JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — It has turned into a tradition at Bradford K-8 North where fifth graders are challenged to answer, 'Who is your everyday hero?' while also learning about a hero who lived where they call home.
Jason Dahl was the captain of United Flight 93, where hijackers planned to crash the plane in Washington, D.C. but passengers and crew members fought back, resulting in the plane crashing in Pennsylvania.
A memorial was created in Dahl's honor in the neighborhood he lived in. However, in 2011 it was vandalized by youth resulting in a teaching moment. At the time, Sam Palamara was the principal and brainstormed with Tom Bush and Sandy Dahl of how to teach these students of the hero they had in their community.
They came up with the Heartland Hero Essay Contest where fifth graders would write about the every day hero they have in their lives. The results from that first year left them in awe.
"The children wrote about heartfelt stories about people that inspired them, using Jason as a model and the stories that came out of the fifth graders have just tugged at all our hearts every time we listen to them. So over the last 15 years, there have been about 15,000 essays that have been written by fifth graders in all the schools in the South JeffCo area where Jason lived here in Littleton," Palamara explained.
There is a display located inside Bradford K-8 North with a picture of Dahl and newspaper clippings teaching the students of 9/11 as they were not alive at the time.
"The 25th anniversary is really special. It's special to me because when we started the essay program, the kids were 10 or 11 years old. None of them had been born when 9/11 actually happened and so whenever we talk about the hero essay, we talk about times that the country came together and it goes back to Pearl Harbor," Palamara said.
Now, with this new school year starting up, teacher Amanda Little led one of the toughest assignments, explaining 9/11 to fifth graders and the lasting legacy Dahl left behind.
"It did kind of dawn on us pretty early on when we started doing this, that even at the ten year anniversary, fifth graders are ten and 11 years old, so they weren't really around to experience these types of things," said Little. "We did kind of take it on to present to them, not only just the events that happened on that day, but really the the humans that were lost on that day, the people, the heroes that were lost on that day and really bring it to a ten year old's mindset in terms of what a hero truly is."
The assignment has evolved over the years as students now complete it at school rather than at home. However, Little emphasized to these fifth graders that spelling and length don't matter; what counts is writing from the heart.
"The types of things that comes out of these ten year old and 11 year old brains are so emotional and heartfelt that, yeah, there's definitely many of them that are very emotional," Little said.
Lesia Hatelstad and Tom Bush are both involved with the Captain Jason Dahl Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships to aspiring pilots in the Denver metro area and at San Jose State, Dahl's alma mater.
"Well, flying of course, is is a vocation, vocation for a lot of people and when kids start growing up and wanting to become pilots, it is incredibly expensive and a long road for them to to gain that experience, gain that seasoning to become a good pilot, to have situational awareness in the cockpit," explaiend Bush. "So it's great to be able to recognize them for their efforts and they're so appreciative of it, not just for the monetary value of the of the scholarship, but the scholarship itself that comes from Jason Dahl from a hero and so they can take that forever in their lives and be proud of it."
There is a selection committee for the Heartland Hero Essay where three winners are chosen and each receive a certificate from the Captain Jason Dahl Scholarship Fund.
"On this 25th, it's a good reminder for all of us, but I think for the kids, it's very special because they see this as a time when the country really came together," Palamara said.
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