Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI
May 23 2005

Students learn from those who lived history

Teens write about people who experienced America’s past
By JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIM

jabdul-alim@journalsentinel.com

Greendale – They fled genocidal conditions, endured tough times on
American farms, and fought in and survived wars.

Such are the stories that Advanced Placement U.S. history students in
veteran history teacher Brian Gunn’s class at Greendale High School
have been collecting from relatives and others for a class project
called “Meeting with History.”

Instead of turning exclusively to textbooks for insight into
America’s past, Gunn has his students seek out individuals who
actually experienced various events in American history, such as the
Great Depression and World War II.

“All too often, students see history created by high-placed figures
that are far removed and remote from everyday existence,” Gunn says.
“Lost are many people who in their way and at that right moment acted
and changed the course of events, causing history.”

By dispatching students to talk to these individuals, Gunn says,
“history becomes alive.”

Students say they appreciate the assignment because it gives them an
opportunity to do research beyond library books and the Internet.
They say it also gives them a better sense of the rich history in
their own families and in the lives of people who are still here
today.

“It makes us more aware,” says Laura Briskie, 18, who presented a
paper called “Remembrances of a Farmer’s Life,” which speaks of how
her grandfather, Anthony Joseph Briskie, still resides on the same
100-acre farm just east of Ripon where he was born. It deals with how
he had to balance his education and farm chores.

“His day began around 4 a.m. and went straight through to the night,
with little to no breaks,” Briskie wrote of her grandfather, who
ultimately had to forgo college to take over the family farm.

When Derek Engebretsen, 18, asked his farming grandmother, Dorothy
Kelley, how the Great Depression changed life, she responded: “It
might have made a lot of city people frugal, but farmers were always
trying to make ends meet.”

During the protests of the 1960s, the demands of farm life left
little time for criticizing governmental actions abroad.

“They were too busy milking cows, so you’d have to schedule your
protests around that,” Engebretsen said in one of several humorous
moments of the class presentations.

Steven Blinka, 17, presented a paper about how his great-grandfather,
Nazaret Avakian, left Turkey in the 1910s, the same decade that his
three brothers and four sisters died in the fatal “death marches”
Armenians were forced to make under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

Avakian made it to America by way of Argentina via the SS France, a
cargo ship on which he assiduously avoided Turkish militiamen who had
been guarding cargo during the 17-day journey.

“Had my great-grandfather been found trying to flee the country, he
would have been executed on the spot and thrown overboard – which he
had heard happened on other vessels leaving the country,” Blinka
wrote, based on an interview with his grandfather, Samuel Avakian,
who is Avakian’s son.

The older Avakian eventually settled in Racine, where he worked at
Case Manufacturing and later Walker Manufacturing, where he was known
as “Charlie Johnson,” until his retirement in his mid-90s. He lived
to be 104.

Colin Bennett, 18, interviewed his mother, Mary Bennett, who had been
an intern for former U.S. Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin.

Bennett relates an anecdote that typifies the oft-celebrated
integrity of the senator.

It involves the time a constituent called with a request for some of
the dirt from Proxmire’s jogging trail.

Acting on the orders of other staffers who said it didn’t matter if
the senator had jogged on the dirt or not, his mother went out and
got some dirt the senator hadn’t jogged on. When Proxmire found out
what his staffers were up to, Bennett says, Proxmire ordered them to
be honest in filling the constituent’s request.

“She (Bennett’s mother) had to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning and
follow the senator around to get actual dirt from his jogging trail,”
Bennett says.

Cherish Zugbaum interviewed Dave Meyers, a Vietnam veteran who found
himself involved in the war at the age of 17.

Meyers related being “somewhat bitter” about how the government
handled the conflict in Vietnam. He questions the legitimacy of the
war.

“It still, after all of these years, does not make sense to me,”
Meyers told Zugbaum. Asked for his final thoughts, Meyers said he was
“completely dismayed at the actions and decisions that are being made
in Iraq right now.”

“I feel that it is kind of like history repeating itself in a vicious
cycle,” Meyers is quoted as saying. “I often wonder and ask myself:
What did we learn from the past? We should have learned from our
mistakes instead of repeating them.”