matthew Hall. Friday 19 May 2017.Matthew is not only a great music teacher but he is also a savvy, relentless researcher of WWI history and collector of artifacts as well. He is the descendant of two soldiers from the British army whose heartbreaking stories he shared with our students. He conveyed a palpable personal connection to the time period and gave students some very practical advice about research methodology and mindset. He also offered to spend time in class, helping students along in their work as he is able. 4. Founder of American War Memorials overseas, Lil PFluke. Monday 22 May 2017.Lil's work dovetails perfectly with the work our students have been doing with ABMC. So far we've seen the impressive managed results of the American governments official military memorials overseas. The many photos on this site of Suresnes are a perfect example. These locations do not account for all such memorials and soldiers abroad. There are many others that lack such attention and, in consequence, desire research and attention. Lil's non-profit documents, promotes, and preserves those monuments and soldiers for which the American government does not have the resources or responsibility. Lil talked about and modeled her motivations, methods, and mindset as a researcher of these neglected monuments and stories. She has a way of making the toughest tasks seem possible without diminishing the degree of challenge involved. 5. Students from Stuyvesant High School in New york join the Effort! |
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CategoriesAuthorMonuments Project Participants, reflecting on process, findings, and plans. Archives
September 2017
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