Serving With Dignity, Evergreen Park Veterans Speak to a New Generation

For centuries, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces have served with humility and dignity, coming home carrying the country on their backs. Today we pay tribute to those who left their families and risked their lives for worthy causes.

For about 40 veterans in Evergreen Park, they started the commemoration  at a breakfast sponsored by National Honor Society and Choir at .

Stories transcended generations Thursday as the students soaked up information told to them by veterans, most of whom they had never met before.

Seventeen-year-old junior Tyler Jusino introduced Elisha B. Daugherty, 71, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1958 to 1961.

Growing up in a Navy family, Daugherty said it was understood that he would follow suit. So after graduating high school at 17 years old, his mother signed for him to enlist. He served aboard a radar ship as an electrician mate and said his favorite memory was living as a soldier and meeting new people.

“It was interesting for me to get to meet other people. Some of my best friends were from other parts of the country,” said Daugherty. An added extra, Daugherty says, was meeting his wife while he was a soldier. He also enjoyed watching the beautiful ships enter and exit their ports.

Upon leaving the military, Daugherty faced what many soldiers are facing today, a slow local economy. He said when he got out, there were “no real opportunities for employment in Kentucky,” his hometown, so he relocated to the Chicago area, and after he and his wife got married, to Evergreen Park. In 2002, Daugherty retired from Downers Grove-based Kocurek Construction after several years of working in the industry.

Ben Nesler, a Social Studies Teacher at EPCHS who organized the breakfast said the intergenerational event has been running for three years, and was inspired by a similar program that happens at annually.

“We just thought it was a good way to kind of try to build on their success and do something here,” said Nesler. The events don’t take place on the same day so the veterans can attend both.

Nesler said he thinks it’s important for teenagers to understand that they’ll have their own generation of veterans to honor.

“We have so many kids at Evergreen Park going into the services and they’re going to be eventually putting their lives on the line too,” he said. “It’s important that they learn, not only remember those who fought years ago, but also their own generation who sacrificed for their lives. That’s something that I really feel strongly about, that they need to honor their own peers as they come back.”

“The bravery, camaraderie, patriotism and sacrifice exhibited by those veterans who join us today are the qualities which our students will truly try to emulate,” said District 231 Superintendent M. Elizabeth Hart.

For many of the honorees, the sights of war were forever engraved in their brains. Nicknamed ‘Sunshine’ by her patients, Schechner, 91, served in the Pacific as an Army nurse from 1943 to 1945. Her favorite memory was taking care of Iwo Jima casualties while on the Island of Saipan.

At the young age of 23, “The one patient that I remember specifically, he was only 18, and he kept repeating over and over, ‘if I could just go home and eat my mother’s cooking, I know I’d get well.’ But the sad part was, he did not yet realize the severity of his injury. He was a paraplegic,” said Schechner.

For George Peso, who serves on the Evergreen Park Historical Commission, he said his most memorable moment during active duty was appearing in the 1968 war film The Green Berets, starring John Wayne. After serving in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967, he stepped off the bus at Fort Benning in Georgia and was asked if he’d like to be a movie extra. “I made about $25 a day,” he said. 

Another great part of his time in the military, he said, was simply meeting people.

“Wherever I went, it was interesting to see how people lived, because people are different all over the world,” said Peso. “The good Lord made us that way for a reason. To learn to live together. Period.”

Peso left the army as a Spc. 5th Class.

Sharon Schumann went into the military during a transitional period between 1973 and 1976 as part of the Women’s Army Core (WAC), but came out as a soldier. During her time as a WAC, a law was signed ending the core and incorporating those women into the Army.

Schumann worked in the signal department, sending and receiving messages on computers, saying she continues to be amazed with the advance in technology.

“At the time I worked on computers, the computers were so big that you could sit on them…if there was something wrong, you had to turn tiles,” she said jokingly.

Schumann said she feels strongly about U.S. residents serving their countries. “I believe every adult, young or old…should spend two years in service to this country, whether it’s military, or volunteering in some way to this country,” she said.

“It gave me a chance to grow up and to find out who I was. I think it broadens your horizons, I think it makes you appreciate more what you have.”

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