- April 26, 2024
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As Debbie Kryspin’s second-grade students returned to the classroom after P.E. Thursday, May 17, they expected to follow their daily routine of eating snack. But there was something bigger planned.
One by one, the students slowly entered the classroom to find a familiar face standing in the front of the room. The face was one they had seen through video, but never expected to be in their classroom. It was their Army pen pal, in real life.
Capt. Teresa Swank, physician assistant in the U.S. Army, stood with her nephew, Bruce Collura, in front of the welcome sign being projected onto the white board as an American Flag hung on one side. One by one, the shocked second-graders timidly made their way to their seats attempting to hold back their excitement, until an adult said that it was OK.
Then the floodgates opened, and a swarm of students, jumping up and down, grinning ear to ear, surrounded Swank. They packed in for a group hug, no longer containing their excitement for meeting their superhero in person.
“I think they are going to act like children who are seeing someone they know and love, even though they’ve never met her before,” Kryspin said before the surprise visit.
After the excitement settled, 8-year-old Adrian Otero said, “She is awesome. It’s really nice to write to Capt. Swank because she’s in the army — she fights for our country. It’s really, really good to meet her. It’s amazing.”
The pen pal relationship started in the beginning of the school year when the class signed a card and drew pictures for their classmate, Bruce, to bring to Swank at her home in Ohio before she deployed to Afghanistan.
As a return gift, Swank sent the class old money with Saddam Hussein’s picture on it that she had left over from her deployment in Iraq.
“It’s really just paper,” she said. “Bu they got the biggest kick out of it.”
Through the year, students continued to send Swank letters and holiday cards. They even sent Christmas ornaments.
But Swank became a real person to the second-graders when she video recorded herself reading a book and sent the DVD, along with the book, to the class, through the military program, United Through Reading.
“Bruce is my little buddy,” Swank said of her nephew. “So I thought it was so neat to do some education pieces with (the class) and answer questions for the kids to help them understand. There is one child (in the class) that has a relative who’s deployed, but a lot of people don’t really understand a lot about the military. I thought it was neat to interact with them, as well as come down here to be able to meet them.”
The impression that Swank has left on the class is one of admiration and honor — so much so that to motivate the class to be better, Kryspin asks the class, “Would Capt. Swank be proud of you right now?”
