V-Day (as in Valentine's) tributes to vets by Westport kids

Hundreds of local military veterans were set to celebrate Valentine's Day with messages of thanks from the students of Kings Highway Elementary School.

They used their artistic talents to create Valentine cards with lots of construction paper hearts and heart-filled words of thanks for the veterans' bravery and sacrifice.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, visited the school Monday to talk with students in several classrooms about the role of the military and to help make the cards for his third annual Valentines for Veterans project. He left the school with two large boxes of about 200 Valentine's Day cards, which he was scheduled to deliver Tuesday to veterans at the VFW Post 399 in the Saugatuck section of town and the Veterans Administration Hospital in West Haven.

"They're a pretty special group of people," Himes told fourth-graders and the kindergartners who had been paired with them for the art project. "They take risks and they are proud to serve the country and wear the uniform," he said.

To a second-grade classroom Himes said, "They all put on the uniform and went to dangerous places to defend us." Himes took questions from the students and asked them to share stories of their relatives who served in the five branches of the U.S. military.

One student asked Himes if he had served in the military. Himes said he is not a veteran but has worked with veterans in his capacity as a congressman and has visited American troops deployed in Afghanistan.

Teacher Tracey Carbone said was impressed with the students' level of creativity in crafting their cards. One student made an elaborate card that included a pop-up jet plane. Another drew a camouflage heart.

Most of the students used red, pink and lavender hearts to decorate their cards. Others drew their hearts and penned messages inside them. "I can't help but say thank you for all you do," one fourth-grader wrote on her card.

"Thank you for risking your life for ours," wrote Charlotte Foege, a fourth-grader.

One enterprising fourth-grader, Peter Alaimo, drew an American flag on his Valentine and pasted pink hearts in the place of the stars.

Fourth-grader Lia Chen placed rows of pink hearts in the stripes of her flag.

"I made a four-leaf clover," said Griffin Bilacic, a fourth-grader who told Himes that one of his relatives invented the duck boats that were used in World War II, a fact that was confirmed by several teachers.

Kindergartner Jojo Treisman, 6, turned her drawn heart into a character and pasted small pink hearts on its ears to make earrings. Inside a second pink heart she wrote "Thanks for risking your life. Happy Valentine's Day." One girl pasted five hearts in a circular pattern, the pointed edges toward the center, to make a flower blossom with a different message on each "petal."

Fifth-grader Ethan Parker, 11, escorted Himes from classroom to classroom and collected the heart-laden cards from fellow students.

"This is a really special thing you're doing," Himes told the children. "It reminds them that you're thinking of them." He said it is especially important to think of them now as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wind down. "When we had hundreds of thousands of people deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan it was top of mind," Himes said. There is less attention on them now, he said.

Himes asked the students to remember veterans throughout the year, not just on Valentine's Day. "When they get care packages -- magazines, candy, shampoo, it really means a lot to them," Himes said.

Meg Barone is a freelance writer.