Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Close-Up Students Visit Capitol

Visiting Washington, D.C., proved to be an experience to remember for three Gurdon High School students.

The trio visited the nation's capital as part of the Close-Up Program in April. They recounted their trip to the Gurdon Rotary Club Thursday, June 4.

GHS Principal Leonard Gills informed the club members the students, along with he and Rita Guthrie, the sponsors, made the journey the week before Easter.

He said everyone involved stayed busy and a lot of walking was required as the students hiked to the various meetings, seminars and programs.

A total of 20 students from Gurdon participated, Gills said, making it one of the largest contingents there, of the five states present at the time.

The students speaking to Rotary were Holly Almand, Andy Taylor and Chris Wise.

Almand said they were given workbooks to help them get familiar with what would be going on when they arrived and afterwards.

She spoke of how the media in Washington can affect the national vote by the way it represents various candidates for office.

There was little rest for the students, she said, as most of the meetings and conferences lasted until around 10 p.m., but the visit was still fun, as they met a lot of new people, learned a great deal about how the government operates and had wonderful experiences.

Taylor, speaking next, ventured to the topic of monuments, specifically the Vietnam Memorial.

He said while there they saw a side of Washington not shown on television and were able to ask questions they wanted to ask.

There are 58,022 names on the Vietnam Wall, Taylor told the Rotarians, each in the order the soldier was killed during the war.

He made a pencil etching of one of the names on the monument, and wondered if the lives of these men and women were minimized by being on the wall. However, Taylor said, the wall is a living monument to the sacrifice these people made in the battle for freedom.

"It's easy to sit at home and gripe about things," Taylor said, "and take voting for granted." Voting, he continued, is not a right, but a privilege and duty each American should live up to showing they honor the supreme sacrifices made by those who died so the rest of us can cast ballots on election day in peace.

"These soldiers," he said, "died fighting for our rights. Their deaths must not be in vain. This is what I learned in Close Up."

Wise ended the student speaking portion, giving an overview of what went on.

Day one, he said, was for settling in and meeting the new roommates, as those attending didn't get to stay with the group they came with at the hotels.

From there, though, it was touring, seeing monuments and memorials and hearing speeches daily. "Everything was learning," he said.

Perhaps not everything, as he admitted there were some students who fell asleep during a session of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Arkansas students didn't get to meet the state representatives or senators, but did visit their offices and talked with the staff.

Gills said everyone found the culture different in D.C. from Gurdon.

The students, he continued, had very little free time, but spent the free time they had Friday visiting the Georgetown Mall.

"This was a good experience for them," he said. "They got to see what the rest of the world was like and compare values and morals."

Two students wound up being televised on C-Span.

The tours took the students and sponsors to the Arlington Cemetery, the Pentagon City Mall and the Press Club. "It was a fast-paced week," he said.