By RANDY BARTLEY
Staff writer
For the past 16 years, schoolteacher Rachel Kindel has been taking her students on a field trip — to a cemetery.
This year, though, was different.
Kindel had been teaching at Rimersburg Elementary School, and her students just walked to the cemetery in Rimersburg.
So, the Union School Board agreed to bus the students to the cemetery for the field trip on May 14.
At the cemetery, the students joined with local members of the American Legion to place American flags on the graves of hundreds of veterans.
Kindel opened the tour of the cemetery at the flagpole, where the students recited the Pledge of Allegiance and observed a moment of silence.
“Because they were willing to go and fight to keep America, free you are still able to live in a country where one of its privileges is to be able to have a free public education,” Kindel told the students.
Terry Custer, commander of American Legion Post 454 in Rimersburg, said he is grateful to Kindel for bringing her students to the cemetery every year prior to Memorial Day to place the flags.
“It is a great help to us. Many of our members are older and the kids make the job much easier,” Custer said. “I don’t know what will happen when she can no longer do this. It is a tradition I hope can continue.”