Michelle Pell, an English teacher at Seoul American High School in South Korea, talks Monday to students who have volunteered to plan a walkathon that will raise money for families of servicemembers who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
YONGSAN GARRISON — Michelle Pell held up two checks Monday afternoon, the first two donations toward a scholarship fund for children of soldiers who have died serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first was from Pell’s father, the English teacher acknowledged. But the other was from one of her former Seoul American High School students: 2nd Lt. Tad Tsuneyoshi, now a 2nd Infantry Division platoon leader in Ramadi. He sent a few dollars.
“This check comes from Iraq,” Pell told about a dozen current Seoul American students gathered on their day off school to plan a walkathon to raise money for families of fallen servicemembers. Pell hopes to raise $50,000 from the7-kilometer walk/ run on April 2, which she expects will draw thousands.
In 2001, almost 1,500 participants raised just more than $21,000 for families of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack victims.
During that event, only families, soldiers and workers from Yongsan Garrison, the main U.S. military base in Seoul, took part. Now, Pell and her students are trying to draw the entire Pacific region’s attention. She’s already contacted all Department of Defense schools in Korea and a few in Japan and has assigned two high school students to line up corporate sponsors.
“This is going to be big,” she told her band of volunteers over pizza and sodas. “This is going to be a giant event, I have a feeling.”
The students’ own goals were closer to home. They want to ensure the campus, and the walk’s route, have posters and reminders of the 42 Strike Force members who’ve died in Iraq since deploying from South Korea last summer. They plan to use their younger siblings to recruit help and pledges from Yongsan middle and elementary schools. They want to make sure South and Main post electronic message boards advertise the walk and plan to ask U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Leon LaPorte or 8th Army commander Gen. Charles Campbell to consider making a public service announcement about it.
Money raised, Pell said, will go to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. Since 2000, it’s collected donations in memory of servicemembers who died in military operations. Pell said the group has approved her starting a fund for scholarships for the servicemembers’ children.
Pell and the students spent much of their 90-minute meeting discussing how to ensure each person will be walking on behalf of a specific person who died.
For the 2001 walk, each participant was given the name of a 9/11 victim; many students wrote condolence letters to the victims’ families. Those families, during the next year, began writing back, Pell said. She now has a scrapbook filled with “thank you” letters.
Sophomore Tricia Ro, 15, suggested the group use the school’s morning announcements in March to remember each of the Strike Force soldiers who have died. She also suggested creating a video of one of their planning sessions, to convince even those who might not support the war effort still to donate.
“There’s people fighting over there who don’t believe in what they are fighting for,” she said, adding that she now has three uncles deployed to Iraq.
Pell said she plans to walk for the dozens of former students now in Iraq, such as Tsuneyoshi. The event also will remember another Seoul American alumnus — Capt. Sean Sims, a 1990 graduate who died in Fallujah in November.
Pell said she knows organizers have a lot of work to do, but she’s undaunted by the challenge. She has already set up an e-mail for the event: walkathon42@hotmail.com.
