U.S. Army veteran John L. Smith served in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War, and now his grandson, freshman Logan Smith, chose to tell his story in a special Veterans Day celebration. But it’s not just Smith who helped with this: through the History Club, 46 veterans were featured in a Wall of Honor commemorating the people who served for our country.

History Club meets once a month, with history-focused activities ranging from trivia to escape rooms. But with an important holiday with ties to history occurring early in November, History Club sponsor Emily Ruda brought a new type of activity to the club, one that involved the whole school.

“I wanted the kids to do something where they could connect history to the people who are actually in the building, like our teachers who are veterans. So what I did was I collected from all the teachers and students any veterans who are a part of their life, whether it be friends or family,” Ruda said.

Each individual, whether they’re a member of the History Club, like Smith, or someone outside, could make one or more small posters, which were all posted together by the Mustang Mart on Veterans Day.

“On your little poster, you choose a veteran, and they can be a family member, or somebody you found online, and you just say some stuff about them. It can be a paragraph, or you can just say the basics of when they were born,” Smith said.

Many of the veterans featured on the wall were relatives of the people who worked on it, but everyone chose someone important to them. This meant that the activity could be more than just another project for its participants: it was a way to thank a veteran who had impacted their lives.

“I’m hoping that it will get people to realize how personal Veterans Day can be to everybody, and how much veterans have shaped our school. We have teachers who are on display who kids probably didn’t know are veterans, or family members, just to realize there are veterans all around us when we probably don’t realize it,” Ruda said.

One veteran at MN is physics teacher Brian Yueill, who came from a family full of veterans, and would always listen to the stories from their service. Growing up hearing about what military life was like is part of what led to his decision to serve, as well as helping him find the branch he wanted to join.

“[I joined] the Navy because I wanted to be on submarines, and that was because my dad had been on an anti-submarine airplane. He would tell me stories about how hard it was to find submarines, and finding Russian submarines in the Puget Sound, or they’d been tracking what they thought was a submarine that turned out to be a whale. And it just fascinated me that we had these machines that could do that,” Yueill said.

Yueill was featured on the Wall of Honor, which he found very meaningful, as he has experienced the various ways veterans are celebrated over the years since he left.

“Even compared to when I served and when I first got out, I think we do a much better job as a society recognizing the service and sacrifice that the service members and their families have made. So I’m very appreciative of what the greater society and the Millard North family does to recognize veterans,” Yueill said.

Even though the Wall of Honor was only up for one day, the display still inspired many people within the school. Because of the stories behind every poster on the wall, the 

“I got a lot of great feedback about how much this touched people,” Ruda said. “And I think in the future, I would like to maybe take it a step further and try to include other people and grow a bigger wall next year.”