Veterans visited New Hyde Park eighth-graders to give them a lesson in history – and portrait painting.
For the seventh year in a row, Assembly Member Ed Ra hosted the Veteran Portrait Project at Notre Dame Catholic School, organizing roughly 20 veterans to come into students’ English and art classes, providing them with the opportunity to interview and paint the veterans on Wednesday.
“I think the students and the veterans both get a lot out of it,” Ra said. “The veterans enjoy sitting with the students and telling their stories…And, for the students, the takeaway, I hope, is that veterans are people who are heroes within our local communities who are living alongside them.”
Students spent an hour interviewing and taking notes on the veterans’ lives and another hour sketching them to prepare for a watercolor portrait. Their English teacher, Jennifer Starzman, and art teacher, Maria Murphy, provided them with lessons on interviewing, biographical writing and portrait drawing prior to Wednesday’s session.
“They love it. They really take it seriously,” Murphy said of her students. “I’ve noticed that they become perfectionists when it comes to the paintings, because they want to do justice to the veterans. They really want to impress them.”
Students will continue to work on both projects for the next month in preparation for a reception where their work will be unveiled at the Long Island Children’s Museum and remain on display for the month of November in honor of Veterans’ Day.
“At that reception, the veterans are reunited with the students who interviewed them, and they get to see the finished product,” Ra said. “A lot of the veterans will bring their families there to see their portraits.”
Murphy said the experience makes for a great lesson. The students get a real-world experience in profiling and painting someone and have the opportunity to really understand and connect with veterans, something they may otherwise not have the opportunity to do.
“It’s a great way to bridge the gap between the different generations,” Murphy said. “They learn a lot about the veterans. Some of them didn’t realize that women could be veterans…It’s a great way for them to learn and to have respect for the men and women who serve our country.”
Ra and Murphy said the veterans and students frequently develop genuine, longstanding connections due to the project, remaining in touch well after the work concludes.
“Some of them have formed friendships with the students,” Ra said. “One veteran told me a couple of years ago that a student had invited him when they were holding their Eagle Scout ceremony four years later.”
Ra, who regularly holds veteran-centered events within his district, started the project because he was inspired by former President George W. Bush’s book, Portraits of Courage, in which Bush painted 66 veterans to share their stories.
He said he hopes to expand the program to additional schools within his district.
“It’s a great opportunity for students to see that veterans are ordinary people who did an extraordinary thing,” Ra said. “They are people who are in your local community.”
