Tuesday, April 24, 2001

By Terry Boyd, Turkey bureau

Terry Boyd / Stars and Stripes Incirlik High School teacher Chelly Kennedy, left, showed RAF Cpl. Caroline Baggott a videotape catalog from which her learning-impaired students are chosing videos.

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey — For Chelly Kennedy’s students, reading is painful. Like other kids their age, they want to explore the complex adolescent relationships in "A Separate Peace," and race Sherlock Holmes to the secret of the creepy moors haunted by "The Hound of the Baskervilles."

But "it hurts too much" when they try to read, said Kennedy, whose 18 Incirlik High School students have moderate learning impairments. "Maybe if I can get them past the hurt, it’ll open the door" to literature and the world outside their classroom, she said.

Kennedy’s kids just got a new key to that door courtesy of $1,600 raised by British airmen assigned to Operation Northern Watch, the United Nations mandated mission operated by British and American units to stop Iraqi warplanes from flying in northern Iraq.

A week ago, Royal Air Force Group Captain Clive Bairsto, commander of British forces at Incirlik, gave Kennedy’s class $1,000 in cash, and a new television and video player, said Corp. Caroline Baggott. British troops, like their coalition partners, organize social events to pass their rotation, "and we thought we might as well have a cause," Baggott said.

This year, they chose the American Department of Defense Dependents School as a way to say "thank you" for the support Americans give Brits at Incirlik, she said. Squadron Leader Trevor Stone contacted the American school.

Incirlik vice principal Walter Ulrich referred Stone to Kennedy, who told Stone that her kids — who typically read on a third-grade level — do much better with visuals and the spoken word. They could use videos to experience film versions of literary classics, as well as travel videos.

A six-member RAF charity board oversaw the 180 British flyers’ fund-raising effort by holding social events that doubled as fund-raisers. A March 22 talent show, a five-kilometer fun run and a "horse-race" event with play horses and dice generated the money. Bairsto presented the money and equipment on April 16.

"It’s hard to be on the receiving end," said Kennedy, who called the British philanthropy "a humbling experience. I told the kids, ‘We have this … because someone simply wanted to do something nice. That’s very special."

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