First-graders get sad news about 'adopted' soldier

Franklin Elementary's 'Private Joe' died last Thursday in Iraq

By JILL CECIL WIERSMA
Staff Writer


FRANKLIN — There's no good time in the school day to give bad news about a friend's death.

So administrators at Franklin Elementary School waited until just before the school day's end yesterday to let a first-grade class know that the Fort Campbell soldier they "adopted" died after a recent mission in Iraq.

"We want to give them a little time to absorb it," Assistant Principal Marcella Crenshaw said.

"It's a lot to absorb for 5- and 6-year-old children. Children are very resilient, but it depends on their personal lives and what they've dealt with like this before."

Pfc. Joseph Duenas — or "Private Joe" as the children called him — visited the school with a group from Fort Campbell at the beginning of the school year. He was adopted by Lisa Kozlik's first-grade class, which spent a day getting to know the 23-year-old soldier.

Duenas died last Thursday when he fell out of a helicopter in Kirkuk after a mission, Fort Campbell officials confirmed Monday. He was an infantryman assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team. He joined the Army in November 2004 and arrived at Fort Campbell in February 2005.

Principal Mark Tornow, Crenshaw and school counselor Suzanne Simmons planned to talk with Kozlik's class Wednesday afternoon and to make themselves available for any child who took the news badly. A letter will also be sent home with students about the accident.

Duenas was from the unit adopted by the city of Franklin. Mayor Tom Miller offered to speak with the children, if school leadership felt it could help. Miller's son-in-law, Sgt. 1st Class James "Tre" Ponder III, was one of 16 killed in late June when a Special Forces helicopter crashed into a mountain ravine in eastern Afghanistan.

"I can share some things from a personal perspective that others may not be able to do," Miller said. "And I can help them understand what a hero is and that he is a hero."

The school is planning a few activities to help the students deal constructively with their loss, Crenshaw said. They will be collecting money to buy new library books memorializing Duenas. They will also be planting trees in his name.

Kozlik said she also plans to have her students write letters to his family now to share their sympathies. The students, because they are very young, had little correspondence with Duenas. They sent him a thank-you letter after his visit. They also sent him a care package and another package before Christmas.

"Oh they remember him," Kozlik said. "We had an assembly not too long ago where soldiers visited and they were asking about him. It was a great day for him when he visited."

Kozlik said she couldn't predict how hard the students would take the news. She said the children asked him several questions about his life that helped them relate with him. They asked why he had no hair. They learned that he was married, learned about his family and that he had a cat named Snickers. Kozlik said Duenas also tried to be honest about the danger of his work.

"He said he was going to be flying," she recalled. "I remember him saying it is going to be hard and it is going to be scary, but I remember him telling them that they need brave people over there."

Crenshaw said the school has coped with loss among its own staff before with the deaths in the past few years of teacher Betty Barnhill and special education assistant Larry Davis.

"We have had to deal with that in the past," she said. "It's not something you get used to but it is something you have to deal with and it is a part of life."

Debbie James, whose first- and second-grade students have also adopted a soldier, said she knows students throughout the school will be troubled by the loss.

"It's hard to put it into words," she said.

"It's just heartbreaking."

Link Here