When Memorial Day rolls around, Americans pay tribute to the fallen heroes of our nation. They also may think of military veterans and honor them in various ways, even as November is the traditional time to do so. 

But a teenage band of brothers in New Jersey is ensuring that military heroes, including veterans, are remembered all year long — thanks to the15 regular members of the Veterans Service Club at Seton Hall Preparatory School in West Orange, New Jersey. Educating young men since 1856, the prep school was founded by Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, first bishop of Newark, New Jersey (and nephew of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, thus, the school’s name).

This month, ahead of Memorial Day, the club members decorated the school’s campus with American flags in honor of the fallen.

During the course of the year, the young men raise funds for activities such as care packages for current military personnel and a camaraderie-filled pizza party for older veterans. The club’s members also spruce up memorials, enjoy a military-style hike with newer members of the military, and bring cheer to those in a nearby Veterans Administration medical facility.

Graduating senior Max Widmer is thankful for having connected with veterans all four years at Seton Hall Prep. 

“The best thing about it is just having genuine conversations with these guys and them telling their stories and their perspective,” he told the Register. “You realize how grateful that you are to be in this position — like I am right now. Being a teenager and not having go to war is just an incredible feeling, and I’m super grateful for these guys.”

Marine Corps veteran and retired policeman Thomas Ronnie, who works in security at Seton Hall Prep as well as commander of the American Legion James Caldwell Post 185 in Caldwell, New Jersey, has coordinated several  veterans’ gatherings at the school for members in his post and students.

At the informal pizza parties, members “get to ask the veterans anything they want, any question they want, from where they served to how long they served, to their jobs, to if they were injured,” Ronnie said. “Many of my vets who come here are disabled, and they don’t hold back. It’s a very successful time. Both sides learn a lot. And the respect is mutual.”

Widmer related the affecting story of one vet who described how he entered the military at age 18 before finishing high school — “all to go to war for us and sacrifice himself. And I thought that was incredible.”

Junior Mason Heskett has learned things about veterans he never thought about or realized. “It’s really important hearing about what they did for the country because if you weren’t to run into any veterans at all, you wouldn’t know what they go through and what they do for our country,” he told the Register. “It’s really important hearing that and seeing what they did — all just so we can have freedom. So we should help them, too.”

He added, “From my experience, all veterans really just like to have someone listen to them. They do tell really interesting stories, and it's really enjoyable for them to just talk to you. They always have just such great stories. It’s such a pleasure to hear them.”

The students have come to realize how important families are to veterans. “A lot of the times they’ll talk about their family, kids and grandkids,” Heskett explained. “My grandfather is a veteran. And it really just made the connection for me that my grandpa is just like these guys. My grandpa loves to talk about me and my brothers and my parents. It’s the same for these veterans that come and visit us or we go and see them. They always love to talk about their family.”

Graduating senior Graham Coakley, who shared that he has been “pretty passionate about helping our veterans and being involved in the club” and “was at every event,” also highlighted the lunch with veterans, mostly Vietnam veterans and several who served in Afghanistan, as a favorite memory. He described how, over “a bunch of pizzas, we sat down and had basically two hours of conversations with them about their experience overseas, what they did at war, how it was for them getting back home,” Coakley recalled. “We talked to them about everything. It was a really interesting insight into what their lives were like then, what their lives are like now, and how we can help.”

Coakley also found the get-together enlightening — especially hearing from the Vietnam vets about how, “when they got home, they were not greeted with tears and applause. It wasn’t like World War II. When the World War II veterans got home, everyone was really happy and they had parades. It wasn’t like that for Vietnam. So they talked about that a lot, how their sacrifices weren’t totally appreciated because of the political climate in the U.S. at the time.”

Teacher Vincent McMahon, the club’s faculty adviser, likes this direct contact “where we can actually meet some of the veterans and get to know them personally and thank them,” he said. “There’s a real camaraderie I see around the veterans when they’re together, which is nice, especially the older guys that go back to Vietnam.”

 

A Deployed Outreach

The club’s charitable activities provide hands-on appreciation to military heroes. Widmer told the Register one of this year’s highlights was raising more than $6,000 to use for such endeavors as sending “care packages to guys who are deployed right now and to veterans.” The “care packages” included basic necessities and also chips and candies, “niche stuff that a guy would really miss.” One of the packages’ recipients is a Seton Hall Prep alumnus who now serves as a SEAL team commander.

In a way, it is a corporal work of mercy since they are feeding not just those hungry for a taste of home, but a reminder of home itself.

The Veterans Service Club rallies many students in the school to be involved in holiday cheer. As Coakley described, “Another thing that I love that we did this year was letter writing. We set up a table right by the front door of the school in the morning, and as kids walked in, we said, ‘You want to sign up to write letters to a veteran?’ And most guys jumped on it.”

The club enjoys hearing back from those they write to. In one instance, Coakley got the address of a squadron through his uncle who is a Navy pilot and whose friends are deployed in Japan, and a very grateful recipient “wrote me a really nice note,” Coakley recounted. “He said, ‘Thank you so much. We really appreciate everything.’ I let everybody know that they wrote back and said, ‘Thank you.’”

The letter-writing initiative is already on the books for this coming school year.

Cheering up veterans also happens locally. The week after Memorial Day, about 15 members and four adults will be heading to the Lyons VA Medical Center in Lyons, New Jersey. “I’ve done it a few times with my dad who works with them,” Heskett said. “It's really important to — I wouldn’t say — keep them entertained, but they’re sitting in a veterans’ hospital, and they have family visits. But other than that, they don’t have much to really do there. And going with a bunch of kids and a deck of cards and just playing games with them, it’s the highlight of their week, and it really makes things better for them.”

 

A Touch of Faith

The Catholic faith, of course, is at the root of their school’s mission and their club’s outreach.

Widmer looked back to his “first real Catholic moment” in freshman-year theology class. “I remember the way that we got extra credit in the class doing service,” he explained. “I would, of course, learn about the Bible, and then I would go after class and do a little bit of service and get extra credit. That was the first connection I had with service and faith.”

Now as a club member, he thinks it “all ties in the faith because this feeling of giving back, you find it nowhere else. There’s no other feeling like it. It’s basically the same feeling that I get when I do service and I’m praying.”

Similarly, member Coakley believes “the one thing that really stands out is being of service to others. And that’s, of course, what Jesus tells us to do. So, I think that being of service always and putting others before yourself is a very obvious way that our club correlates to faith and honors Christ in everything that we do.”