I didn’t expect to see a dozen neatly folded Army, Navy and Air Force polar fleece blankets on the table when I walked into work on Monday. Each blanket was surrounded by 140 hand-tied knots, patiently tied by members of the Air Force Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). Commander Lucy Villanueva, a junior at Prescott High School, led her team on this special mission of comfort for hospice patients who have served their country and deserve extra care and honor at the end of their lives.
Lucy is one of those young people that gives you hope that the future of this country will be in good hands. She’s in her third year of JROTC, and is in line for a three-week program this summer to get 12 to 15 flight hours under her belt. She’s also an alternate for an eight-week program to earn her pilot’s license. As I talk with her about her plans and goals I make a mental note to think back to what I was doing my junior year in high school. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything close to learning to fly a plane.
I asked her how she got interested in the program and what she has to do as a member. She shared that she heard about it in middle school and that she would earn Career & Technical Education (CTE) credits for participating in it. One of her mountain bike coaches, Erik Appeldorn, is one of the JROTC teachers, so that helped persuade her to jump in. One of her friends joined in along the way and joined her too.
Each class has a commander and sergeant who help the teacher each day, by calling the class to attention, taking roll call and sharing an educational slide show each morning. Lucy explained it typically has something to do with the military—jobs, planes, historical events. She said they are doing a basic overview of the Iraq war this week. They wear their uniforms to school at least once a week, which can alternate between full dress blues, and JROTC-branded morale wear, depending on what’s going on.
They’ve participated in honor guard and color guard events in the community, at local school football games, veteran celebrations in local senior facilities, and they’ve even carried a giant American flag with 50 cadets holding it at the Prescott Veterans’ Day parade.
A big part of being a cadet is helping with service projects in the community. Each cadet has to contribute 10 hours per quarter toward community service. They have participated and promoted blood drives, and even taken a bunch of cadets to Phoenix to fill food boxes for the “Feed My Starving Children” program.
Cadets that keep their appearances and grades, along with showing a devotion to the group that demonstrates good leadership, are eligible to petition to be elected to be the JRTOC commander. Lucy is proud to have taken on that role this semester with her team and help come up with the topics that will be presented each morning in the slideshow. Along with her vice-commander, Evan Haberern, they help lead the way by serving as teaching assistants to the instructor and developing service opportunities for the cadets to earn their hours.
Lucy earns some of her service hours as a hospice volunteer, helping her mom, Kelsey, one of our bereavement coordinators, with the boxes and mailings she sends to families after they’ve lost someone they love. She has helped with pinning ceremonies, helping provide an extra gift of dignity and respect by wearing her JROTC uniform to the event.
And this is how we came to have a dozen beautiful blankets in our office. Thanks to the Air Force JROTC crew at Prescott High School, led by Lucy, her cadets not only spent hours cutting and tying the knots on all of the blankets, they also used their own funds to purchase the materials to create this final gift of dignity and respect to our veterans.
Prescott-area resident Kelly Paradis is a community liaison for Good Samaritan Home Health, Hospice & Marley House. She loves listening to and writing stories about life.