ABOVE: Bailee Easton and Lori Woods explain their upcoming trip to Washington and Normandy during a recent District 118 School Board meeting.
Danville High School History teacher Lori Woods and sophomore student Bailee Easton will soon be one of only 15 teacher – student combinations nationwide to take a very special journey to Normandy, France; commemorating D-Day.
They were accepted to participate in the Albert Smalls Normandy Institute from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. And once you are accepted, there’s lots of work involved. From reading, to studying videos, filling out forms, resumes, references; and most importantly of all; two major assignments.
One assignment was to research an area solider who is buried at Normandy. Woods and Easton have been looking into Vermilion County’s one D-Day Veteran who never made it home from the Normandy beaches, Leslie Milton Irvin. He was from a large farming family with several siblings, but at the time of his enlistment he had a Main Street address in Danville. Irvin ended up with the 2nd Ranger Battalion, which played a major role on the Normandy beaches.
Lori Woods says she and Bailee’s efforts on Irvin’s biography will help the Smalls Normandy Institute reach its ultimate goal.
AUDIO: Within the archives at the Normandy Cemetery; every soldier, they hope, will eventually have a biography; so people can know about their life and their service.
The second assignment they had to do, completely separate from researching a local D-Day casualty; was to write a college level paper on a chosen D-Day topic. Easton’s chosen topic is the role of African Americans in D-Day. In fact, during their first stop in Washington, Easton and Woods hope to visit the National African American Museum.
Bailee Easton says this trip, in some ways, is a dream come true for her. But at the same time, there was the suspense of wondering if they would be selected.
AUDIO: I’ve always wanted to go to France. But, Ms. Woods came to me with the proposal of doing this. And then we worked together, and we had to write a really long essay application to get in. But we got a call, like in December, saying that we were in the first selected group.
Woods says one reason she chose Easton for this is that last year, Bailee Easton was the only freshman in Woods’ Future Problem Solvers student group. And it was Easton’s work with another student that showed her ability in research and proven data, which the institute requires.
AUDIO: We won the “Project Management” award. Without them, that part of the competition probably wouldn’t have happened. So I knew she had the ability. And she’s already started talking about building that “college ready resume,” and getting those global experiences
And Easton is hoping to turn all those experiences into being a Pre-Med major in college. Woods and Easton will be leaving for Washington, D.C. for some work at George Washington University on June 17th, and heading on to Normandy on June 22nd. They will be one of two Illinois teams, the other being from Bloomington.
